Speaker 1: You're walking down the hall alone, your shoes squeak against
Speaker 1: the hard, seamless flooring. You have a sense of otherworldly dread,
Speaker 1: a feeling of looming over a drop so far you
Speaker 1: can't see the bottom, but you can't remember why. Where
Speaker 1: are you? You can't remember that either. The feeling of
Speaker 1: dread is absolutely oppressive. It's weighing you down, as if
Speaker 1: to pull your soul into the underworld. But wait that feeling.
Speaker 1: It's not dread weighing you down. It's a backpack full
Speaker 1: of heavy textbooks. You're in your high school. You're alone
Speaker 1: in the hall because you're late for class. That's right now,
Speaker 1: you remember you had to go back to high school
Speaker 1: because it turns out you never actually finished. There was
Speaker 1: an error with the paperwork in the high school office,
Speaker 1: and somehow they let you graduate even though you never
Speaker 1: took the final exam in your hardest class, Russian calculus.
Speaker 1: You have to go back and take the exam, and
Speaker 1: if you don't pass, you'll be stuck in high school forever.
Speaker 1: Let's see what do we learn in Russian calculus? You
Speaker 1: can barely recall some vague cyrillic operating symbols. What was
Speaker 1: the division symbol. No time to think about it, you
Speaker 1: sprint to the classroom where they're holding the exam. Once
Speaker 1: you get there, you remember you're not the only one.
Speaker 1: Your next door neighbor Jimmy, who's seventy four years old
Speaker 1: and illegally burns trash and a metal drum in his backyard,
Speaker 1: he also has to come back and take the Rustcal exam.
Speaker 1: Jimmy asks did you study? You did not. And that
Speaker 1: coffee shop barista with the Optimus Prime tattoo who you
Speaker 1: went on a date with a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: they're here too, except now they're dating your childhood best friend.
Speaker 1: And who's administering the exam? That's right, it's your old
Speaker 1: rust Cal teacher, Christopher Lambert. Mr Lambert is asking everyone
Speaker 1: to take their seats. The panic rushes up from your
Speaker 1: gut into your wrote. Is there any way out of this?
Speaker 1: Your hand bolts up. Mr Limbert calls on you. He says, yes,
Speaker 1: when is it? And the whole class turns to look
Speaker 1: at you, scrutinizing, crinkling their noses in pity and disgust
Speaker 1: at what they see. Then you realize you're not sitting
Speaker 1: at a desk, your pants are down and you're sitting
Speaker 1: on a toilet in the middle of the classroom. Why
Speaker 1: would they put a toilet here? But no time to
Speaker 1: wonder about that. The class is laughing viciously at your shame,
Speaker 1: and Christopher Lambert is passing out the exams. You didn't
Speaker 1: bring a pencil, Sandra Bullock won't let you borrow one, neither, well,
Speaker 1: Ken Griffey Jr. The test is starting. Mr Lambert, yell's
Speaker 1: eyes on your own paper. A single tooth falls from
Speaker 1: your mouth and lands on page one. Welcome Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind? A production of I Heart Radios has
Speaker 1: Stuff works. Are you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: obviously you can tell that we are going to be
Speaker 1: talking about the one, the only, the high school Horror Dream. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the which is really the worst. I have a lot
Speaker 1: of disdain for the high school Dream because and I'll
Speaker 1: get into more of it later. But but basically, it's
Speaker 1: like when you when you go when you dream, you
Speaker 1: can do anything, You can be anything, Like this is
Speaker 1: the place where lucid dreaming is possible, where all the
Speaker 1: boundaries can dissolve, and all the limitations that you know
Speaker 1: in the waking world can just be swept away and
Speaker 1: you can ascend into the skies of being of pure
Speaker 1: light and energy. Uh. But instead, what does our mind
Speaker 1: do when we slumber? So much of the time we
Speaker 1: have dreams like this, We you know, dreams that are
Speaker 1: just cobbled together out of the mundane garbage of our
Speaker 1: lives into a form that does not fill us with
Speaker 1: wonder or even even terror. You know, like for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, it fills them with terror. It depends
Speaker 1: they're sort of like they're sort of like low stress,
Speaker 1: low anxiety, high school dreams. But when you read a
Speaker 1: lot of people's accounts of these, they're like they wake
Speaker 1: up in a cold sweat, they're absolutely petrified. This is
Speaker 1: something that I think is worth discussing a little bit
Speaker 1: because when you when when you look at the surveys
Speaker 1: of what people have dreamt about, and there are different
Speaker 1: ways of conducting those surveys, so it's there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a fair amount of variety there anyway, and it's a
Speaker 1: lot of it's also gonna depend on who you're talking to.
Speaker 1: As we've discussed on the on the show before. A
Speaker 1: lot of studies like this, especially psychological studies, they're often
Speaker 1: conducted with college students in small sample sizes, and that
Speaker 1: brings a you know, it brings a lot of limitations
Speaker 1: and what kind of life experiences the dreams then are
Speaker 1: are ascending from. But but I was looking around a
Speaker 1: little bit thinking about Okay, it seems like we're often
Speaker 1: not talking about nightmares. There's there's like a variety of
Speaker 1: dream that is, you know, filled with anxiety or even
Speaker 1: dread without actually really breaking over into this room that
Speaker 1: we think of as the domain of nightmares. I guess
Speaker 1: that depends on the definition you'd use, because I've always
Speaker 1: thought of nightmares as including dreams that are not like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like immediate physical peril. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: violent dreams that people obviously think of as nightmares. Like
Speaker 1: one of the most common themes of bad dreams is
Speaker 1: being chased by something, right, but they're you know, a
Speaker 1: huge number of people's really bad dreams are about like
Speaker 1: or about like public embarrassment or about things like having
Speaker 1: to go back to school and face some kind of
Speaker 1: scrutiny or examination. Yeah, but yet when you look at
Speaker 1: the surveys to deal with the content of nightmares. We
Speaker 1: don't often see, you know, a real definite place for
Speaker 1: the school dream. For instance, UH in the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: psychologist Wholesye case and conducted a survey of nightmares and
Speaker 1: found their contents to be UH like dealing with animals,
Speaker 1: him being chased, death and murder at twenty and then
Speaker 1: it goes down to like two percent home and family falling,
Speaker 1: and then miscellaneous nineteen percent, accidents seventeen percent. And you
Speaker 1: see similar things with other surveys. There's a Harvard psychologists
Speaker 1: Didra Barrett's survey and it UH said like being chased
Speaker 1: with seventy two percent death of family members in for
Speaker 1: sixty percent. Following UH, monsters and or animals made it
Speaker 1: on their thirty three percent war, violent crimes, natural disaster.
Speaker 1: And there there have been others that kind of match this,
Speaker 1: this sort of thing, you know, it's like physical harm,
Speaker 1: physical danger. UM. I did find a two thousand uh
Speaker 1: inten German study from the Central Institute of Mental Health
Speaker 1: and Mannheim, Germany that said nightmares okay, forty falling, being chased,
Speaker 1: feeling paralyzed, but also twenty four percent being late to
Speaker 1: an import an event, which definitely lines up with a
Speaker 1: lot of what we're talking about here, because so often
Speaker 1: the content is I am I'm late to the exam
Speaker 1: right um, or I have I've let time slip away
Speaker 1: in advance of the exam. So yeah, it is going
Speaker 1: to come back to like how do we classify nightmares?
