I've wondered for a while why my dreams mock me (cross post from lounge).

[Tobin S.]

According to http://www.experienceproject.com/dream-dictionary/Mocking-dreams:

"To dream of mocking means an aspect of yourself that you are ashamed of. To see someone mocking you or making fun of you in your dream means that you are suffering from low self-esteem. Perhaps you are too overly worried with what people say about you."

That sort of fits except I'm not overly worried about what people say about me. I do care about it to a certain extent, but I'm not above drinking a 40 on the front porch which my wife thinks is just terrible.

I suffered horribly from low self esteem for years, but I hadn't really thought of myself in those terms for a while. But I guess I still do have that a bit. It's something from my background that I guess I'm not going to change in just a few years.

[kickysnana]

1. Sometimes dreams are just dreams. n/t

[Denninmi]

2. I don't really know.

I think if it happens a lot, it must mean something, but dream analysis is all over the board, people interpret them very differently.

I used to have a lot of dreams about walking into a classroom and being told a term paper was due that day that I had never known about, or a test that no one told me about. I guess that means I had anxiety over being unprepared for something?

[hunter]

4. My anxious dreams are about forgetting my college class schedule for many weeks at a time.

Then I remember the class, I walk in late, and they're already discussing the results of an exam I missed entirely. Usually it's a chemistry class, but sometimes it's a math class or an off-the-wall botany class, something like "The Plant Ecology of Croatia" and I realize I've missed the required field trips too.

It's either that or some authority discovers I didn't complete high school and is making me go back, and I'm sitting there in Introduction to Physical Science trying to be invisible and thinking, "Wait a minute! I was a teacher, I taught this class!!!" and feeling ten times the misfit I was at sixteen years old.

[Denninmi]

5. I've had a couple like your first type.

Disconcerting but I don't think they mean much in the big picture.

[mopinko]

3. most of my worst dreams are caused by my apnea.

but mostly i think it takes time for stuff to sink all the way down in into the unconscious.

[Tobin S.]

6. You guys are missing the point.

The realization is what's important. It doesn't matter what the impetus was.

[hunter]

7. You said, "I guess I'm not going to change in just a few years..."

... implying some sort of acceptance.

We talk about "brain chemistry" but it's still difficult for us to see mental illness or injury as something physical.

I have some physical injuries that are healed as best they can be, but are still a nuisance. My knees and hips often hurt -- sometimes one knee or the other will stab me unexpectedly with a terrible pain that will cause me to stumble. I used to be able to take ibuprofen for joint pain but it now messes up my stomach. For now I tolerate the pain. In the future I may need stronger meds, or even joint replacements. (I hope not...) Evidently I was not born with the sort of knees able to withstand the abuse of my compulsive running and enjoyment of hard physical labor. I stopped running years ago because it simply hurt too much, but I'll still occasionally enjoy hard physical labor even though I always regret it afterwards.

I also have scars from accidents that don't trouble me at all. These are simply a reminder of my past, no different than the memory of the accident itself.

Our minds are physical organs too, just like skin or bone or joints. We all have differing capacities to deal with various sorts of mental trauma, and we are all born with differing capacities of specific function. My white skin is excellent for synthesizing vitamin D in the cloudy whether of Northern Europe, but it burns easily in the Southern California sun. I am covered with scars from sunburn. Likewise, someone with dark sun resistant skin would not have fared well in the malnourished Northern Europe of times past.

Some of us are sensitive to certain kinds of mental trauma, some of us less so. We can have two soldiers in identical horrific situations and one might come home with PTSD and be "scarred for life" while the other is apparently able to "put it behind them." We can have two children raised in situations of identical abuse, and one will suffer as an adult and the other will not.

Our society likes to claim it's "mind over matter" as if the mind and body are two separate entities, but I reject that. It would be the same as if somebody claimed I could sunbathe nude all day and by "force of will" refuse to get sunburned. That would be bullshit.

I "suffer" depression the same way I suffer fair skin. If I want to go out in the sun I put on sunscreen. If I want to be somewhat functional in this society I take anti-depressants.

Maybe your "mocking dreams" are like a scar on your skin. The wound is healed, the skin is functional, but you can still see the scar and it may or may not fade away as time passes.