I don’t get any sort of reflux that I know of. For me, the phlegm actually does have a connection to real life. When I was a child, I had some sort of bronchial illness or another that had me coughing up wads of the stuff. I remember getting enough of it lodged and spread across my throat that it was becoming very difficult to breathe normally (or at least it felt that way.)
I’m a weirdo, in that I’ve never had the classroom exam dream, the omg I’m naked! dream, or the filthy toilets gotta pee! dream. (Maybe I just wake up too easily when my bladder is full.) I HAVE had the teeth falling out one, a bunch of times, and it creeps me right the hell out each and every time.
But, here’s my recurring dream, and it’s definitely not a common one. I haven’t had it in a while, but a year or three back I was having it monthly or even weekly. Before I tell you, though, a bit of key background: I used to have rats as pets. So, for me, rodents aren’t the ewwww! creepy! thing that they are in most people’s minds. To me, they’re what they really are: smart, cute, furry little fuzzbutts with charming personalities. (Really!)
In my dream, I’m walking through some strange building (varies constantly) and find a room in which I’ve tucked away a cage with a couple of pet rats. In my dream, the rats have been in that cage, uncared for, for weeks or months or even years. My dream-me had completely forgotten about them, and abandonded them unwittingly. :eek: I rush to the cage and am certain I’m about to uncover either pathetic live rats dying in starvation and agony, or withered and decaying skeletons 
… and every time, I’m greeted by hungry but perfectly healthy little faces, their fur clean and shiny, their noses twitching. I let them out, relieved, and they scamper around, playing with each other and with me.
One particular former rat of mine is usually a key player in the dream. RIP, Sydney, sweetheart. You were quite the pistol, all, what, eight grams of you?
This is pretty much the only one I have anymore. It’s the end of a semester, and I suddenly realize I forgot about a class. It’s always a math class, lol. I’ve never been to it and don’t know where it is. And campus never looks familiar, so I don’t know how to go about even finding it.
I used to have one where I was being chased, and I’d run and run and run till I felt like I couldn’t breathe, even in my sleep. I’m usually in a familiar place, like the neighborhood I grew up in, and I’d be looking for places to hide…under a neighbor’s deck, behind a car in a garage, etc. Horrible!
I know we’ve done this topic before, search-fu fails me tho…
I haven’t had a full-blown nightmare in years-decades really. My reoccuring dream themes are much more existential. I regularly visit what I call a “shade” of this reality-streets and neighborhoods (often it’s at my old house where I lived as a teen) are vaguely similar, but just enough “off” to make me feel uneasy. There might be a huge hill in a place where in waking life it’s completely flat, there might be a bridge which would head out into the ocean to a 2nd line of barrier islands, trees would be 2x as tall, etc. I used to call it the “bore-mare” universe, but, since it dates from my dark times (i.e. going back 30 years), it’s changed over the years, and lately has taken on a much more vivid quality (not so boring anymore). Traditionally I would wander around in my car for virtual (if not literal) hours-very rarely would I meet another human being of significance-if I did he or she (usually female) would disappear pretty quickly. Streets and sidewalks are typically oddly empty of cars & people, tho not always. It doesn’t bug (or bore) me nearly as much as it did, and sometimes I can run across a very visually pleasing scene, tho I still don’t actually interact with anyone. Mirrors my real-life loner tendencies I guess.
The most common theme of the dreams I remember is sex. Either just a sexually charged environment or actual sex and often lots of it.
I’ve had the class/exams dream on many occasions. I used to have the one about a gooey gummy substance in my mouth that I couldn’t get out: very unpleasant. I still often have a dream where I’m back in the military, usually realizing suddenly that I’m about to miss my flight because I forgot to pack my stuff. I have a lot of dreams about driving, for some reason, usually in snow.
I get a lot of these but something I want to ask. I have had the teeth falling out one and seriously did not think it was a dream. I’d check myself in a mirror, all sorts of stuff and it would still feel real. I’ve that happen often enough now that I can actually reason within the dream “Don’t panic, last time this happened turned out it was all a dream”. I’m on top of the sleep paralysis in the same way, “Here we go again, this is sort of intesting”.
Just me, or do lots of people get scarily real dreams like this?
And then there’s the sleep walking.
I’ve had the ‘teeth fall out’ dream. I wonder if so many people have this dream because of grinding and clenching teeth in our sleep. Maybe our ‘half awake’ selves work the sensation into our dreams somehow?? I mean, there has to be some reason that such an odd and specific element is so common in dreams.