Speaker 1: And what do we think of when we think of nightmares?
Speaker 1: And then after we've had one of these school dreams,
Speaker 1: how we classify it. But I think there's a strong
Speaker 1: case to be made that that what we're talking about
Speaker 1: here isn't a nightmare, and yet at the same time,
Speaker 1: I myself find myself at times wishing it were, because
Speaker 1: at least if it were a nightmare, it would it
Speaker 1: would feel more more potent, you know, it would feel
Speaker 1: like it's maybe doing something that it's cathartic in a
Speaker 1: way that matters, instead of being this just ridiculous rehearsal
Speaker 1: for a thing that is that is not going to occur.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, this brings us back to a question,
Speaker 1: of course we're gonna have to touch on throughout the
Speaker 1: episode today, and unfortunately we're not gonna be able to
Speaker 1: answer in a definitive way, But like, what is the
Speaker 1: purpose of the content of dreams if anything to begin with,
Speaker 1: I mean do that we know that like sleep and
Speaker 1: dreaming are obviously important for some kind of neurological function,
Speaker 1: but we don't know if the contents of dreams are important,
Speaker 1: and we don't know if they are important, why are
Speaker 1: they important? What do they do? Right? And and yeah,
Speaker 1: once you you can sort of divide into two schools
Speaker 1: of thought where it's either the contents of the dreams
Speaker 1: do matter or they don't um and when you get
Speaker 1: into the various arguments for them actually mattering, and then
Speaker 1: you get into various divisions. On the show, we've discussed
Speaker 1: the writings of Frederick van Eden in the past, who
Speaker 1: wrote Study of Dreams, and this was a book that
Speaker 1: outlined lucid dreaming, for instance, but you know he covered
Speaker 1: everything from you know, ordinary dreams to symbolic dreams, demon
Speaker 1: dreams and more so. Yeah, it depends on it depends
Speaker 1: on which view you're taking. Either the content manners or
Speaker 1: it doesn't. And then if it if it does matter.
Speaker 1: There's so many ways to unpack that. But I would say, actually,
Speaker 1: whether the content of dreams matters or not, like whether
Speaker 1: what you dream about actually has adaptive value in life
Speaker 1: or whether it's just sort of like a byproduct of
Speaker 1: something going on in the brain. And you know, what
Speaker 1: happens in a dream has no effect on life or
Speaker 1: no positive effects, either way you split it. It's an
Speaker 1: interesting question to ask, why do we dream about the
Speaker 1: things that we dream about? Like why is that the content,
Speaker 1: whether it's adaptive or not. Well, it comes back to
Speaker 1: the nightmare thing, Like so much of the time, I
Speaker 1: feel like the school. You know, sometimes we we do
Speaker 1: have dramatic events in our school history, but a lot
Speaker 1: of times we don't. And yet that's the stuff that
Speaker 1: still remains like so potent to us in our dreams.
Speaker 1: And I think that can be the irritating thing, Like
Speaker 1: why am I still dreaming about this thing? This thing
Speaker 1: is solved high school, you know is solved. You know,
Speaker 1: it's i've I've I've been out of it for you know, decades.
Speaker 1: Why I still returned to it in dream? What is
Speaker 1: it about that experience or that time in my life?
Speaker 1: Maybe the plasticity of my mind that that makes that
Speaker 1: the the the the the fabric of my dreams. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I want to talk about a few common variations
Speaker 1: I think just from what I've read anecdotally. I've not
Speaker 1: been able to find a rigorous study characterizing the nature
Speaker 1: of school anxiety dreams, but I have found some informal
Speaker 1: collections of anecdotes and based on that, and I have
Speaker 1: to say some very common dreams are, uh, I have
Speaker 1: to go back to high school and finish a class
Speaker 1: or a test that I never finished and I don't
Speaker 1: know in like, there's the knowledge that I am an adult,
Speaker 1: but I have to go back and do this. Yes,
Speaker 1: I've definitely done that one. I've I've definitely had that one,
Speaker 1: and I've done that one to a certain extent because
Speaker 1: I went back after college and taught high school at
Speaker 1: the high school that I attended. Wow, so I kind
Speaker 1: of had this weird like I was kind of living
Speaker 1: the dream the worst way possible. And so I will
Speaker 1: sometime have dreams that are I'm sometimes a little vague
Speaker 1: as to whether I am dreaming about teaching high school
Speaker 1: and my old high school where I'm dreaming about attending
Speaker 1: the high school, or having to go back and take
Speaker 1: a class that I didn't finish, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: What age were you when you were teaching at that
Speaker 1: high school? I mean, I was fresh out of college.
Speaker 1: So I was, oh, yeah, so that might come back
Speaker 1: later when we talk about different periods of life in
Speaker 1: the formation of memories, that that might be relevant to
Speaker 1: your case here. Um. So another thing that is extremely common.
Speaker 1: In fact, just before we started off, we were talking
Speaker 1: to our producer today, Seth, and he was saying that
Speaker 1: he's had this dream. I've had this dream. I've talked
Speaker 1: to tons of people who have had this dream, who
Speaker 1: have been out of school for decades, and it's this.
Speaker 1: It's the end of the semester. There's a class that
Speaker 1: I forgot I was enrolled in and I haven't been
Speaker 1: going to and now I suddenly remember, oh no, I'm
Speaker 1: in this class and I've got to go take the
Speaker 1: final exam. Yeah. I I have done that one as well,
Speaker 1: where I'm I missed the deadline to drop the class, uh,
Speaker 1: and or just forgot that I had it entirely. And
Speaker 1: and it'll like summon like a mental calendar of when
Speaker 1: your classes are, and it's generally usually something like, oh,
Speaker 1: it was a Wednesday morning class and it was it
Speaker 1: was sandwich between two other classes, and somehow I just
Speaker 1: missed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get the exact same
Speaker 1: calendar effect. Actually, I think about like, oh, I wasn't
Speaker 1: going because I was doing this other thing at this
Speaker 1: time of the week, and I just forgot repeatedly that
Speaker 1: I had this class. Now I suddenly remember, and uh,
Speaker 1: and my chicken is cooked. I mean, they're like, there's
Speaker 1: no way I'm going to pass this exam. Other common
Speaker 1: things that I found reported are difficulty with navigating the
Speaker 1: school environment, so being in high school or being in
Speaker 1: college and being unable to find the classroom so you're
Speaker 1: like running around, you're late for the class and you're
Speaker 1: trying to get there, but you can't find the door
Speaker 1: or you can't get in. I've never had that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's it's weird how you know that our experiences will
Speaker 1: will vary like that one. I've never had, Like I've
Speaker 1: never had a problem getting to the dream classroom and
Speaker 1: a dream. Another big one I think is school based embarrassment,
Speaker 1: dreaming about like being embarrassed in front of a classroom
Speaker 1: or in front of classmates, or like having to give
Speaker 1: a presentation in front of a class and not being
Speaker 1: prepared or being embarrassed some way. See I I the
Speaker 1: weird thing is I don't have any of those related
Speaker 1: to actual class experiences. But but since I was in
Speaker 1: um theater, I do have dreams related to productions that
Speaker 1: I haven't learned my lines. Yes, I have the same
Speaker 1: dreams I did theater in high school. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: I very frequently dreamed that I suddenly remember, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm in a play that's opening tonight and I haven't
Speaker 1: looked at my lines yet. How about this one? This
Speaker 1: is a weirder one, but I feel like I hear
Speaker 1: this one pretty often, sort of blending of school with
Speaker 1: the workplace or with the current friend group, and blending
Speaker 1: of like old teachers with bosses. You get this, No, No,
Speaker 1: I don't really get that one. I would get get
Speaker 1: the blending of workplaces to a certain extent, because I'll
Speaker 1: have dreams where I didn't actually fully quit my previous job.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of like kept one foot in it somehow,
Speaker 1: but I have to keep going back to do like
Speaker 1: the bare minimum to still be a part of the
Speaker 1: previous employers. And and I always just kind of analyze
Speaker 1: that as being like, it's about fear of change. It's
Speaker 1: about fear of like entering any kind of new phase
Speaker 1: in life. This dream rehearsal in which I never actually
Speaker 1: leave any step behind, you know, where I'm managing to keep,
Speaker 1: you know, one foot on every stone that traverses the
Speaker 1: pond or the stream. I can absolutely see that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: general dreams about not just school, but school being one
Speaker 1: example of like being drawn back into a previous stage
Speaker 1: of life, like you can't you can't move on to
Speaker 1: the next thing. Yeah, yeah, all right, Well maybe we
Speaker 1: should take a break and then when we come back
Speaker 1: weekend analyze the school dream a little more than alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So, you know, in our cold open you
Speaker 1: added the bit about tooth falling out and seth our producer.
