No, I Don’t Watch The Bear. I Already Dream It.

Hospitality Stress Dreams and Strange Theater of the Mind

People ask me about The Bear a lot.

Like, a lot.
“You must love that show.”
“Isn’t it just so real?”
“You probably relate to it so much.”

No. I didn’t really love it.
I didn’t even watch it at first.

Why would I binge-watch what already plays on loop in my subconscious?

I’ve worked over 26 years in this industry. I have stress dreams every week. The recurring kind. The ones that sneak in sometime after 3 a.m. and remind you that you’re still carrying weight you thought you put down years ago.

These dreams aren’t just about overcooked steaks or yelling chefs or dinner rushes.

They’re deeper. Meaner.

Sometimes it’s a lover I let down again. Sometimes it’s a business I couldn’t save.
Sometimes it’s me, watching myself unravel from the inside.
Sometimes it’s dough uncontrollably slipping through your fingers no matter how hard you try to stop it. (Yeah. That one makes no sense either. But if you know, you know.)

And sometimes, most times, it’s a face I haven’t seen in 25 years.
My old chef.  A mentor figure. Long gone from this world but still clocking in every night inside my head. He shows up just to glare at me as I fail again.
Fail to prep.
Fail to plate.
Fail to speak.
Fail to breathe.

That’s the real show.

So no, I didn’t need to watch The Bear to know what a walk-in breakdown looks like.
Or what it feels like to wake up drenched in adrenaline over a missed ticket from 2009.

Because here’s the deal: Hospitality trauma doesn’t vanish just because you leave the building.
It doesn’t go away because you’re not on the clock anymore.
It seeps.
It sticks.

And the worst part? Most of us think that’s normal.

We joke about it.
“We’ve all had the dream where we forget the sauce.”
Or the one where the damn POS system won’t work.
Or the one where you’re double-seated, you’re out of glassware, and you’re naked.

And still, I wake up sweating. It’s not about knives or flames or screaming chefs. It’s about the feeling of not being enough. Of dropping the ball. Of not hitting the mark. The truth is, The Bear didn’t invent this feeling. It just held up a mirror to it. But mirrors don’t fix what they reflect, healing does.

Healing looks like a service where we treat each other like humans before hustlers, where vulnerability is respected, not weaponized. If you’re dreaming in panic, you’re not alone. You’re not broken. You’re just overdue to feel safe again.

We laugh because if we didn’t, we might actually cry.

Stress dreams are part of the gig, but they shouldn’t be.

Maybe that’s what The Bear gets right. Maybe it’s just another glossy dramatization of what’s already hard enough to live through in real life.

Because when guests ask me about the show, what they’re really saying is:
“I want to understand you.”
“I want to peek behind the curtain.”

That’s generous.

But if you really want to understand, don’t just ask about the show. Ask about the dreams.
Ask what it feels like to carry those dreams for decades.
Ask what it means to still be haunted by a chef who hasn’t walked the earth in years, and you didn’t get to see again for a quarter century before you found out he was gone.

Then maybe, just maybe, you’ll understand why some of us can’t stomach the idea of turning it on for entertainment.

Because for us, these jobs are never just a set, they’re a memory.
A wound.
A mirror.

And most nights?

They’re still wide open.

A companion reflection, “The Ones We Couldn’t Save,” lives now in Shift Notes, a dream that follows the moment long after you thought it was over.

More thoughts on burnout and healing: The Overflow Is a Lie

The Tip Pool Can’t Pay for Therapy: Why Hospitality Deserves Better