Someone Buy Me a Dream Catcher

It's the middle of the afternoon here on the East Coast and I'm on my second cup of coffee since 10:30 this morning. Thank goodness I don't work until the evening or I'd be in trouble. After a rather rough day yesterday I found myself having an extremely difficult time falling asleep last night. I tossed and turned until I gave in around a quarter 'til one and went into the bathroom to grab some NyQuil. Not only had my mind been racing every time I closed my eyes, but the cough that still lingered from my now two week long cold was making it tough to get comfortable. 

I laid down and waited for the NyQuil to kick in and next thing I know I'm groggily being awoken by my alarm. After I hit snooze I was flooded with a series of terrifying, awful, unbelievably ridiculous dreams/nightmares. When my alarm went off again at 9:30 I wanted to cry because everything felt so horribly real and I couldn't tell if I had dreamt everything in the two short hours since my alarm first went off or if some of it was from when I was sedated by the NyQuil. Either way, it felt like I had 20 dreams in one night and they all lumped together in some weird connected story line. 

I won't get into the psychotic, tragic, and slightly paranormal details of my dreams, but I know for a fact that I have never experienced such crazy nightmares before in my life. I'm not about to get on google and look up the metaphorical interpretation of my dreams because that stuff just scares the crap out of me (no offense if you're a fan of this). Plus, I truly believe a good chunk of what I dreamt last night directly relates to a lot of things I'm stressed and overwhelmed by here in real life. As someone who studied psychology in college (not my major, however), and has dealt with anxiety for many years, I'm really into psychologically analyzing dreams, emotions, etc. For example, I was having this recurring dream for a while where my teeth kept falling out. One of the symbolic or metaphoric interpretations behind that dream was that someone in your life was going to pass away. UM ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? Last time I ever looked up the symbolic interpretation of anything. The psychological interpretation of that dream was that you are concerned about your appearance and what people think about your appearance (it can also mean that you are feeling insecure about something). BINGO. I had been feeling rather insecure at the time and that made total sense when I looked into the psychological meaning behind the dream.

Regardless of the meanings or reasonings behind my dreams last night, one thing is abundantly clear: I need a little more zen in my life. I need to learn to de-stress, worry less, and really have some quality R&R. I had high hopes of crossing off a number of items on my to-do list before heading into work, but I think I'll be attempting to nap instead. Maybe I should dig through my closet to see if I have my old dream catcher first?

xoxo