Speaker 1: He he mentioned that he has had dreams in which
Speaker 1: is his teeth fall out in the school anxiety dream.
Speaker 1: I've never had a dream where or teeth fall out,
Speaker 1: which which is is weird because I mean, like dental
Speaker 1: anxiety has was. It was kind of part of my
Speaker 1: upbringing because you know, my father was a dentist. You know,
Speaker 1: I remember like seeing slides of awful teeth when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, and and even today like I'll you know,
Speaker 1: i'll you know, I you know, I'm I'm I'm getting older.
Speaker 1: I think about my my dental health and I and
Speaker 1: I regularly read articles that are discussing correlation between dental
Speaker 1: hygiene situations and say things like Alzheimer's. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of of of fuel there for the fire,
Speaker 1: and yet that never happens in my dames. That's interesting. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, the teeth falling out dream goes way back,
Speaker 1: and you've got all kinds of like Freudy intakes on
Speaker 1: that and stuff where it's you know, it's metaphorical for
Speaker 1: some kind of like wish or anxiety that you have.
Speaker 1: Weather dreams are actually metaphorical in those ways, I think
Speaker 1: is an unsettled question. But but but it's certainly they
Speaker 1: could be. And if they are, yeah, it could be
Speaker 1: that maybe you don't really suffer from the underlying anxiety
Speaker 1: that drives whatever causes people to think about their teeth
Speaker 1: falling out in dreams. Maybe the teeth falling out in
Speaker 1: dreams is not normally about teeth. That that's if the
Speaker 1: like metaphor theory of dreams is true, which we don't
Speaker 1: know if it is. And my hand has fallen off
Speaker 1: in a dream before, but yeah, never the teeth. Well,
Speaker 1: so back to the school dream, we know, at least
Speaker 1: anecdotally just from talking to people, that it seems pretty
Speaker 1: common for adults who have been out of school for
Speaker 1: a long time to keep having these recurring dreams about school.
Speaker 1: Uh even you know, I've I've talked to people who
Speaker 1: are in their sixties who still have these dreams, which
Speaker 1: is not I'm not looking forward to that for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. But oh well, uh, and so
Speaker 1: the question is like, is it really all that common? Again?
Speaker 1: We are going to be dealing here with the problems
Speaker 1: that are common to all kinds of psychological studies, which
Speaker 1: is often there is not enough data about say, the
Speaker 1: entire world, and you know, we get like the weird focus, right, yes,
Speaker 1: weird science, but not in the fun way of weird
Speaker 1: standing for Western educated and from industrialized, rich and democratic countries,
Speaker 1: just meaning that like in lots of studies, especially lots
Speaker 1: of psychological studies, there is a disproportionate representation of people
Speaker 1: in that sort of category a lot of times because
Speaker 1: these studies are done at like western research universities, and
Speaker 1: that brings up the potential criticism. Well, of course, all
Speaker 1: these people were having dreams about exams and exam anxiety.
Speaker 1: They are college students. Right, there's not any mystery at
Speaker 1: all why college students would be dreaming about uh school
Speaker 1: and college and exams. And of course these find that yes,
Speaker 1: college students do dream about that a lot. Just one example,
Speaker 1: a two thousand three study in the journal Dreaming found
Speaker 1: among Canadian university students that dreams about the category known
Speaker 1: as school teachers and studying where the fourth most common
Speaker 1: typical theme of dreams out of a list of like
Speaker 1: fifty something common themes of dreams. But they're Canadian college students.
Speaker 1: That just doesn't seem very surprising at all. But studies
Speaker 1: including like older populations have also found that school dreams
Speaker 1: remain very common. Just to cite one example from the
Speaker 1: journal Dreaming in by Mathis Shreddle and Goritz called frequency
Speaker 1: of typical dream themes in most Recent dreams and online study.
Speaker 1: They had a big sample collected online. It was two thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred and fifty three participants. They did a survey
Speaker 1: about the themes of recent dreams people had, and this
Speaker 1: was based on a common dream theme inventory that has
Speaker 1: like a list of commonly cited themes and you can
Speaker 1: check off which ones applied to you in recent dreams uh,
Speaker 1: And they said that the findings were mostly consistent with
Speaker 1: other studies showing prevalence of dream themes in different populations.
Speaker 1: They ended up ranking dream themes by prevalence, and dreams
Speaker 1: about school teachers and studying was actually the fifth most
Speaker 1: common category of dreams by theme. Overall. I found that
Speaker 1: the entire list of ten was kind of interesting. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean six is arriving too late, which could be
Speaker 1: very very well be couched in the same area, right,
Speaker 1: and then if you have a dream that you know
Speaker 1: more than one applies to, you can check both. Right,
Speaker 1: So let's do the whole list. Number ten swimming, number
Speaker 1: nine being physically attacked, Number eight, a person now alive
Speaker 1: being dead. Number seven a person now dead being alive,
Speaker 1: Number six arriving too late, number five school teachers and studying,
Speaker 1: number four, sexual experiences, number three being chased or pursued.
Speaker 1: Number two. Oh, this one hits home trying something again
Speaker 1: and again. And then number one flying or soaring through
Speaker 1: the air. See you know this list just it almost
Speaker 1: just makes me enraged, because like people are people are
Speaker 1: having flying dreams? Is their number one? Lots of people
Speaker 1: have flying dreams. I do not have I've had like
Speaker 1: to flying dreams I can remember i've and then the
Speaker 1: sexual experiences. I've rarely have a sexual dream, and now
Speaker 1: I should have. I should add the caveat here that
Speaker 1: I remember. Big aspect of dreaming is you know, to
Speaker 1: what extent are we able to then recall what we
Speaker 1: have dreamt of when we wake up? I hate that.
