Apparently this whole grad school application thing is stressing me out a little more than I wanted to admit. When I am anxious about something, one or both of the following things happen: I have trouble falling asleep at night (or staying asleep in the morning); and/or I start having dreams about my teeth falling out. Lately, I've had both.My teeth dreams really do happen whenever I get stressed. I've looked it up online, and apparently this is pretty common. According to the online dream interpreter people, dreaming of your teeth falling out often represents anxiety about a transition or change in your life, or a feeling of powerlessness. This does seem to fit for me, as these dreams really started happening for me when I started facing big life changes. I still remember my very first one as I was applying to grad school (the first time!). In the last 4 years, I've faced a lot of life changes, and my dreams have continued.
The funny part is that my dreams reflect just how stressed out I really am. For example, if I'm just a little worried, I might dream that one of my back teeth is a little loose. It's not inevitable that it will fall out, but if it does, at least it's in the back so it's not very noticeable. However, if I'm REALLY stressed, I've had dreams where the falling-out is so drastic, that in my dream I just coughed and all of my teeth flew out of my mouth. Most of my dreams are somewhere in between...just the other night I dreamed that I had about 4 teeth towards the front of my mouth that were really loose, just barely hanging on. I spent the whole dream trying desperately to keep them in my mouth. (For some reason, in these dreams, there must be no dentists, because there never seems to be any hope of repair for my lost teeth.) Regardless of the actual dream content, I always wake up feeling bothered and helpless.
I'm trying to talk myself down and remind myself of my "What is meant to happen will happen" mantra as far as this grad school application goes. I had really planned to just apply and see what happened...if I got in, great, if not, no big deal. However, I'm studying REALLY hard for the GRE, and I'm starting to think that after putting in all this effort, if I don't get in, I'll be pretty bummed. Yet at the same time I keep thinking, "can I really picture myself back in school again?" I had always thought I'd love to be a professional student, but now that I've had a taste of being out of school and having a job, I think I prefer that. Basically, I'm just a big ol' confused mess.
But, we'll cross the "do I really want to go to school again" line when we get there. In the meantime, I'll go back to my studying and dreaming of loose teeth!
Have any of you ever had a recurring dream like this?
1 comment:
I have had dreams of my teeth falling out! I didn't realize it was related to stress, but I wouldn't be surprised if I was stressed when I was having those dreams. One was so awful.. my teeth were all falling out and cramming my mouth and gagging me.. it was horrible!! Don't have that one :-) Dreams or no dreams, you're gonna do awesome on that GRE!
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