Nightmares
I've been working more hours at work these last few weeks. I've been scheduled for 40 hours, but have been able to cut out a bit early some days. I'm not actually hitting the 40 hour mark, but I've done quite a few full length workdays. The back hurts from it, but it's not unbearable and that's some major progress. Unfortunately, I've started having nightmares and it's got to be related to the extra time spent on the job. This time it's a brand new recurring dream, one I've never had before. I'm in some sort of cave and there's a cave-in. I'm not completely trapped and I can see light in an opening that is my way to dig out. I start digging my way out, moving boulders and dirt (with my hands, no shovel), but then there's another collapse and the space I'm in gets tighter and smaller as does the opening of the way out. I dig some more and, you guessed it, another collapse. Rinse and Repeat. I always wake up in a panic, at the point where it seems like the next collapse will leave me completely pinned with no sign of light from the opening of the way out. It's not a fear of death that causes the panicked feeling, it's a fear of being trapped and unable to do anything about it. This cave-in dream has me waking up, shaking all over and feeling every bit as if it really happened. That's something that used to happen with my recurring dream of drowning that I have when I'm feeling overwhelmed, but these days (and for a long time now), in the drowning dream I always realize I'm still breathing and therefore I can't be drowning so at that point I wake up and I'm not in a panic, just awake. And I think, "Ah, I'm feeling overwhelmed so let's do something about that tomorrow" and I go right back to sleep. This has been the case with ever other recurring dream I've had in the past and there are a lot of them, each tied to a specific problem. Eventually I figure out what the dream is trying to tell me, fix the problem and the dream either goes away completely or comes back as a reminder from time to time (without the panicked feeling) that I need to address a particular issue in my life. And this time, the solution for the nightmares is not to work less hours or to find another job, but to figure out what is it is about those two things that is triggering this. The answer will come to me, tomorrow or the next day or a month from now, but it will come eventually. In the meantime, I should probably plan on going to bed a bit earlier to make up for the hour it takes me to go back to sleep after waking up from one of these dreams.