I retired a few months ago, and I keep having work-related dreams.

[raccoon]

I was glad to retire. I liked what I did, but in recent years the job had become more pressured, more focused on the numbers (imagine that LOL).

But I keep dreaming I'm back at work somewhere, usually similar to my last workplace, or some other place I worked. The dreams are mildly unpleasant, that is, not as bad as the exam dream, but I'd rather be someplace else.

Last night I dreamed I was at my last job and interviewed for another job within my department. In the dream, I would either get that job or either stay in the one I was in. I really didn't care if I stayed in the same job. I had a feeling of vague unease that they might just get rid of me.

Anybody else have this experience?

[greymattermom]

1. I had a really bad experience at work about 30 years ago

and I had nightmares about it for almost 10 years, like PTSD. Now I'm retired and I don't dream about work at all.

[shraby]

2. Mr. Shraby retired over 10 years ago and still dreams about the job he had and

disliked.

[Midnight Writer]

28. 10 years retired myself. Very vivid but mundane dreams of going in and doing my job.

[ret5hd]

3. Retired now for 1 yr and 3 mo....

Took about a year to stop getting up at 4:00 AM.

I had one of those dreams you talked about just a couple nights ago.

We'll get over it I imagine.

[True Dough]

4. My nights have been rife with work dreams

I was a middle manager with a company during the last 5.5 years of a 15-year stint with them. Mostly enjoyable work, but long hours. I left that job several years ago. Earlier this year my former boss, who is still there, contacted me and asked if I wanted to take on some work remotely. I agreed to do it. Ever since then my brain is re-engaged and, in my mind, I'm frequently back in the office after I drift off to sleep at night.

It's logical and doesn't bother me to have such dreams.

[femmocrat]

5. I retired three years ago and still dream about work.

I dreamed about it last night in fact. I have had this one before -- I missed work and didn't call for a sub (I was a teacher) and get into big trouble for it.

[greatauntoftriplets]

6. I have dreams similar to what you describe in paragraph 2 after four years.

Often it combines previous workplaces. The common thread is that I'm always being taken advantage of in some way.

I don't like them at all.

[TexasProgresive]

7. I've been retired 25 months.

I have had work related dreams after about a year, then they subsided. I had one about a month ago. I too liked my job, but the admins were making it more and more unlikable. I was scared a bit about retiring but I have not regretted it. So far we are doing well financially. That may change with the current misadministration.

[alfie]

8. I still dream about work after 9 years

I am a retired nurse, my dreams frequently are that it is the end of my shift and there was a patient I didn't know was assigned to me and I hadn't seen. That would constitute a nightmare in real life. I also have other just generic dreams that just happen to occur in a hospital setting but that isn't the main focus of the dream. They are getting fewer and farther apart. I am not bothered by them when I wake up.

[Runningdawg]

15. Retired nurse also

I had the dreams frequently in the beginning, less now, although I still have them. They are similar in character to yours. I dream about loosing patients - not them dying, but physically loosing a patient for which I search the entire hospital frantically.
I also have work/hospital related dreams, I am sure fueled by pictures of war zones. In these dreams I am faced with hundreds of dead and dying people and no equipment or supplies to help them. This type of dream sticks with me much longer, because I know there are places it is a reality.

[Golden Raisin]

9. Retired 8 months ago.

Worked for 45 years, almost 50 if you count summer jobs in HS and College. I was at my last job for 29 years and the last couple of years there were extremely stressful. I suspect after all those years it's a little hard for our brains and bodies to just suddenly switch off the ingrained habits and pressures of such a long stretch of working time. I've also noticed I am occasionally dreaming about work and the dreams are as you describe: mildly unpleasant.

[lillypaddle]

10. I retired 4 years ago

and dream often about my last job, and the one I left in 1998! These dreams me leave me worn out. What you are experiencing is normal, like it or not.

[Yonnie3]

11. I left my full time corporate job in 2004.

I still have dreams about that workplace. For the most part the dreams are about the insoluble problems passed to me by the people who created said problems. A combination of feelings of helplessness and dismay/disbelief leading to anger.

It seems to have some relation to last November's election as these sort of dreams have increased significantly since then.

[Nitram]

12. Everytime I've left a long-term job or situation I've had dreams for years afterwards.

[duncang]

13. Wires wires all over the place

I was a maintenance electrician at a large chemical plant. After 25 years there I never shut down a operating unit. But can't count the times I was called asking me to come quick to get something back running because one of my co-workers shut one down. And a gang of bosses would come running asking stupid questions getting in the way. I got so pissed one time when a boss said "I'm not a electrician, but" I cut him off telling him right you aren't now get the hell out of here. Yes, I was a professional ass. Now I just do it for amateur standing.

That kind of stuff seems to be a reoccurring theme for a lot of my nightmare dreams.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

14. Yes, many times.

Retired two years, still dream of work. Places I've worked at, people I've worked with, projects like I used to work on. Sometimes, I dream that I'm retired, but somehow got called back to work for some project.

[angstlessk]

16. I too am retired, and just last night I dreamed about my former boss

I dream about him, his wife, his house, or the office etc about once per month...and I don't miss it at all!

The rest of the time I'm either looking for my car or driving around???

[trof]

17. In spades. I was an airline pilot.

I dream about showing up for work, but...
I don't have my ID badge
I don't have my passport
I'm not in uniform
I don't have my nav kit (That rectangular bag we all used to carry with approach plates, worldwide nav charts, flight handbook for the airplane, etc., etc., until it all went digital on the computer in the cockpit.)
I'm no longer qualified on the airplane I'm on.
I get to JFK the day AFTER my flight departed.

I hung it up in '99, but I still get the dreams once in a while.

