Anxiety Attacks In My Sleep

I seriously still have panic attacks in the middle of the night about school! I have two specific dreams that send my heart racing.

A list of random thoughts that play out into a story-

[The first is that I’ve shown up for the first day of school, in high school, and I’m un-prepared.] The bell will be going off any second. I have one pen and one notebook. I know I’ll lose the pen by third period. [I start to panic] Wonder if someone would lend me another pen? [As I’m walking in to the doors of the high school] I forgot my schedule at home! [I can see the tables lined up inside to get copies of your schedule and locker combinations.] I don’t even know where my locker is…what grade am I in anyway? The bell! I’m not even to the table. Late already, and it’s only the first day! No time to find my locker. Don’t have anything to put in it anyway. [As I walk into what seems to be a chemistry lab I can see that the teacher is irritated with my tardiness, and now all of the class is looking at me.] Is there anyone in here that I know?

Breakdown: This never happened to me, but I always feared it with the start of each quarter or new school year. Everyone was always late for classes on the first day of school, so it wasn’t anything to stress about! To top it off, I went to a very small high school where you knew everyone…so to walk into a room of people wondering if I know anyone, that wouldn’t have ever happened!

Second Dream’s Random Thoughts: (my heart is seriously pounding just thinking of this story…and still, there’s no reason for it!)

[I’m in college and as I walk across the bridge to my class anxiety fills my body as I think about going to this specific class.] This is the second time I’ve taken this class. I never go, no wonder I’m going to fail it again. What if there’s a test today and I have no idea what’s even going on in the class? What if the class moved? I could walk into an empty room, or even worse a room with a completely different class in it! How would I find out where my classed moved? I could call the professor, but what if the class moved weeks ago? He’ll know that I haven’t been there! I don’t know anyone in my class so I would have to call. Maybe I should just drop the class and try again next quarter. God, I need the credits though. This is all my own fault!

Breakdown: This too never happened to me, but I did in fact stress about it in college. I feared skipping a class because then I’d probably miss something important, like the class moving! I did have a friend that actually experienced her class moving after not having been there in awhile, so I’m sure that’s how the thought entered my mind.

Now I’ve been out of high school for 12-years this coming June, and out of college 8-years this August. Why in the hell am I still stressing about this stuff!?! I wouldn’t think anything of it if the dreams happened once in a very blue moon, but no, I’ve had them so often that I actually get anxious going to bed thinking that I might dream about it…therefore allowing me to dream about it!

Part of getting past my anxiety issues is facing those issues and getting past them. Am I supposed to get past the dreams, or past the things I’m dreaming about? What in the world do I do to get over things that NEVER happened? Or better yet, never happened 12-years ago!