Latent stress

I'm a pretty laid-back person. I don't tend to fret, worry or panic. Well, that's not accurate. I do actually feel anxiety, stress and overwhelmed, it just doesn't manifest itself as fretting, worrying or panicking. I try to go with the flow, a day at a time, relax, imagine a calm blue ocean.

Eventually though, the stress has to manifest, somehow! Once I had 3 measly little bumps. They looked like pimples. Or chicken pox. But they weren't itchy. They were just sharp, stabby, painful things. It was shingles! Three measly shingles, can you believe it?

Lately, it's manifesting through weird dreams. I think that dreams do indicate latent thoughts and feelings in our subconscious. Some people think it's the objects of our dreams that represent those latent thoughts and feelings, and perhaps they do. But during a dream, there's usually an overriding emotion throughout a particular (weird) dream. And I think that speaks more to a person's subconscious happenings...

I've had 2 weird dreams lately. One was about raw chicken.

I hate raw chicken with a passion. I love to eat chicken. It's one of my favorite foods. But I HATE preparing and cooking chicken because I loathe raw chicken meat. I'm not sure where this strange paranoia came from. Salmonella, perhaps. I've never had food poisoning before, though.

I dreamed that I had to eat a chicken salad. A raw chicken salad. In my dream, I was vividly conscious of biting the raw chicken and gagging. Panic! Panic! Ah! I woke up feeling the need to gag. All morning this persisted.

Did. not. like.

Last night, I had another panicky dream. It was time for the teddy bear's picnic. In my dream, I think that no parent had signed up to bring veggies and dip (true fact) and so I parked the kids in front of the Teddy bear picnic movie and rushed to the store to purchase said food. For some reason, I also had to purchase a new outfit to wear to the picnic and I couldn't find the perfect one. And my 30 minutes (the movie's length) was up. I had to get back to the children! Panic! Panic! Ah!

I know that the teddy bear's picnic is going to go well this year.

1. because I have an idea of what to allow and what to control intensely.

2. because I am resting my voice so that I will be back with full loudness and volume in time for the parties.

3. because my students are just fabulous.

But I guess past experiences just leave a mark in my psyche. I don't look towards teddy bear picnics very favourably.

It's only one (two, actually) days a year, right?