Speaker 1: The thing I definitely identify with most on here is
Speaker 1: trying something again and again, like the dream about how
Speaker 1: you just need to do something that should be really
Speaker 1: simple and you should be able to do it, but
Speaker 1: you try and you try and you try and you
Speaker 1: can't and it just doesn't work. Yeah, or like like
Speaker 1: one of my most recent dreams I will share with
Speaker 1: everyone is that that I was trying to move a
Speaker 1: horse across um uh you know, like from one city
Speaker 1: to another in a horse train there, and Glenn Danzig
Speaker 1: was helping me, or he was supposed to help me,
Speaker 1: but he was absolutely no help at all, and it
Speaker 1: was super frustrating and I kept having to to reattach
Speaker 1: the horse hitch um, which is or the hitch on
Speaker 1: the trailer with the trailer hitch which was you know,
Speaker 1: which was extra frustrating because like nothing in this dream
Speaker 1: had anything to do with what with with like actual
Speaker 1: real life struggles, like I'm not dealing with horses or
Speaker 1: horse trailers. Yeah, well that's that's interesting stuff again because
Speaker 1: sort of like the school dream, Now it's not relevant
Speaker 1: to your life at this moment. So what's going on.
Speaker 1: Is it a metaphor for something that is relevant to
Speaker 1: your life in this moment or is it just a
Speaker 1: sort of like thought pattern or memory patterns being retrieved
Speaker 1: for no good reason. And and I guess the perplexing
Speaker 1: thing and about anything like this is that since we
Speaker 1: we have this fan, this fantastic ability to to make
Speaker 1: connections and things and even like random assemblages, you know,
Speaker 1: we can come up with the story if we if
Speaker 1: we analyze it enough, we can say like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: well this is like clearly the horse represents this, and
Speaker 1: the trailer represents this, and Glenn dansit represents that. You know,
Speaker 1: you can come up with a version of it that
Speaker 1: makes sense. But then does that have anything to do
Speaker 1: at all with the the origin of the dream exactly?
Speaker 1: I mean that might be a personally useful story to
Speaker 1: come up with. I can see how it can be
Speaker 1: useful for for people to interpret their dreams, even if
Speaker 1: the interpretation they come up with actually has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the cause of those thoughts arising in their
Speaker 1: head while they're sleeping. But I do agree this is
Speaker 1: I joke about it being enraging, but it is a
Speaker 1: very interesting list. Yeah, it's like swimming dreams. Swimming is
Speaker 1: on here. I never, I rarely have ever had a
Speaker 1: swimming dream. Don't I swim, you know, every morning if
Speaker 1: I can. Uh? And yet it doesn't really factor into
Speaker 1: my dreams at all. But okay, to mention it again.
Speaker 1: Back to our our subject. This theme, known as school
Speaker 1: teachers and studyings number five the fifth most common theme
Speaker 1: of dreams uh in people responding to this massive online survey.
Speaker 1: But simply checking a box that says a recent dream
Speaker 1: included themes of school teachers are studying doesn't really tell
Speaker 1: you all that much, right, Like it would be useful
Speaker 1: to have more granular detail. What exactly usually happens in
Speaker 1: the most common school based dreams? What level of school
Speaker 1: does it apply to? Are the dreams good or bad?
Speaker 1: I imagine they're probably mostly bad, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've got, you know, hunches. But has anybody actually looked
Speaker 1: into this, and so the answer is I was not
Speaker 1: able to find a rigorous study characterizing the school dreams
Speaker 1: like this, but I did find at least one informal
Speaker 1: survey of of these dream experiences, so to look at that.
Speaker 1: I was reading a blog post about this on Psychology
Speaker 1: Today by the Boston College research psychologist Peter Gray, and
Speaker 1: he had obviously noticed the same trend about adults having
Speaker 1: school dreams long after they leave school or graduate. And
Speaker 1: by the way, the post had a great deadpan title
Speaker 1: that does give away the findings, but it's worth reading.
Speaker 1: It is the dream of school and none of the
Speaker 1: dreams are good. Yeah, I mean I can I certainly
Speaker 1: can't think of a good school dream that I've ever had.
Speaker 1: They've all been at the very least boring and tedious,
Speaker 1: if not, you know, anxious. Yeah. So Gray used his
Speaker 1: online platform to conduct an informal survey about the nature
Speaker 1: of school dreams and their emotional valence. Uh. Now, remember again,
Speaker 1: this is an informal survey, not scientific data, so there's
Speaker 1: no attempt to randomize participation or blind respondents about the
Speaker 1: purpose of the inquiry, so there could be selection effects
Speaker 1: biasing the responses here, but with that strong caveat in mind,
Speaker 1: what you know if it's a starting place. What did
Speaker 1: he find in this survey? Well, first of all, he
Speaker 1: looked into what was the level of school that people
Speaker 1: dreamed about. By far, the most common was high school.
Speaker 1: Seventy three percent of dreams involved high school. Uh. And
Speaker 1: these responses are going to add up to more than
Speaker 1: because people can report dreaming about more than one level
Speaker 1: of school. But like high school seventy college thirty percent,
Speaker 1: elementary school twelve percent, middle school seven percent. Where the
Speaker 1: dreams good or bad? As alluded to in the title,
Speaker 1: the dreams were overwhelmingly bad on a one to five scale,
Speaker 1: with one being very pleasant and five being very unpleasant.
Speaker 1: Nobody rated any recurring school dream better than a three.
Speaker 1: Almost all dreams were rated a four or five. Common
Speaker 1: emotions identified by the dreamers in these dreams include anxiety, panic, shame, embarrassment,
Speaker 1: and helplessness. It sounds about right. He found that the
Speaker 1: dreams continued for decades after people graduated from school, and
Speaker 1: they were extremely common in people in their thirties and forties,
Speaker 1: but much older people still reported them. Uh. And back
Speaker 1: to the question of like, what are these dreams like
Speaker 1: what actually happens in them. Plenty of things happened, but
Speaker 1: he found the two most common among the people who
Speaker 1: replied to his survey were missing classes all term and
Speaker 1: therefore being likely to fail. This seems like it goes
Speaker 1: right along with this. You know, this archetype we talked
Speaker 1: about at the beginning, and then second being unable to
Speaker 1: find the classroom. This is the one you were less
Speaker 1: familiar with, right, Robert, Yeah, I don't think I've had
Speaker 1: this one, but it totally makes sense. I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean I remember from real life at times having that issue,
Speaker 1: like trying to find a classroom or trying to find
Speaker 1: where the classroom is moved temporarily. I mean, it seems
Speaker 1: like the kind of thing I would have dreamt about
Speaker 1: but I did not. Well. Another interesting thing that I've
Speaker 1: found when people collect these anecdotes of people's school anxiety
Speaker 1: dreams is that they're not only common among people who
Speaker 1: struggled in school or actually experienced feelings of helplessness and classes.
