Taxonomy of Nightmares

Facebook friend asks:

I had a horrible dream where no matter what, I could not remember anything. Where I parked my car, what kind of car I had, etc. I was in the parking garage all stressed out. It was horrible!

My reply:

These are the three most common stress nightmares:

1. Oppressive obstruction or impedance (most common: “I need to run but my legs won’t move”).

2. Forgot a step (anything from needing to return to high school for one last test to going outside naked to realizing you're unprepared for something important).

3. Find yourself somewhere high and can’t get back down.

There’s another sort, not caused by stress, which (unlike the above) we normally forget upon waking: “This world makes no sense.”

This happens when you lose some of the suspension of disbelief necessary to accept dream illogic. It's a dark version of lucid dreaming, where you realize you’re dreaming and have fun with it, flying around, etc. You've applied some critical dispassion to recognize that the realm you're in - nonlinear and unreal - makes little sense, but you're too foggy to frame it as "dreaming", so you get stuck stressfully struggling to force it to make sense (spoiler: our waking world offers the same conundrum...which benefits from the same solution: critical dispassion and blithe embrace, while framing it for what it actually is: a story you're telling yourself).

What you describe sounds like a combination of “forgot a step” and anxious partial lucid dreaming, per above.

Suggestion: practice lucid dreaming techniques (google is your friend) to bridge the impasse if it repeats. And practice meditation to relieve anxiety as well as to boost your lucid dreaming effort (this is the simple, stripped-down, non-dogmatic, non-religious, non-joiny and extremely efficacious meditation practice I do, but I strongly suggest skipping the rest of the web site).

Another asks:

I've had this one for years: Trying to get ready to be someplace and obstacle after obstacle keeps popping up - can't find the other shoe, stuck in traffic, walking through thick mud that slows my pace . . . .

Obstruction and impedance. The first on my list, above


Further reading: Counterintuitive note on dreaming in "All A Game"

Nightmare note in "Inoculation (or: I’ve Figured Out Cats!)"