[raccoon]

18. That sounds just like the "exam dream" which I've had from time to time over the years.

I'm in college, it's exam time....and I haven't cracked my books or done any of the work I was supposed to do.

[trof]

20. Here's another weird thing. Flying dreams.

Quite often I used to dream I could fly.
All by myself.
By doing the breast stroke, REALLY HARD.
Man, I could just SOAR.
It was fun.

No more.

Now I dream about somehow being on top of some impossible height with no way to get down.
Then I just wake up and think 'whew'.

I credit the current political climate.

[Rollo]

27. When I was in college (many years ago) I used to dream about missing a final exam...

The finals were usually in big halls with a lot of stressed out students...

Then one year I actually did miss a final. It was for a very small class. I went to the instructor and he let me take the final in his office.

Never had that "missed the final" dream again!

LOL.

[DavidDvorkin]

19. I retired in 2009, and I had one of those dreams last night

It's a relief to wake up from them.

[Stuart G]

21. Last day teaching in a high school...20 years ago..

still dream about the experiences and they were varied...2 or 3 times a week, almost every week....

Like what ...trof...said in his first post on this subject..post #17......most of the dreams are not positive, but in some kind of dangerous situation that I cannot control.. Often, I have become the student...looking for my class or books, or something like that.........................
....................................................oops.............

[TexasBushwhacker]

22. I was a school teacher for 9 years

Left the profession in 1990. I still have dreams that I have papers to grade.

[mitch96]

23. I see a common thread here

Stressful job, retire... dreams about stressful job.
I bailed out of hospital work in 2013 after 40 years.. Loved it up until the last five years. It got nuts with the admin's trying to get blood out of a stone to the point of just this side of patient safety. With the pace they wanted with the staffing they provided someone was going to get hurt and I could not take it any more. Management via spread sheet.
I had dreams about work, while I was still employed. Not any more.. I just have occasional dreams about the PEOPLE I worked with. Some good, some bad..
Now as a mental exercise I try to remember the names of all the people in my department. I can see their face plainly but what the heck was there name?? Eventually it comes to me.
m

[demosincebirth]

24. I retired 17 years ago and still have dreams about work - driving a truck ( I was a teamster).

Ninety percent of them are weird and not good. They get fewer and fewer , thanks for that.

[RealityChik]

25. Think that's bad? ...

I was a web developer when I retired last year, but I owned a custom t-shirt printing business for 17 years before that. And THAT'S what my dreams are about. I silkscreen print t-shirts all night! Usually against some insane deadline that I can't make! And I wake up exhausted, like I was during REAL countless peak seasons, printing late into the night after the employees left for the day.

I have no idea how to stop these dreams. It was long hours of hard work. The biz made good money and I had some great clients, but the web design industry was so much fun from the get go. I just sold the T shirt business and walked away with absolutely no regrets.

Or so I thought...

[Binkie The Clown]

26. I retired 10 years ago and I still occasionally dream I'm at work.

Usually I get annoyed with myself (in the dream) for not remembering that I don't really need to work any more. The dream usually culminates with me quitting my job. Then I wake up happy to be retired once more.

[trof]

31. YES! Sometimes I wake up kinda...

And think "Hell, I'm 76 years old. I can't fly for the airline anyway. I'm too damn old." And go back to sleep.

[Blindingly apparent]

29. Thank you for this thread. I thought I was the only one still dreaming about my work

In my dreams, I still go to work but I’m a whole lot less competent than what I was whenI acteally worked. And I find the dream job more confusing

[rock]

30. It gradually dies off

I also at one period suffered from visually acute dreams. Really intense and upsetting. That too has calmed down a bit. Been retired now six years. "And loving it", as Maxwell Smart would say.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

32. I've been retired for six years now, and I still dream about my old job.

They aren't really bad dreams, just weird, and they usually involve a situation where I've retired and been called back to the job for some reason. Oddly, some of them take place in the company cafeteria. Others take place in flight simulators (that was my old job) that look more like the giant Star Wars robots on legs, and I can't make them work properly.

[demosincebirth]

33. I started having them five years after I retired

[Totally Tunsie]

34. About 2 years ago, started having PTSD dreams about a job I left about 15 years ago.

They're always complicated and many are disturbing, involving bizarre situations in the office and conflating people I know from elsewhere. In some, I'm racing deadlines all night, and wake up exhausted as if I had actually been working. In reality, I had two bosses - President/CEO and Chairman/COO. One was OK, the other not so much, so guess which one haunts me. The only plus is that I'm back in my working days size 8 suits!

I've been attributing them to medications I've been prescribed, but there's a tRump effect there also. He does appear in some of the dreams I believe because the Chairman/COO boss socializes with tRump at Mar-a-Lago and has a very similar personality and attitude. Birds of a feather, and all that...

I've mentioned them to my doctors, with regard to the prescriptions I take. They've confirmed that they're hearing about tRump-related dreams from many patients that don't have the "two degrees of separation" that I do, so there may be a new psychosis brewing as a result of this administration. LOL

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

35. I still occasionally dream about a job I left in 1979.

There's no expiration date for such dreams.

I'd also once read that the common dream of being at school and going to a class and there's a test you haven't studied for is simply an anxiety dream dressed up as the school test dream. I used to have that dream when I was in high school. Then, many years later I returned to college and started taking math classes. Kept on dreaming I was specifically in math class, trying to take a test I hadn't studied for. So in my case at least, it was a very specific math anxiety dream. The interesting part is that in the dream, I was always back in high school, in the same room I had math in for two years.

[trof]

36. Yep. Same here. Still 19 years later.

I was an airline pilot.
I dream that I'm at work but don't have my ID card or passport.
Or maybe I don't have my nav kit with all the charts and flight handbook.
Or I don't have my uniform.
Or that I'm given an airplane whose type I have never flown before.
On and on and on...