We talk about reoccuring dreams, but what about ones that aren’t exactly the same, but tend to have the same “theme”, if you will?
Some of min
-I’m back in Catholic school. Even as an adult, or a college student. Each time, I’m told I just have to stay there for two more years. And each time I tell them, “No, this is wrong, I’m supposed to be in college/graduated from college!” But they don’t listen and I have to go through it all again.
-I’m living back in one of my old houses. Before my parents bought our current house, we lived in about four or five different rental places. Even though I haven’t been in the last rental since I was ten, I dream I’m back there.
-I never quit my job at Kmart, and I’m still supposed to go to work. I’m panicking, sobbing, hysterical at the thought of going to work there, but nothing does any good, I still have to go.
I look in the mirror and discover all my teeth have fallen out. Or they get knocked out somehow.
I suddenly realize that I have an apartment that I forgot I rented and where I haven’t paid the rent in a year. I realize that I’m going to be liable for thousands of dollars in rent. Plus I can’t understand how I could have forgotten that I was supposed to move.
I suddenly realize that I had a baby (either my own or one I was babysitting) that I forgot about and when I remember (weeks later) of course the baby is dead. Usually dehydrated into nothing.
The first two are weird enough, but what the heck does that last one mean???
I’ve had recurring dreams about being back at Uni. It’s horrible because it’s like I haven’t passed and still have to do a load of complicated uninteresting time-consuming work to do.
My most recurring dreams are the ones where lights don’t work. I’m supposed to realize I’m dreaming at this but I never do. I remain convinced that I am awake and NONE of the lights are working.
I’ve had recurring dreams for 20 years that I’m trying to get somewhere - an airport, I think, but situations keep preventing me from getting there on time. I have to hitch-hike, or I can’t find a bus, or the taxi driver gets lost, or some such thing, and sometimes I wake up in a panic. I’ve had these dreams since before I was ever on a plane.
Another one is about an apartment (where I have never lived). It’s kind of a ratty place, and I can see the living room with white walls and hardwood floors, and a fireplace and the old sofa and carpet, and the view out the window. In this dream, there is a hole in the floor in the closet off the living room. I can see through the hole into the apartment below, and there is a bag of pot in a wooden bowl on top of a bookshelf directly under the closet. The details that I dream are so vivid that I can picture it now. Strange, huh?
I’ve often wondered if these dreams I have are trying to tell me something, and I could figure out what it was if I could just have them in the proper order.
My recurring ones are almost always in the “student nightmare” theme. Usually it’s one week before my thesis is due and I don’t even have a topic yet.
But I also dream about my childhood home, where I spent life until leaving for college. Particularly there’s a focus on my closet ?! Sometimes student nightmares and childhood home are combined, as I have to leave for school any minute now and haven’t packed anything yet.
I also dream that either my teeth are loose and about to come out, or I’ve ruined my contact lenses in some way.
No matter what kind of dream I’m having, there are three things that can occur which mean that the action is all over:
I have to get dressed or change clothes. I will spend the rest of the dream trying on an endless series of outfits. (I never do this in real life.) For some reason the closet always contains a bunch of things that were thrown out or outgrown sometime around high school.
I need to buy something. Similar to the above. I wander the aisles of the store until I wake up.
I need to dial a phone, use an ATM or something similar. The number is entered painfully slowly and something will always go wrong, so that I have to start over. And over. And over.
I also have a dream where I try to call 911 - there’s an ax murderer or something right outside my door - and it never answers or I get put on hold or the operator doesn’t believe me or can’t hear me and keeps making me repeat the story over and over.
I can’t help you with the apartment dream, other than I think you want to get high.
But the other dream is exactly like dreams I have. It isn’t an airport for me though. I usually want or need to go someplace, like the grocery store or to the movies, and a million and one things go wrong and other people delay and delay. I usually wake up pissed off. I call these ‘frustrated’ dreams. I think the meaning of that one is clear. There is something I want out of life and I’m frustrated that I’m not getting there.
I’m alone, at night, walking down a large road in the middle of nowhere (or sometimes a cornfield). I don’t know where I’m going, but I know it’s important. I had the walking dreams almost constantly for a few months. I kept waking up with swollen feet. Seriously.
Aliens
They abduct me. They lurk in the backyard. They’ve been abducting me for years. These dreams include all manner of bizarre experiments.
The Forgotten House
I’m visiting an old house in Philadelhpia. It belonged to a deceased relative who never mentioned it. The house, or a significant portion of it and its contents, are legally mine. The house is huge and oddly built. The rooms are connected in strange ways. The conditions vary. But the house is never too dirty, and never vandalized. The rooms are still furnished, and some of the things in the house are quite valuable.
The damn school dream. The one everyone has where you’re in school again and you haven’t been to class all semester and there’s a final. The class always varies and sometimes it’s high school and sometimes college. Sheesh. If I had known I’d still have this dream 15 years after graduating, I’d never have skipped a class.
The teeth falling out thing. No idea why I have this one. I brush and floss, and I only have one filling. But, somehow, my subconsious must be convinced my teeth are rotting away.
It’s really dark and I need to see, so I turn on a light. The light goes on, but it doesn’t actually light up anything. Instead, it’s like a glow in the dark stick. It glows, but no light comes off it so I can see anything.