Speaker 1: It seems they're very common at least also maybe even
Speaker 1: more so among people who were successful as students and
Speaker 1: who did well in their classes. Yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 1: just because you're good at something doesn't mean you're you're
Speaker 1: stress free about it, right, right? But I guess now
Speaker 1: we've got to turn to the question of why why
Speaker 1: these school dreams? For decades after people leave school, you
Speaker 1: might be in your fifties, you might be in your sixties,
Speaker 1: and you're still having the dream where you forgot you
Speaker 1: were enrolled in Russian calculus and you've got to show
Speaker 1: up and take the exam. Why does that happen? Why
Speaker 1: does that take hold of our brains? Why are we
Speaker 1: not instead replacing those dreams with dreams about things that
Speaker 1: are affecting us in the present. I think it's he
Speaker 1: has a great question, and my my sort of gut
Speaker 1: answers it would be that we live very boring lives,
Speaker 1: you know, Like, like I I legitimately want I did
Speaker 1: a little looking around for this, and I couldn't find
Speaker 1: a good source. But my my immediate question is, like,
Speaker 1: how would this kind of data match up with people
Speaker 1: who instead of going to college, uh, like we're we're
Speaker 1: drafted into the military. Like what would this data look like,
Speaker 1: say from you know, more from like a World War
Speaker 1: two era, um, you know, a group of subjects. I
Speaker 1: was really curious about that too. And like, as we said,
Speaker 1: you know, the data we have seemed to be affected
Speaker 1: by like the selection problems that exist in a lot
Speaker 1: of current psychological literature. But yeah, if there is data
Speaker 1: like that out there somewhere and somebody knows about it,
Speaker 1: please send it our way. I would love to see that,
Speaker 1: to see if that's different. Likewise, this would be a
Speaker 1: great area to hear from just our listeners, Like what
Speaker 1: has you what's your experien as if you especially if
Speaker 1: you didn't if if you were, say drafted into the
Speaker 1: military or join the military, like right after high school,
Speaker 1: Like what do you have more of Do you have
Speaker 1: more like boot camp dreams or military dreams or even
Speaker 1: combat dreams, or do you have more high school dreams?
Speaker 1: Like I wonder, wonder like what has the most potency?
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder also our school dreams common among people,
Speaker 1: say who didn't go to high school. Maybe if you
Speaker 1: only have an elementary school education and you know you
Speaker 1: went on straight to a career after that, do you
Speaker 1: still have anxiety dreams about elementary school right? Or do
Speaker 1: you have dreams about like the trials that take place
Speaker 1: at that high school age stage of your life? Like
Speaker 1: entering the workforce or you know, whatever happened to you know,
Speaker 1: fill those years. Yeah, I wish we had more information
Speaker 1: about that, but that's a very interesting question. All right.
Speaker 1: On that note, we're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back. All right, we're back. So
Speaker 1: in trying to answer this question of like why school
Speaker 1: anxiety dreams seem to be so calm and among people
Speaker 1: who went to high school or college but have been
Speaker 1: long out of it, you know, like the high school
Speaker 1: is not something that's still a pressing concern for them,
Speaker 1: and yet they have nightmares about it, or at least
Speaker 1: anxiety dreams about it frequently. Yeah, Like you can forget
Speaker 1: everybody's name that you went to high school with, but
Speaker 1: he still these dreams. I was reading an article by
Speaker 1: the science writer Stephanie Poppas about this and and she
Speaker 1: led me to some interesting thoughts that I don't think
Speaker 1: I would have connected to automatically, but this was this
Speaker 1: was cool. So so she's looking at the same question,
Speaker 1: and one idea she brings up that I thought was
Speaker 1: a very interesting possibility is an association with what's known
Speaker 1: as the reminiscence bump. Robert, were you familiar with this. Okay,
Speaker 1: I wasn't either, but um, but it makes sense based
Speaker 1: on some other things I've read. So the reminiscence bump
Speaker 1: is the tendency for people to have better recollection of
Speaker 1: stuff that happened when they were in their late teenage years,
Speaker 1: in their early twenties, and better recollection of that stuff
Speaker 1: than any other point in their law fives. So, for example,
Speaker 1: older adults, you take somebody maybe in their fifties or
Speaker 1: sixties or seventies, they will seem to have greater access
Speaker 1: to more vivid memories with more accuracy at the referring
Speaker 1: to things that happened at the time there were maybe
Speaker 1: sixteen to twenty five, and less access to memories with
Speaker 1: less accuracy dealing with things both before and after this.
Speaker 1: And many studies have demonstrated the reminiscence bump. I think
Speaker 1: this is a well established phenomenon. Well I could see
Speaker 1: that being a you know, a direct factor in its
Speaker 1: then for sure, Yeah, it's possible. So we'll continue to
Speaker 1: think about this. But to look a little bit more
Speaker 1: closely at the reminiscence bump, if you want to imagine
Speaker 1: basically the quality or salience of memories throughout the life.
Speaker 1: In general. Uh, the quality and quantity of autobiographical memories
Speaker 1: is is not equal across time, and there's sort of
Speaker 1: an s curve in lifetime memory retrieval. For example, adults
Speaker 1: tend to remember very little from before the age of
Speaker 1: five or so. This is sometimes referred to as childhood amnesia.
Speaker 1: Memories increase from here and you get this curve going
Speaker 1: up where the older you get, the more memories you
Speaker 1: have from that period, and it peaks sometime around the
Speaker 1: early twenties, like late teens, early twenties. That's that's the
Speaker 1: golden time for having the most memories that are most
Speaker 1: easily retrieved. And that it's also a reason perhaps that
Speaker 1: you like so much of the nostalgia that is marketed
Speaker 1: at you is going to be marketed at things from
Speaker 1: that period of your life. Oh yeah, actually, uh now
Speaker 1: I don't remember who made this point, but somebody I
Speaker 1: was reading made this point. I'm sorry I can't remember
Speaker 1: the name. Pointed out that the connection between this and
Speaker 1: the cycle of remakes and films, that there seems to
Speaker 1: be about a twenty year lag and that would tie
Speaker 1: in with like the stuff you remember coming out when
Speaker 1: you were twenty years old, you being ripe to like
Speaker 1: go engage in nostalgia for that or even participate in
Speaker 1: making the remake when you're forty interesting Okay, But anyway,
Speaker 1: after this increase in in the retrieval of memories from
Speaker 1: around the early twenties, they your your ability to retrieve
Speaker 1: memories decline again from later periods, so older adults remember
Speaker 1: less from their thirties and forties. Though, of course, no
Speaker 1: matter what age we are, we tend to recall recent
Speaker 1: events better, So whatever wherever you are in the age range,
Speaker 1: the memory of course from the last few years will
Speaker 1: usually be pretty good. So no matter what your age is,
Speaker 1: if you're after you know, thirties or forties, you're going
Speaker 1: to have kind of an s curve with it peaking
Speaker 1: up again for more recent things. So we can definitely
Speaker 1: see how this could be related. It could be relevant
Speaker 1: to the lifelong power of school related terror and it
Speaker 1: seems to line up especially with the observation that the
Speaker 1: majority of school related dreams are not about like elementary school,
Speaker 1: but they tend to be about high school and college.
Speaker 1: So that could be because school anxieties are common for
Speaker 1: people who attend high school and college in their late
Speaker 1: teens and early twenties, and these themes are especially salient
Speaker 1: and easy to access in memory for dream content. But
Speaker 1: I guess this forces us to ask the question, if
Speaker 1: the reminiscence bump plays a role in the prevalence of
Speaker 1: school related dreams, why do we have a reminiscence bump
Speaker 1: in the first place, Like why would we remember this
Speaker 1: part of our lives better than other parts of our lives.
Speaker 1: And there have been a lot of hypotheses to explain
Speaker 1: this pattern. I think it's something that it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's not fully answered yet, but there's a lot of
Speaker 1: research and thought about this. An early idea was that
Speaker 1: maybe this is just the time of life when like
Speaker 1: the brain is physically most adept, it's you know, your brain,
Speaker 1: is it optimized, high potential, it's making memories best than
Speaker 1: those those memories are easiest to retrieve later. Well. One
Speaker 1: one possibility that I think ties directly in with this,
Speaker 1: that you know, I'll come back to later on, is
Speaker 1: that this is a time period this is the teenage brain.
