They should call January the month of the anxiety dream. Most people have taken a break, short or long, then find themselves about to recommence work. That’s when their subconscious gets to work, whispering in their ear: “Frankly, you don’t know what you are doing. Frankly, this will be the year in which you are revealed as a fraud.”
None of this is expressed during daylight hours. It’s saved for when you are asleep, usually in the week before you are due back at work.
Having asked around, these anxiety dreams are tailored to each person’s profession. The pilot, for example, dreams of overseeing the plane during an emergency, but the manual containing the necessary codes has disappeared. Sometimes, it’s locked in a drawer, the key inexplicably missing.
They should call January the month of the anxiety dream.Credit: iStock
A school principal, meanwhile, tells me about driving a bus full of students, despite not being licensed to drive a bus. Oh, and now the bus is starting to career out of control.
The church minister is at his lectern, he tells me, the congregation hushed and attentive as he opens the folder containing his sermon, only to find nothing there. At this point, he awakes, sweating. The school teacher, meanwhile, is lost in the woods, a wild storm preventing her from even approaching the school where her students await her arrival. She tries to get there, but wind or fire forces her back.
Some obvious questions arise. Why are we all so anxious? Was such self-doubt always part of our working lives? Or have we created a performance-reviewed, KPI-measured, short-term contract world in which half the population believes they are about to be sacked and shamed in the year ahead?
Certainly, I’ve been busy with my own nightmares. For those of us who work in radio, the dream is always the same. It’s your turn on air, but you are not in the studio at the designated time but in some room far away. There’s equipment there, but it doesn’t work, however many buttons you press. The door is locked and you cannot reach your destination. The panic rises in your body. You believe you’ve let everyone down. Then you wake up.
No wonder we all look a bit tired. We’re working harder during the night than we need to work during the day.
Actually, many people talk about this moment of waking up and the rush of relief it brings. It’s almost worth the nightmare. “Oh, phew, it was all a dream.”
There’s an argument that these nightmares are useful. They are provided by our subconscious as a way of sharpening our psyche for the year ahead. They are the mind’s way of marking the transition between a lazy summer and the tougher requirements of employment.
That’s one theory, but here’s a more likely one. Over the past few decades, we’ve been busy creating a world in which the human tendency to anxiety has been amplified in a million ways.
It’s been amplified by parents who complain weekly to the school principal about their child’s teacher; by a hospital system so stressed that nurses and doctors fear they’ll make a mistake with a patient; and by social media sites that leave every cafe owner, mechanic or builder in daily fear that a single unhappy customer might try to destroy their business.
And so we sleep, or we try to, as the builder imagines they’ve forgotten to install the damp course; as the barrister addresses the judge while realising they have no knowledge of the case; and as the actor walks on stage – having forgotten to learn the script and to wear some clothing.
No wonder we all look a bit tired. We’re working harder during the night than we need to work during the day.
Perhaps, for those of a certain age, retirement offers freedom from this anxious dreaming? Alas, according to my research, there is no escape. Those who gave up nursing or teaching or lawyering 10 or 20 years ago, still wake up in a sweat.
An Olympian, retired from the scene for two decades, tells me of performing in a sport that had weight restrictions. All these years on, in his fevered dreams, he still occasionally must mount the scales, only to be found wanting. Ah, the shame.
Evolution has burdened humans with a high level of anxiety. The calmer early humans, lacking the genes for instant flight or fight, fell easily to their predators. It was the anxious ones, those who saw a lion in every shadow, who earned the chance to hand on their DNA.
The lions, for most of us, have now disappeared. Yet here’s the mystery: why have we worked hard to replace them with threats of our own making?
We are left hoping for February, when the anxiety dreams will abate. We’ll realise we can do our job after all, or at least fool the world that we can. The ropes of the plough will not bite into the flesh quite as fiercely once the calluses of work have returned.
In the meantime, how about a kinder, more supportive world as opposed to a world that, by our own collective design, becomes meaner, more threatening, more judgmental with each passing year?
Here’s a resolution for the year ahead: be nice!
Get the day’s breaking news, entertainment ideas and a long read to enjoy. Sign up to receive our Evening Edition newsletter.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Mort Laitner
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
visit website
