When work spills into your dreams

If you cannot escape dreams about never-ending Zoom meetings, a micro-managing boss, “death” by PowerPoint and all the other twists and turns of your working life, you are not alone.

Crises like a pandemic are known to stir up our dream life, which may be why your sleep is being invaded by seemingly senseless dreams of all kinds – including those about your work.

Before you cast aside the work dreams as being completely barren of any meaning, take note that those who study dreams often warn us not to be too quick to banish them to the memory graveyard.

Our dreams are considered to be the language of the subconscious, created by you for you as a means of working out issues in your waking life.

In recent times, our working lives are featuring more in our dreams, sparked not least by the havoc the pandemic has played with our work-life balance.

There is often no storyline, dreams tend to be repetitive and they are unlikely to hold any relevance – except perhaps to ourselves.

If you dream about being late for work or missing an important deadline, it could be a subtle reminder that you have not been managing your time well.

Dreams about messing up an important project could be our subconscious putting us through a dress rehearsal and might be aimed at helping us avoid such an unfortunate occurrence.

The dream of getting lost in the office on the way to the bathroom can simply be a sign your job is not meeting your needs and you might need to look for a different role – mirroring the meaning of a dream in which you spend countless hours searching for a new job online.

A dream that involves flying through the office could signal that you are at the top of your game. It is perhaps also a reminder you should take time out to consider what steps you ought to take to continue your career hot streak.

Do not be concerned that you are developing exhibitionist tendencies if you find yourself naked in front of your colleagues in the middle of an office nightmare. It could mean that you are feeling vulnerable or anxious about change and your subconscious is telling you to take steps to uncover the reasons why you are feeling the way you do.

Perhaps worse, if you have a disturbing dream about getting a little too intimate with a colleague or even your boss there is no need to be alarmed. Such dreams are almost always about the need to make a connection with a person though rarely a physical one.

While work dreams are often cast aside as being completely meaningless, perhaps a more prudent approach is to spend time reflecting on those that are replayed in our subconscious regularly or evoke strong emotional reactions.

They might well be subtle reminders of something that needs to be attended to.

Dreams might provide us with an opportunity to learn more about what we want and need from our work and resolve some nagging issues about our jobs.

So maybe it is time to get to the bottom of the dream in which you find yourself revealing all to your colleagues far too regularly.