Speaker 1: And uh, we've talked about the teenage brain on the
Speaker 1: show in the past, about how it is it is
Speaker 1: wired a little differently, like the different there are different
Speaker 1: priorities for the teenage brain, for instance, with making social connections.
Speaker 1: Uh and you know, from an evolutionary standpoint, like that
Speaker 1: is there because you would need to make connections with
Speaker 1: new people, you would need to branch out and uh
Speaker 1: and and become a part of other groups and it
Speaker 1: would be necessary for your survival. So like the teenage
Speaker 1: brain is is wired for this passage into a new
Speaker 1: phase of life. Uh So, yeah, that could be part
Speaker 1: of it for sure. Well, I want to come back
Speaker 1: to that in a second, because who's the Who's the
Speaker 1: personality that you need most importantly to make a connection
Speaker 1: to for social relevance. It's yourself, right, that's like identity
Speaker 1: formation period. So so we'll come back to that in
Speaker 1: a minute. Uh. There's another explanation that seems to have
Speaker 1: gained some credence after the initial thing about maybe the
Speaker 1: brain just being good at making memories. Then, um, it
Speaker 1: has to do with the nature of life in late
Speaker 1: teens in early twenties. Maybe we remember this period best
Speaker 1: because for many of us, this is the period when
Speaker 1: life is filled with the most variety and novelty. Remember
Speaker 1: when we talked about the sort of the psychological dilation
Speaker 1: of time. Experiences that feel like they're taking the longest
Speaker 1: actually take up the shortest time time in our memory,
Speaker 1: and they sort of collapse because these are the mundane, boring,
Speaker 1: grinding experiences. An hour waiting in line for something feels
Speaker 1: like it takes forever, but it takes up almost no
Speaker 1: space in your later memory. Meanwhile, a novel experience that
Speaker 1: you've never done before, it's very strange and challenging to you,
Speaker 1: goes by in an instant in the moment, but then
Speaker 1: in your memory it takes up this expansive character. And
Speaker 1: thus the faster your time seems to go by in
Speaker 1: the present, the more time you seem to have had
Speaker 1: to experience life in your memory. Yeah to the prime
Speaker 1: examples of this are frequently, of course, a vacation, and
Speaker 1: ultimately that's one of the great things about of a vacation,
Speaker 1: because you've you've changed the way you're interacting with novelty
Speaker 1: in your life. Uh. The darker example, though, it would
Speaker 1: of course be a traumatic occurrence, where it is it
Speaker 1: is also impacting your life in a novel way. But
Speaker 1: in both cases, those can be things that where it
Speaker 1: just seems like time is super sped up in the moment,
Speaker 1: like the things are just rushing, asked you, and then
Speaker 1: it's over. But then when you think back that time
Speaker 1: is way stretched out. It represents more life than the
Speaker 1: you know, the week before that, where there was there
Speaker 1: was just a mundane work week. Yeah. Another example of
Speaker 1: this is frequently a one's wedding. If you've had a
Speaker 1: wedding ceremony, like it's it's it's really become kind of
Speaker 1: a trope, right that it will it will just fly by.
Speaker 1: You'll barely have a chance to experience it in the moment,
Speaker 1: but of course it will be this thing that you
Speaker 1: think back to, uh, you know, for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. Right, And this does seem to go along
Speaker 1: with some psychology and neuroscience. It's well known that the
Speaker 1: brain essentially encodes stronger memories of novel experiences than of
Speaker 1: routine ones. You're gonna have a weaker memory of things
Speaker 1: that you've done a million times and just happened to
Speaker 1: do again the other day, then of something that was
Speaker 1: really unusual and new for you. Just for example, I
Speaker 1: was reading an article about the reminiscence bump by Katie
Speaker 1: Waldman and Slade and She pointed out that there was
Speaker 1: a nineteen eight study that found that nine percent of
Speaker 1: vivid life memories concern unique or first time events. That's
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah, I mean that would make sense. I
Speaker 1: mean just if you look at memories just to sheer
Speaker 1: like cataloging of events or occurrences that may prove useful later,
Speaker 1: like the ones that are gonna be highlighted, or this
Speaker 1: would never happen before, Well, we better we better mark
Speaker 1: this one. We better make sure this one's nice and vivid,
Speaker 1: because this will this could be useful if this thing
Speaker 1: were to happen again exactly. But this theory has some
Speaker 1: challenges to explain. The reminiscence bump, for example, a big
Speaker 1: problem a lot of the memories that people report experiencing
Speaker 1: through their reminiscence bumps. So you ask somebody to say, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, what are the things you you know remember
Speaker 1: in your life and make a list of autobiographical details.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are gonna be in their say,
Speaker 1: early twenties or late teens or something. But a lot
Speaker 1: of these experiences are not, in fact novel experiences. They'll
Speaker 1: remember something mundane from that time period. Well like when
Speaker 1: I think back to high school. I don't think I
Speaker 1: have any definitive memories of specific tests that I was
Speaker 1: stressed out about. You know. It's it's like these these
Speaker 1: dreams seem to be occurring from just a generalization of
Speaker 1: of of anxiety that I was feeling at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so Waltman's article points actually to something that I
Speaker 1: found really interesting. And this comes back to the point
Speaker 1: you were making earlier that we're both talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: Another theory that's become popular and gained some traction in
Speaker 1: explaining the reminiscence bump is that the reminiscence bump occurs
Speaker 1: in the late teens, in early twenties or its peaks then,
Speaker 1: because this is a time full of memories that people
Speaker 1: come to see as self defining. These are autobiographical, narrative
Speaker 1: experiences that come to mind when we're asked to think
Speaker 1: about our identity, who we are, and so experiences and
Speaker 1: and studies have shown this experiences that we see as
Speaker 1: self defining occupy a privileged place in our memory, even
Speaker 1: if they occur at other stages of life. But apparently
Speaker 1: it's just very common for self defining experiences to be
Speaker 1: clustered in your late teenage years and in your twenties.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Yeah? Absolutely, yeah, I mean this
Speaker 1: was this is this this time of of expansion in
Speaker 1: our life, this time of stepping from one one stone
Speaker 1: across the stream to another. Yeah. And so normally when
Speaker 1: we think about self defining memories, we want to drift
Speaker 1: towards the positive, right, And so if you are asked
Speaker 1: to make a list of like I am statements about yourself,
Speaker 1: so you know, make list ten statements about you saying
Speaker 1: like I am this, I am that, And then after that,
Speaker 1: I say, take every one of those I am statements
Speaker 1: and make a list of specific autobiographical memories you have
Speaker 1: that that that illustrate this fact about you that you
Speaker 1: are this thing. People will tend to make lists of
Speaker 1: a lot of things from their like teenage in early
Speaker 1: twenties period. But studies find that that people can have
Speaker 1: un if people have self defining experience at other periods
Speaker 1: in their life, they will remember these other periods in
Speaker 1: their life very well also. Uh So, so it could
Speaker 1: just be that there's this unfortunate like timeline coincidence, coincide, coincidence,
Speaker 1: coincidence that the timeline of when you're in high school
Speaker 1: and when you're in college. Happens to line up pretty
Speaker 1: well with the timeline of when you're figuring out who
Speaker 1: you are and making memories that will last the rest
Speaker 1: of your life to help you make sense of your
Speaker 1: life and your in your narrative arc. Absolutely, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think those two line up, you know, rather nicely now.
