Recurring dream about high school

[marigold]

I've been having dreams, for years, about high school. I am 28 now. Usually I'm in the wrong class, or don't remember which class to go to. I can't remember how much of the work I didn't do. When I'm in the class, I wonder if I'm failing (because I skipped all the time, in real life). Often, I will still not have graduated, a few years overdue, feeling like I will be there forever. Sometimes it feels so real, and I feel like I'm still in high school when I wake up (I know that I'm not, but it feels as if i could be). These dreams kind of disturb me. In the waking world, that school wasn't a good experience for me, as I had very few friends, and often ate my lunch in a bathroom stall, in order not to make it more obvious that I was a loner. I didn't get picked on that much. There were a few times in the earlier years (in Canada our high schools are grade 8-12), and definitely some psychological bullying from one girl. I always knew I could stand up for myself physically, so I wasn't afraid of being hurt in that way. I skipped class all the time, as I felt very out of place, friend-wise, and didn't like a lot of the academic subjects, being more on the artistic side. I went home, and my Mom was always there, as she has no friends either, and was also a stay-at-home mom. She would harass me about not being at school, then ensued name calling and blaming. During high school, I felt that I had no emotionally safe place to go, and attempted suicide a few times. This was such a painful part of my life, but I can look at the issues if I know what my dream is telling me.

[JoannaB]

Unfortunately, school leaves a lasting effect on people's dreams. I know a 75 year old who still had the "have final exam and am not prepared" dream earlier this year. I had a dream about college earlier this year too, and I am turning 40. These dreams happen to a lot of people, throughout our lives, and they are stressful even to those of us for whom high school and college were not a big deal. I can only imagine how difficult this must be for you. I think there are many different reasons to have such dreams, one of them is if we are learning some kind of life lessons and are stressed that we are unprepared for them. for example, let's say someone had a new responsibility at work, and was worried about not doing his or her best because this was a new duty they had not mastered yet, then one might have the dream about being unprepared for a final exam in school. Or if an adult conversation did not go as well as hoped for, one might have a dream of a memory of a socially traumatic event in high school. We learn a lot of things in school, and some of them are not just academic: we learn the templates for how to learn, how to deal with stress, how to socialize. And then, much later in life, our dreams go back to that school time when something in current life triggers those templates. Unfortunately, for some people such as yourself, that time is one you would rather not keep revisiting in your dreams. Unfortunately, the subconscious has other ideas. Have you considered learning to lucid dream, if you do not already know it? It is one of the most effective remedies against recurring nightmares: when you find yourself back in high school, you can become aware that you are dreaming, and then you can teleport out of there, to leave high school behind again.