In some TV program (something like "Saved by the Bell), there’s a student who realized that she’s nekkid in class–and she hasn’t studied for the exam.
And in one ep of “Babylon 5,” Ivanova dreams that she’s walking around the C&C nekkid. Then when she wakes up, she mentions other recurring dreams that people have, like “the bad teeth dream.”
Teeth, check. School exam, check. Don’t have the naked dreams, though sometimes I’ll have inappropriate clothing, like I’ll be at work and realize I’m wearing shorts.
I will add that I have recurring dreams where I’m balding and never realize it until one day I look at the back of my head in the mirror and it’s all gone. Oh, and I consistently have dreams where I’m about to have sex with some woman and then something happens to interrupt us before we start and I wait for it to resolve and it never does.
I have the teeth and school dreams, but not as often as I used to (I’m 49)
I have many, many plane crash dreams. I always survive. Perhaps I’m flying too much.
Also, I know a lot of people have flying dreams. (without airplanes) I have “swimming underwater but able to breath” dreams. Very nice.
We were talking about Freud and symbolism in dreams once in a psychology class:
teacher: “…and dreams where their teeth fall out-”
girl: “oh I have those all the time”
teacher: “…are a symbol of sexual frustration”
Then we all laughed.
I’m an insomiac who has the reoccuring dream of lying on my floormat trying to fall asleep.
My recent recurring dreams have all been about frustration.
The most common one is I wake up late for work and spend the next several hours trying to find my keys. Usually there are other people in the dream trying to get me to do something other than trying to find my keys. Often I’ll wake up after the dream kind of freaking out and then I roll over to look at the clock and it’s only 1 AM. Then I get a feeling of relief and happiness because I get to go back to sleep for four more hours.
I had a new frustating dream last night. I was in the house I rent and some people started showing up for a party. Which I thought was cool but then a lot of people started showing up and a lot of them started coming into my bedroom. Well I got annoyed and started telling them to leave my room but noone would listen. Afte a good while of me telling them to leave and getting very frustrated I went out to look for my roommate to get him to tell the people to leave but I couldn’t find him so I went back to my room and all of my stuff was gone and was replaced by other stuff. I turned to the first person and told them to get out of my room but they said it was their room and I needed to leave. I woke up after the entire house had changed into a different house and everyone inside was getting pissed off at me because I wouldn’t leave.
Nobody else dreams about swimming with dead fish?
The worst dream I ever had was pretty cool as dreams go. Extremely realistic and detailed, it involved winning a huge lottery jackpot. A world record sized jackpot.
The dream was all about what I was doing after getting the cash. I was having fun, and looking forward to every coming minute of life. Lighting Macanudos off of hundred dollar bills, buying a mansion for everyone I knew, the works.
Then I awoke. It took me a little while to realize it was all a dream. I was bummed out for days, continuously reliving in my mind all the things I remembered. I’d rather have the worst nightmare ever than to ave that dream again.
My most common dreams are:
- The rushing for assignment/exam dreams
- Finding myself inappropriately dressed for military parade (does anyone else who was or still is part of the military get this?)
- Wandering lost in an almost familiar place
- Teeth falling out or breaking
My variation on this is running. I’m running up a mountain path or something and it’s challenging but it feels great!
Check.
Check and check.
Check. I think this is without a doubt the most frustrating dream I have.
I regularly dream about the house I grew up in – specifically, my bedroom, and usually it involves me having sex with someone in that room and not wanting to get caught by my parents. Hmmmm. What could that be about?
I used to get school/teeth related dreams, but not anymore.
Now I get two kinds of recurring dreams:
-
I moved to a new apartment and it’s a complete piece of shit (abandoned soviet block, missing walls etc). I actually had 2 seperate dreams about this just tonight.
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Some kind of sleep paralysis-related dream. I “wake up” and realize that I’m partially or completely paralyzed and that there’s an invisible… thing… touching me, dragging me out of bed, crushing my chest/arms, or slowly pulling the sheets away.
I HATE the second type of dream.
Anybody else dream you are in a fight, only your arms are so weak you can’t land a punch harder than a love tap?
i recently had one where I was at war, only the bullets in my gun moved in slow motion. I had to lead my target by several yards, and by the time the bullet got there, they had run away.