Speaker 1: But then again, uh. In that article I was talking
Speaker 1: about by Stephanie Poppas, she also interviews Michael Shreddle, who's
Speaker 1: in charge of the sleep Laboratory at Central Institute of
Speaker 1: Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. Yeah, he's the same author
Speaker 1: of that and the nightmare survey that referred to earlier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one of the studies I referred to earlier survey.
Speaker 1: And Shreddle does not agree with the reminiscence bump theory.
Speaker 1: He he thinks that dreams stem from the brain trying
Speaker 1: to deal with problems it's facing in the present, perhaps
Speaker 1: by way of analogy, and and he tells her quote
Speaker 1: the examination, dreams are triggered by current life situations that
Speaker 1: have similar emotional qualities. And I mean, obviously, you know
Speaker 1: he's the expert on this. I'm not, but I have
Speaker 1: some issues with that because if this is true, I
Speaker 1: feel like, in a way, it still doesn't answer the question. Like,
Speaker 1: let's say that all school anxiety dreams are actually functioning
Speaker 1: on a kind of unconscious system of metaphors. It's the
Speaker 1: brain working over current problems and obstacles by presenting a
Speaker 1: strange metaphorical scenario that has similar emotional qualities. We don't
Speaker 1: know that's the case, but let's assume that's the case. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: for instance, you're not looking for a classroom in which
Speaker 1: you have to take an exam, but perhaps you're looking
Speaker 1: for something. Perhaps you're not concerned about failing a test,
Speaker 1: perhaps like you're concerned about being judged in one fashion
Speaker 1: or another. Exactly right, Yes, So if that's the case,
Speaker 1: the question remains, why is school so prevalent as the
Speaker 1: metaphor that the brain chooses even later in life? If
Speaker 1: for some reason it must default to a metaphor, why
Speaker 1: not one from more recent experience. Why aren't all the
Speaker 1: fifty year old's anxiety dreams about school or replaced with
Speaker 1: dreams about other anxiety inducing situations from the past month
Speaker 1: or the past year of their life? Why go back
Speaker 1: to this time? So I feel like that that could
Speaker 1: be true, but it wouldn't necessarily answer the question of
Speaker 1: why school in the dreams? Now is? I believe we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that dream anxiety dreams about exams in school.
Speaker 1: You know, we've mostly been dealing about them after the fact,
Speaker 1: you know, five, ten, twenty forty years later. But the
Speaker 1: reality is that we also see these dreams occurring, you know,
Speaker 1: in real time before the tests occur, being experienced by
Speaker 1: actual students. Yeah, and that that's the time when it
Speaker 1: totally makes sense. It's more just the mystery of why
Speaker 1: they occur later in life. But maybe by understanding what
Speaker 1: role they serve in the moment, you could better understand
Speaker 1: why they linger in the brain so much. Right. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this bring brings us to this this broader question, right,
Speaker 1: could could anxiety dreams actually be adaptive? Are they helping
Speaker 1: us in one way or another? Are the contents of
Speaker 1: them helping us in some way? Right? And and this
Speaker 1: again we come back to sort of the division about
Speaker 1: dreams and how they work. Does the content matter at all?
Speaker 1: Or or or the contents of the dreams sort of
Speaker 1: like the scap that has been extruded by by the
Speaker 1: like the psychic digestive system of the sleeping mind. Uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: and this we end up, you know, coming back, yeah
Speaker 1: to those big questions. I'm reminded of an interview that
Speaker 1: we conducted with the Dr marn Surf years ago on
Speaker 1: our episode. I believe it was the one about the
Speaker 1: nine dream Worlds of Frederick penn Eden. And you know,
Speaker 1: you talked about there being five different theories out there,
Speaker 1: predominant theories about dreams that range from importance about dream
Speaker 1: content that range from importance to non importance, you know,
Speaker 1: ranging from it like it's like a defragmentation of the
Speaker 1: hard drive, you know, a race and key memories assorting
Speaker 1: dreams as emergent narrative another one. Um. And other extreme
Speaker 1: examples include, you know, the idea that our our brain
Speaker 1: is looking at things that we suppressed during the day,
Speaker 1: or that the brain is using the dream to simulate
Speaker 1: futures for us so that we can act better in
Speaker 1: the waking world and um and yeah, so we're looking
Speaker 1: around them. There are some interesting cases to be made
Speaker 1: regarding these anxiety dreams as being perhaps even being simulations
Speaker 1: for something that's coming, at least dealing with stress ahead
Speaker 1: of an event. And uh so, one of the papers
Speaker 1: that looked at here was will students pass a competitive
Speaker 1: exam that they failed in their dreams? This was published
Speaker 1: in in Consciousness and Cognition was by Arnold at All
Speaker 1: So the authors point out that most students in medical
Speaker 1: school dream about an exam before the exam, and they
Speaker 1: primarily dream of failure, being late, not being able to
Speaker 1: answer the questions on the exam, et cetera. And yet,
Speaker 1: unlike you know, with typical anxiety, dreaming of an exam
Speaker 1: seems to predict higher performance on the exam. So their
Speaker 1: theory was that it's like your dramaticization of high concerns
Speaker 1: during the dreams maybe training the brain for the challenges
Speaker 1: to come, so kind of like let's just hit him
Speaker 1: with a bunch of like the brain is just hitting
Speaker 1: you with a bunch of worst case scenarios so that
Speaker 1: you'll be like better emotionally prepared for something more middle
Speaker 1: of the road. That's really interesting. I mean I do
Speaker 1: wonder if that's true, Like just mechanically, how does it work,
Speaker 1: you know, literally, how does it increase the brain's ability
Speaker 1: to actually deal with the test, to have the dream
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, it also sounds like like maybe you know,
Speaker 1: we don't want to personify the brain. The sleeping brain
Speaker 1: is being like a you know, a team of little
Speaker 1: bitty scientists that are deciding how they're gonna what they're
Speaker 1: gonna roll out, what kind of programming is presented. Is
Speaker 1: with because it also seems like, well, okay, if we
Speaker 1: could go back to the idea that dreams don't matter
Speaker 1: and this is just simply, uh, the dream content doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: and that this is just a you know, a reverberation
Speaker 1: of our of our concerns during the day. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're stressed out, maybe you're I mean, that's what
Speaker 1: we do with mental time travel. We run these scenarios
Speaker 1: in real time, and we think, oh, my goodness, what
Speaker 1: if I don't get there in time? What if I fail?
