I read somewhere a month or so ago, that people dreaming about their own teeth rotting away is a very common dream.
I’ll admit i’ve had this dream 3 times in my 20 years of life. (All 3 times this year)
What gives? Is this really a common dream? Why?
Note: I do not have pristine teeth, i’m sure i have a mild case of gingivitis like most of the world. It is not an issue that normally rests heavily on my mind.
I vaguely remember reading that it is common for teenagers to have this dream which matches with my experience. It’s difficult to google for decent cites as the vast majority of them are new agey woo crap.
I’ve had this dream about 50 times in my life. Figuring I’m 50 years old and sleep 365 times per year the ratio is pretty small.
I’ve also dreamed about flying, falling, being late for [school, work, etc.] and forgetting to study for a very important test. These are all supposed to be common dreams.
Why isn’t having ones ic uced by a gaggle of college cheerleaders a common dream?
I don’t know about rotten teeth, but if you dream about your tooth falling out, that means someone you know is going to die :eek:
I usually have the dream a week or two before my annual dental checkup. I chalk it up to my subconscious nagging me to be more diligent about brushing.
I’ve had that dream a couple of times and it is indeed said to be very common. It’s certainly depicted often enough on TV shows and in movies, and I wonder if that makes it more prevalent. (I don’t know how common it really is, but if you enter “Teeth” into google, the fourth option is “teeth falling out dream.”) Here are the explanations from the first few Google hits. It’s a great example of why I think one-size-fits-all dream interpretation is for the birds. I can imagine this is a common anxiety because teeth are important to your health and socially, but according to the experts, it can represent anything.
http://www.dreamsleep.net/commondreams/meaning-of-teeth-dream.html
http://www.suite101.com/content/teeth-falling-out-in-dreams-a46402
Got all that?
As usual, xkcd shows us the way. (Don’t forget the mouse-over text.)
I have the loose teeth dream on a regular basis, and also something not unlike driving from the back seat. Usually it’s that I’m driving and can’t quite reach the pedals.
I also dream about having to run (either to get somewhere or to get away from something) and I can’t run fast enough, and end up using my arms and legs to run, which gets me going a lot faster.
I’ve always heard that it was about being afraid of change. It recalls the life transitions that happened when you lost your baby teeth.
I occasionally dream about my teeth becoming loose and falling out (which bears some resemblance to reality). But at least they’re not rotten.
I had a similar dream for the first time last night. My teeth were loose so I tugged them out, and it came out with like a quarter of my jawbone. I wonder if I was primed by glancing over the title of this thread in the forum view.
I had the “teeth going bad and then falling out” dream fairly regularly for much of my life. Then I had some teeth pulled and replaced with a partial. That was nearly 10 years ago and I haven’t had it since. In my case, my “teeth falling out” dream may have actually been about my teeth.
I wonder about this dream, too. I don’t usually dream rotten teeth, but teeth falling out or getting pulled out. The fear of death explanation seems to resonate a bit. Maybe indecision and fear of change, too.
Teeth falling out or becoming loose is probably my second most recurring dream, after the typical school stress dreams (forgot where the final is/missed a class all semester/etc.)
This is close to my own experience. I’ve had dental problems most of my life, with teeth breaking or cracking. So when I had dreams about multiple teeth crumbling in my mouth, I always figured it was just an exaggeration of reality. But now that I’m down to only a few natural teeth, with the rest replaced by dentures, I hardly ever have these dreams.
(snip)
Ummmm… I think I’ve had this one at least as often as the others.
Being attacked by my own dog and not being able to pull the trigger to put him down, OTOH… man, I have that one more often, and it sucks. But not as the one about picking babies’ fingers out of a wall.
The brain works in… stupid ways.
I have that all the time. But after they tuck them into their outfits, they leave and I am left completely mouseless :mad:
I have nightmares about this, too. I always figured it was because my parents literally put a terror in me of losing my teeth. Everyone on my mother’s side lost their teeth really early. It was years before I figured out part of this was not just because they’d been raised with different standards but they’d also been raised in a country that didn’t put flouride in their drinking water.
I also have the toilet dream - the dream in which I desperately have to go to a bathroom, but the only bathroom around is a gargantuan maze of toilets with little or no partitions, all really close, and men and women both sharing, and the whole place is filthy and disgusting and smells really bad.
I have never had the “naked on a stage” dream, and though I did go to college and had the same fears about exams, I never had any of the exam dreams, that I remember.
I have this one frequently. It’s always the same dimly lit stadium bathroom, but the buildings I’m in often have several of these. Dozens of stalls that have no doors or are too short and only go about mid-chest when standing, or rows of too-close urinals. Co-ed too, although I don’t have any recollection of the sanitary situation.
I’ve had the tooth dream less frequently since I started getting the A-OK on my dental checkups.
I sometimes have the variant in which my mouth is full of some substance that I try to clear by pulling it out, and I pull and pull and pull but whatever it is is endless.
Anaamika, me, too on the toilet dream.