Perchance to Dream

This may sound strange - of course, coming from me, that's inevitable - but I am afraid of cell phones. I've been having recurring dreams that start off innocuously enough, but quickly escalate into nightmares of intense anxiety, and I am stricken with the need to call someone by phone, but cannot push the buttons on the small keypad.

I looked up several dream symbol interpretations, and found out this is a common archetype. Dreaming that you try to dial the phone but can't, or that you keep making dialing mistakes and can't make the connection, means you're feeling frustrated in communicating something (a message, a need, etc.). You're isolated or cut off from others. You feel the need to reach out or ask for help. Your subconscious mind is imagining a worst-case scenario based on a fear of needing help and not being able to get it.

In a dream, the inability to carry out a task indicates that in some area of your life you're feeling hindered from completing something. Dreaming of being unable to dial a phone number can hint that this area of incompletion may be related to not being heard out or not being able to verbalize completely what you need to happen. This can be as a result of external factors that are getting in the way. Either the listener is not open to you, which can in reality during wakeful hours manifest as underlined anxiety.

Another interpretation says, to dream you cannot dial a phone number correctly suggests that you are having difficulties in getting through to someone in your waking life. Consider whose phone number you are trying to dial. Perhaps he or she is not taking your advice or listening to what you have to say. The message is not getting through.

This is especially true when the dream specifically involves a cell phone, as it does in my case. A cell phone represents personal communication, since it is usually owned and used by only one person. Calling someone indicates a desire to communicate with that person. Calling for help can mean a desire for support, and can even represent a call for spiritual help.

In this context the meaning is clear. I am constantly frustrated that my writing does not reach a wider audience. That my anxiety revolves around communication is self-apparent. Being paralyzed and in constant physical and emotional pain, and being reliant on others for virtually all my needs explains why I would be anxious about needing help and not getting it.

The two people I attempt to call and cannot are my wife and my sister. In real life, I am often frustrated with my wife's hearing loss, which makes it difficult to communicate, and her seeming inability to concentrate worries me because I am so reliant on her ability to hold down a job.

The inability to reach my sister causes extreme panic because she is the one I rely on being able to turn to in times of personal crisis.

This recurring dream infects my waking life. The tiny buttons on my cell phone are a challenge for my clumsy old hands and tired eyes. I am unable to manipulate my wife's iPad, and my son's attempts to get me to accept miniaturization, whether in the form of a new laptop or personal tablet fills me with dread.