Out of all the recurring anxiety dreams I have (and there are plenty!) the worst are the betrayal dreams. Other anxiety dreams can leave me waking up in terror, creeped out, exhausted, concerned about my sanity etc, but the fucking betrayal dreams man… they cut to the core. Maybe because I am so often “misread” by people who project their own issues onto someone they think threatens them (often who they previously admired) by making me… well, whatever they imagine me to be. I wake up from these dreams questioning everything and everyone, especially myself, and wonder how to move forward if trust isn’t actually an option. Not that trust comes easily to me, far from it. I guess mostly it’s just so incredibly sad and deflating, waking up with this awful just been stabbed in the heart feeling. Takes a lot to recover from these fuckers. What’s your worst dream?
casa azahar 
The futility dreams. They fucking wear me out. There’ll be something I have to do or some emergency that calls for an immediate response, and nothing I try to do works and nobody helps, and I end up going from place to place trying to accomplish whatever needs to be done. The phone doesn’t work (sometimes can’t even be dialed, and yes in these dreams they still have dials), or I don’t have the thing I need with me, or no one can be bothered to see if the lost thing is on their premises. Just last night it was a multiplex where for some reason the Cute Engineer and I had wandered into an empty theatre to sit down and chill, and then found people were streaming in to hear a lecture and I was digging in my bag for a mask that fit decently (panicking and looking for a mask is now a subset of this dream type and I guess will be forever). Somehow this evolved to “I had a big duffel bag with all my things but put it down somewhere.” Leading to a long hejira through the building where gift-shop stuff was being sold, but no duffel; eventually to the outside where I found I was in a huge strip mall and went from shop to shop, including the three gyms, where it seemed someone might turn in a lost duffel, but no; and by the time I woke up I was looking at a bewildering maze of little crap mall shops stretching as far as the eye could see. These always leave me completely drained and aching. A subspecies is looking for a bathroom that works and isn’t filthy.
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Omg omg omg… I know these dreams! Have never called them futility dreams before though – great description for them. Like EVERYTHING you try falls flat, becomes impossible, even just not being able to dial a phone or whatever… I tend to have two versions. One is just trying to get somewhere, be someplace and the craziest things happen to prevent me, the other involves the cats. For some reason I am outside with the cats and I have to get somewhere and same deal… except I keep having to round up the cats. I wake up in a sweat from these but at least these ones don’t leave me trying not to hate myself.
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