this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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Omg, is the labyrinth of broken toilets thing a common stress dream? That’s the kind of “nightmare” that messes with me — filled with plausible mundane stuff that makes it seem 100% real and 0% fantasy. It’s like having a panic attack while you aren’t even conscious.
I'd had the same recurring dream since early highschool. It was dream like in that it was a true labyrinth that mademoiselle no structuralism sense, walking around in the dream was ethereal, but the objects within were mundane, the toilets were broken or dirty in ways that could be reality not fantasy, but I always knew it was a dream, and for me it wasn't panicked, it was just helplessly frustrating.
Because it was so recurring (at one point I was having this dream weekly) I told every therapist I ever had and they'll all suggested it was about performance anxiety, since many of the toilets were missing doors, or contamination anxiety, or even just having a full bladder before bed. None of that really resonated.
It was in my 20s, having lunch with and old friend, they'd brought their new partner and we got talking about recurring dreams somehow. We covered the usual, the teeth falling out dream, the highschool exam you never studied for that you're also naked for, etc. I start describing the toilet labyrinth, specifically mentioning that I'm not panicked in the dream, in just confused and frustrated, and this new guy excitedly exclaims "you've got an undiagnosed disability, I guarantee it". He was half right, I was diagnosed, but I didn't have any support systems because I'm broke.
The toilet labyrinth is a very common stress dream, but everyone has a slightly different response to it, and it's motivated by different factors. For some people it's performance anxiety, for some people it's health anxiety. Sometimes it's a fear that your private secrets will cause public shame if they got out. In my case it was my subconscious asking the question "how is everyone else making this look easy? how is everyone else able to do this? The tools I've been given fundamentally don't work! why do people keep staring at me like I'm the idiot for not being able to use a broken toilet? why is no one else talking about how to broken and unusable these toilets are? How is it everyone else managing to do this!?" because I in my real life I was trying to keep up with the able bodied peers while disabled with no support, and I wasn't eligible for support so it was very much "but how do I do anything when I don't have the tools? Stop asking me to jump, and punishing me for not jumping when I have no legs to jump with"
(I have legs, that's just a metaphor)