WATCH YOUR DREAMS FOR BRIDGES AND OVERPASSES. These often signal a transition point in your waking life. Thus, if the bridge from here to there — from the old to the new, or the familiar to the unknown — is fraught with fear, just know that staying where you are in life, i.e. avoiding the transition, may be safer, but it may be stifling as well.

Dear Carolyn,

I dreamed (again!) that I’m in San Francisco and it’s time to go home. Sometimes in this dream I live down the Peninsula in Redwood City or Palo Alto, so the route is over land; other times my home is in the East Bay and I will have to cross a bridge to get there.

I’m in my car pondering which direction to take. I’m morbidly aware of my longstanding bouts with panic attacks while driving over bridges and overpasses, so the decision is critical. It is of the utmost importance that I steer clear of the terror I’ve experienced so many times in the past. I must stay level-headed and plot a route free of bridges and from the nightmarish anxiety I so desperately want to avoid, even if it means a 25-mile detour. Aha, I see the best way just ahead.

I summon my courage and start driving. But within seconds I realize the error of my ways. Looming in front of me is a towering overpass leading to a bridge, with no way out. The tension wakes me up in a shivering sweat.

Signed, Gephyrophobe

Dear G,

Gephyrophobia — the fear of bridges or of crossing them — can be debilitating, especially if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, a place with an impressive array of long, tall, daunting bridges. Some bridges in the United States are so notorious for striking fear in motorists that local governments have arranged driving assistance programs for drivers who ask to be chauffeured across. Others use distractions such as reading license plates backward or listening for words on the radio starting with the letter “A,” for example, to engage their brains in other activities as they coax themselves across an intimidating overpass.

Regarding your dream, while it may reflect your literal fears, it likely also reflects a similarly paralyzing state of mind that prevents you from transitioning from your well-worn and limiting routine into a newer, fresher way of life.

Make a note of when this dream recurs and you will soon see that it pops up when you are going to great lengths — taking a 25-mile detour — to avoid a task to which you have assigned immense stature. You would rather do almost anything than cross that bridge when you come to it.

Your dream suggests you have assigned so much power and importance to the change that it terrifies you. A more rational approach is called for.

Better to break that transition into baby steps that you can take to build your confidence, Dear Dreamer. Otherwise, you’ll do a lot of driving but get nowhere.

Sweet Dreams to you!

Carolyn Plath, M.Ed., is a Benicia resident and member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Reach her at sendmeyourdreams@yahoo.com.

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