A few years ago I had a dream in which, while out on a walk, I suddenly twisted my ankle. The pain in the dream was so vivid that it startled me awake. Strangely, the pain then carried over for a few moments after I awoke! I unconsciously superimposed the painful “dream ankle” onto an ankle that was fine. For a few brief moments it was as if the accident in the dream had really happened to me.
As I quickly started to realize what was going on—that I was, in fact, in bed and that the experience of twisting my ankle had been a dream—the pain instantly dissipated and vanished.
A few weeks later, however, having now forgotten all about that dream, I was outside jogging when, sure enough, one of my feet landed in an awkward position and I twisted my ankle. My first thoughts were: “Oh no! I’ve just started to establish a jogging routine, and now I’ll have to take at least several days off to heal. How am I going to go to work tomorrow? How am I going to be productive around the house if I’m stuck all day on a couch with my feet up?”