Speaker 1: What if I don't get good enough good night's sleep
Speaker 1: before the exam? Uh it makes sense that if you're
Speaker 1: worrying about there in the day, you're gonna worry about
Speaker 1: that at night. Uh. So it becomes, you know, difficult
Speaker 1: to really characterize the purpose if there is one of
Speaker 1: the dream content. I also looked at a paper titled
Speaker 1: Inception the Exam Dream is Real by Alan J. Oxford,
Speaker 1: The third published in a pin state law review. This
Speaker 1: one is also fun because there were a lot of
Speaker 1: Morpheus quotes what in the in the paper, but but
Speaker 1: it was, it was very well written and uh and
Speaker 1: of course it springs as the title suggests, from similar
Speaker 1: situations with law students. And the paper is is lengthy
Speaker 1: and wrestles with the viewpoint that while you know the
Speaker 1: function of sleep and dreaming is vital for our survival,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially restoring our energy, arguably to fragging the
Speaker 1: hard drive, the content of our dreams, you know, may
Speaker 1: very well be without purpose. Again according to some of
Speaker 1: the models. Uh, you're the junk in your dreams may
Speaker 1: simply be there because it's the same junk you've been
Speaker 1: wrestling with all day, all week, all month as you
Speaker 1: prepare for your tests. So I can't help but return
Speaker 1: to this basic scenario of human survival that we've been
Speaker 1: discussing here. You know that these dreams again are often
Speaker 1: relating to periods of great stress and vulnerability, and they
Speaker 1: are in a paper tiger sense of things, not unlike
Speaker 1: states of birth. You know, a process is in place,
Speaker 1: but there is a potential for things to go very wrong.
Speaker 1: There's a risk and in many models of the afterlife.
Speaker 1: The same scenario is also present in transferring to the
Speaker 1: realms beyond death. Uh. Take Tibetan Buddhism, for instance, one
Speaker 1: goes through a mental rehearsal, meditation, and practice so as
Speaker 1: to ensure one's dying consciousness moves safely through all eight
Speaker 1: stages of death to the death point. Confusing, but you know,
Speaker 1: in many ways enlightening state that may last for many days. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think about the ancient Egyptian sort of rehearsals for
Speaker 1: the progress through the afterlife. Yeah, I think very similar scenario.
Speaker 1: You know, it's something where it's like the the journey
Speaker 1: is stressful, the journey is like birth, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that can go wrong if you're not
Speaker 1: prepared for it. And uh, yeah, we see this in
Speaker 1: various other spiritual models as well. So yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that you know, for for most of human history, the
Speaker 1: teenage years, a little before, a little after, you know this,
Speaker 1: this was a time in which we were making these
Speaker 1: big jumps out into the world, you know where, and
Speaker 1: even in our own lives, like so much of the
Speaker 1: time teenage years and then in college years if you
Speaker 1: go to college or entering the workplace, etcetera. Like these
Speaker 1: are dream these are periods of time in which we
Speaker 1: have increasing responsibilities for ourself and our own destiny, our
Speaker 1: own fate. However you want to uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: want to package it and uh, you know, so it
Speaker 1: makes sense that we would come back to this period
Speaker 1: time and time again in dream, you know, either the
Speaker 1: reverberation of the anxiety or just the reverberation of the metaphor,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh, it's it's uh, you almost want
Speaker 1: to think of it as this this thing in our
Speaker 1: timeline that is just so potent that it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's like sending waves back into into the past and
Speaker 1: into the future at the same time. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: feel like the question is still unanswered. But I think
Speaker 1: the thing that we've talked about today that appeals to
Speaker 1: me the most as an explanation is probably the the
Speaker 1: it's it's tying into what you're saying now, like the
Speaker 1: self identity narrative of the reminiscence bump. I think is
Speaker 1: is a it seems like a very good candidate to
Speaker 1: me that, like if if there is a general context
Speaker 1: for what's happening in your life at a time when
Speaker 1: you're making a lot of memories that are highly relevant
Speaker 1: to what what you think about yourself and who you
Speaker 1: think you are. Then those memories in that context are
Speaker 1: going to be highly salient in in memory and will
Speaker 1: be retrieved effortlessly throughout the rest of your life, even
Speaker 1: maybe necessarily when you don't want them to be. And then,
Speaker 1: of course, as you're saying, like the test, just the
Speaker 1: test is a perfect metaphor in a way, like it
Speaker 1: just does fit with so much else that's going to
Speaker 1: happen throughout our life as a metaphor. Uh because because essentially,
Speaker 1: like every major struggle is in a way a test, right,
Speaker 1: and you know, an important test in high school or college. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a perfect example of a paper tiger,
Speaker 1: right because you're not gonna die if you fail that exam.
Speaker 1: But certainly failing important exams and tests can have, you know,
Speaker 1: some some pretty major effects on your life, or at
Speaker 1: least you know they can contribute to major twists and
Speaker 1: turns in your timeline, or at least adults will definitely
Speaker 1: tell you that it contributes. That's because that's the narrative
Speaker 1: you're hit with, like this is an important test, like
Speaker 1: this could this could you know, impact whether you get
Speaker 1: into college or not, or if you have to go
Speaker 1: work at the at the you know, the the shoe
Speaker 1: tongue factory where they just make the tongues for shoes. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean so you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: it we can blame our parents for. I agree. Oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to blame our parents. I just mean that,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it is worth this should maybe
Speaker 1: at least tempt us to think differently about what school
Speaker 1: should be. Like I'm not saying, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying I know everything about education or you know, about
Speaker 1: what's best for for high school age kids and what's
Speaker 1: the best way for them to learn. But if high
Speaker 1: school is causing these high school in college are causing
Speaker 1: these horrible, you know memories that that plague people the
Speaker 1: rest of their lives and they wake up in a
Speaker 1: cold sweat thinking about tests, I don't know that that
Speaker 1: could at least maybe be a sign that like there's
Speaker 1: something structurally about the high school experience that could be different. Maybe.
Speaker 1: But then I again, I also just wonder if you're
Speaker 1: gonna have something similar no matter what you're going through
Speaker 1: at that age. Again, I wish we had some great
Speaker 1: data looking at individuals who go directly into military service
Speaker 1: or or you know, directly into the workforce and or
Speaker 1: in those cases you're just going to see different dream
Speaker 1: content stemming from the same life period. But you know,
Speaker 1: who knows, maybe in the future will have more robust
Speaker 1: data to go from on this. All right, Well there
Speaker 1: you have it. Oh, school dreams something that I think
Speaker 1: everybody can relate to. Um, And if you can't relate
Speaker 1: to it, we definitely want to hear from you about that.
Speaker 1: So basically, no matter you know what your experience, you
Speaker 1: probably have something to share here. UM. I'm not one
Speaker 1: of those you know, some people you know will say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you never want to hear about somebody else's dreams,
Speaker 1: like somebody's else's dreams are always boring. I strongly disagree.
Speaker 1: I always want to hear about other people's dreams because
Speaker 1: even if they are boring, it's telling like you earning
Speaker 1: something about the inner space that defines someone else. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then half the time though it's really weird and
Speaker 1: uh and interesting in its own right. So right into us,
Speaker 1: we'll tell you how to do that. But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, you'll find the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Where else can you find it? Oh,
Speaker 1: like everywhere wherever you get podcasts these days, which seems
Speaker 1: to be like literally everywhere, various programs, various services, objects
Speaker 1: that you find, uh in bathrooms and subway stations. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're probably on that as well. Wherever you get the podcast.
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Speaker 1: to just rate and review us wherever you have the
Speaker 1: power to do so. If you can leave some stars
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Speaker 1: not only this show, but our other show, Invention as well.
Speaker 1: Invention is a weekly exploration of human techno history, one
Speaker 1: invention at a time. Huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producers Steth Nicholas Johnson and Maya Cole. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback about this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, to tell us about your dreams
Speaker 1: or your lack of school dreams, or just to say hi,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more
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