Dreamwork

This morning I had a vivid work anxiety dream about a profession I left nearly four years ago. In the dream I was a high school teacher working at a new school in a complicated building–it’s a dream setting I’ve been in several times and in which I’ve had similar experiences over the years. Despite leaving teaching completely I still have these sorts of dreams regularly. Class has started, I’m unable to find the lounge where my laptop and schedule and keys are, the corridors are confusing. When I finally find my classroom the students are unsure about the project they’ve been assigned, there are administrators in the room asking questions, the technology is not functioning. It’s type of dream I’ve had since I was a student; can’t find my locker, the locker combination doesn’t work when I do find it, I don’t know where my classroom is and I’m late. Other variations? Trying to board a flight but my ticket/passport/luggage is missing.

There’s a bunch of science about dreams being the brain’s way of processing the days’ events into memories. My dreams are almost NEVER related to daily events, however. They’ve always felt weighty and full of almost-realized profundity. Even basic anxiety dreams are trying to tell me something about myself.

Inner Work by Robert A Johnson is a practial guide to approaching and interacting with dreams and dream materials. Johnson is a Jungian and they are the analytic school I find most interesting when I think about my dreams. As a young teen I often had dreams where different selves would argue, different personalities with completely different wants and points of view. And I’d wake up with their dialogues and discussions still ringing in my head. At times the voices were like a mutiny and I genuinely wondered if I were going mad.

I first read a lot of Freud, and finding his work very interesting but unsatisfactory I moved on to Jung and his school. Jung’s assertion that there are completely autonomous elements of the Unconscious which need to be approached and integrated felt right and made logical sense given the content of many dreams, which I carefully recorded in journals over the decades.

So why would I have an increase in teacher anxiety dreams AFTER leaving teaching? Because teaching, as onerous as I found the job, pushed me to the maximum in many ways. I was by necessity at my creative, innovative, and intellectual peak. I had to navigate so many relationships and so many roles, and was for over 20 years completely outside my comfort zone. Every time I thought “I’m getting the hang of this” some new leadership role or challenging group of students or suddenly having to teach online during COVID would happen. Leaving teaching and opening a small business in France has of course been challenging and rewarding, but I am not being pushed in the same ways. There is some part of my unconscious which is dis-satisfied with this state of affairs and is trying to force me to feed its needs for intellectual and creative rigor. Gardening, lumberjacking, speaking French, and running a tourist lodging business are apparently not enough!

I’m considering using Johnson’s method for a bit to see if I can pin down what is going on internally. He’s actually got two methods in the book–one for interpreting and doing dream work, and another for using Jung’s Active Imagination.

Another feature of my dreams is that I often am left upon waking with a song stuck in my head on repeat for days on end. I’ll wake from a dream hearing the song and then can’t shake it. Recently it’s been “Vienna” by Billy Joel. I decided to look up the lyrics, which I’d never really thought about:

Slow down, you crazy child
You’re so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you’re so smart
Tell me why are you still so afraid? Mm
Where’s the fire, what’s the hurry about?
You’d better cool it off before you burn it out
You’ve got so much to do
And only so many hours in a day, hey

[Chorus]
But you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want or you can just get old
You’re gonna kick off before you even get halfway through, ooh
When will you realize Vienna waits for you?

I’ve noticed of late a tendency to always be thinking of the things I need to get done instead of just doing what I’m doing. I’ll be petting one of our animals and thinking “oh shit I have to finish splitting the firewood” or “that pipe in the Loft apartment is not going to replace itself” or “am I ever going to finish reading that William Gaddis novel?”

My unconscious is sending me this song on repeat for a reason. I don’t know that I ever really heard the lyrics outside of the chorus until now. So part of the dream is telling me I need a more intellectual, more creative outlet, while another part is telling me to relax:

Too bad, but it’s the life you lead
You’re so ahead of yourself, that you forgot what you need
Though you can see when you’re wrong
You know you can’t always see when you’re right
You’re right

Take a chill pill, man. You’re doing fine!