I suddenly forget an important skill (like how to walk) when I need it most (like forgetting how to swim when I’m in the middle of the ocean).
Related to #3 only instead of forgetting an important skill, I lose large chunks of my life. Suddenly, I’m piloting a plane (which I don’t know how to do), but I can’t remember taking even one flying lesson. Or I’m giving a presentation but I don’t remember how I got there, what the presentation is about, or who my audience is.
I’m unemployed and desparately seeking a job. Only, I know that I currently have a job–I’ve just forgotten to go for so long that I started looking for something else. I run around in a panic trying to think of how long it has been since I last appeared to work and if I’m still on the payroll.
Last, the only good recurring theme…
I find some extra rooms or furniture in my house that I never noticed before. I just open a door and there’s a whole bunch of nicely decorated rooms with wonderful furnishings, a sunken bathtup, a hot tub–great stuff! I just never knew it was there.
I’m working at one of my past jobs for some reason and it’s just a normal day.
1a. I’m back at Wal Mart again but I have two or three other jobs and don’t remember until I find out I’ve been fired from some other job for not showing up.
I’m living at home again.
Something terrible is happening and I try to run away but I can’t, so I am forced to get on my hands and feet (not knees) and kind of gallop to get away.
I’ve had the school dream repeatedly before, except it was never particularly traumatic…I never had a test I didn’t study for, or a paper due that day. They’re never nightmares, just dreams. I know that, in my dream world, I have a math class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that I went through some sort of freshman orientation day. For all I know, I’m really a college freshman dreaming that I’m a paralegal in my late 20s.
I also have recurring dreams where I argue with my mom. These are really nasty arguments where we get really personal and insulting. Usually, by the time I wake up, I’m so pissed off I want to give her a call and yell at her.
Oh whoa! I’m usually mildly surprised when I discover that other people have dreamt along similar lines as me, but THIS one really surprises me! “My” old house is not always the same house, and it’s not in Philadelphia as far as I know, but it is somehow mine - although I do not live in it - and it is built very oddly with rooms that are hidden or unusually inaccessible for some reason. And it is always well-furnished and well-kept. One particular feature about whatever house it is is that it has a room full of gorgeous old stage costumes, and another room that is very window-full and sunlit.
I HATE the teeth falling out dream, and I have that one a LOT.
I get the school dream. Usually, I’m in a class I haven’t been to all semester, have no idea what’s going on, and it’s too late to drop. Really distressing.
Or I have a chasing dream. Some monster (or something) is chasing me down the street of a dark subdivision. As I run by houses, I know I could knock and, if someone is home, I’m saved. But, if I slow down to try to door and no one is home the monster thing will get me. So it’s this horrible decision.
The good reoccuring dream is that I can fly. Usually I just swim through the air only 30 or so feet up but sometimes I can actually swoop which is cool. The launching sensation seems so real that I’m sometimes tempted to try it in real life.
My latest dreams have to do with the tsunami. I know it’s coming and I’m trying to get out of my apartment. But I have waaaaay too much stuff and I can’t decide what to take. I think it means I need to clean my apartment…
In the last couple of years I stopped remembering dreams, but I used to have dreams within dreams and continuing dreams. But how can I know if I was remembering a dream in my dream, or just dreaming that I did? So confusing.
But here’s an example. I am dreaming that I am at a pool swimming with a baby. And in the dream I think, oh I dreampt of this baby hundreds of times before! This is my dream baby! I have tons of memories with this baby and I dream of her every night. Then I wake up and realize, no I didn’t.
-I’m in a shopping mall or airport or museum or large luxury hotel. Some large anonymous semi-public building. There are lots of stairs and confusing hallways. I’m late for something or I’m trying to find my car.
-It’s finals and I can’t remember where my classes are or what subjects I’m taking.
-Shopping malls with roller coasters, often as the only way to get in.
-I’m late, usually to catch a plane or to work. Everything I do makes me later.
There are seveal places I visit in dreams with different plots:
-a house on a cliff with a gravel driveway and a large deck. It has lots of windows. I’m convinced this house exists and I’ve been there, as the light in this dream is more real than other dreams. *This is possibly from a Hitchcock movie. *
-A college campus with a big “playroom” complete with adult size ball pit and tumbling mats. I drop out of school a lot here.
I had had a recurring nightmare since I was little (say, eight or nine). I was riding my bike (always a child) down a desert suburban street. Park Overall (of Empty Nest fame) was standing in a doorway with a red door waving to me. I take one hand off the handlebars to wave and I skid on some gravel. I lose control of the bike, which takes me down a rocky grassy hill toward a largish body of water. I hit a big rock and start to fly off the bike when I wake up, out of breath and sweating.
One night (high school age), I had that dream (I know what will happen in my dreams most of the time even while I’m dreaming) only this time I didn’t skid and just went on my merry way.
Wow, I had no idea that teeth-falling-out dreams were so common. Folks always think it’s so weird when I tell them I have that one a lot.
I dream of kittens. All the time. I think it’s some weird maternal thing.
Lately I’ve had lots of dreams where the brakes on my car just barely work, and it takes forever to slow down, like I’m sliding on ice. That one’s a bit scary, and started well before the winter weather made the roads bad.
When I was younger, I would always have dreams about walking through complex interconnect hallways. A door in a school hallway would lead into a living room, which lead into a restaurant, which lead into a hotel hallway, etc.