OPINION: Why the bad dream?

I woke up yesterday devastated and exhausted. Why? While I’m not 100% sure what happened, I know whatever happened in my dream left me feeling this way.

Unless I write down my dreams as soon as I wake up, I’m unlikely to remember them later in the day. However, that doesn’t stop the feelings from the dream from creeping into my daily life.

When someone says the term “bad dreams,” most people picture the nightmares we had when we were kids. Some of the most common ones include falling, being chased and, for some reason, losing all your teeth.

I remember waking up from a bad dream as a child and being terrified to even open my eyes. Who knew what might be standing next to my bed? One strong presence in my childhood nightmares was Samara, the girl from the 2002 film “The Ring.”

The thing is, I have never seen this film. Instead, I remember waking up in the middle of the night (probably actually just 11 p.m.) and going to ask my parents a question. They had the comedy “Scary Movie 3″ on at that time, which features Samara. Tiny me was terrified of the horror parody version of Samara, and she consistently appeared in my childhood nightmares.

However, as I got older, my nightmares changed. As I reached high school, driving became a main component of my dreams. A nightmare that I experience even now at times involves me attempting to break for a red light and not slowing down in time.

Eventually the nightmares turned into bad dreams. What’s the difference? A nightmare will leave you scared, while a bad dream will leave you with other, less extreme, negative emotions, like stressed or unsettled. The American Psychological Association says the distinction between the two is very subjective, but that’s how I view it.

It seems that as people grow into adults, the topics of one’s dreams change. Many of our nightmares growing up were unrealistic, something our adult brains realize.

I know that Samara isn’t going to crawl out of my TV or that some demonic creature won’t be climbing the ceiling above my bed. However, a car accident? Everything going wrong at work? These are a bit more likely.

Whatever my dream was about the other night, I know it wasn’t a nightmare. I didn’t wake up feeling scared. Instead, I was frustrated, stressed, exhausted. It truly could have been about anything.

According to neurologist and dream researcher Patrick McNamara, our dreams will continue to change as we age. In old age, he said dreams tend to focus on loved ones, both living and dead, and the legacies that person will leave behind.

Dreams become very specific at the very end of someone’s life.

“Dreams at end of life have been studied with fascinating results,” McNamara said. “My impression from the literature is that you get a lot of ‘preparatory’ dreams that are about preparing to take a train or plane somewhere and so forth. It’s as if the dream knows when you are about to die.”

However, whether a teen, a young adult, middle aged or even near the end of life, everyone seems to have the dreaded school dreams. Maybe you arrive on the first day and don’t know your schedule. Maybe you arrive and the teacher springs a huge test on you.

My school-themed bad dream usually revolves around being forced to complete another year of high school, despite already having a college degree and a full-time job. Every time I have this dream, I remember arguing with my advisor that I need to get back to Iowa for work and don’t have time to sit through another class. For some reason, he never seems to care.

Most sleep specialists say these dreams happen due to stress or anxiety in your everyday life. The reason we focus subconsciously on school is because, for many of us, that’s the first time we truly felt an adult level of stress and anxiety.

“For a lot of us, school is really the first time that we got that feeling of stressful non-preparation,” psychiatrist Alex Dimitriu said. “In a situation where your stress as an adult is triggered by work or some other scenario, those are very powerful memories of effectively the first experiences of being unprepared or late or missing something.”

I’m not sure what has me subconsciously stressed right now to cause a bad dream. To be honest, with Cheyenne back in the office, I am feeling more relaxed than I have in months. Whatever the reason, if I meet my high school advisor again soon in the dream world, maybe I’ll finally tell him I’m done.