Recurring dreams are a common phenomenon experienced by many people. These dreams may contain familiar themes, characters, or places that repeat themselves over time. Understanding the meaning behind these dreams can provide valuable insights into our emotional and psychological states. This article explores the types of recurring dreams and what they may signify.
The Nature of Recurring Dreams
Dream themes, characters, or places often recur in various forms. A recurring dream may start in childhood and continue throughout one’s life, either without change or as part of an evolving series. The setting may remain the same, such as a familiar house, but the details may shift over time. Such dreams can be triggered by significant life events, like puberty or marriage, and they may continue as long as the underlying issue remains unresolved.
Example of a Recurring Dream
One notable example involves a dreamer who experienced the same dream for over 30 years:
“There is a railway station, remote in a rural area, with a central waiting room and a platform all around. Hundreds of ragged, thin, dirty men mill around the platform. I realize they all have my face. I look up at a guard watching us, cruel-looking and armed. Fear and terror grip me as I understand that I am all of these men.” (Anon.)
This dream reflects the dreamer’s deep-rooted anxiety and self-identity conflicts, which persisted over the years. Such themes often incorporate emotional responses, like fear, as seen in the above example.
Why Recurring Dreams Happen
Recurring dreams often occur because the dreamer continues to respond to their internal or external world in habitual ways. These repetitive emotional or mental states cause the dream to remain the same. However, those who actively process their dreams, using techniques like dream analysis, often find that recurring themes either change or disappear as they confront and resolve the underlying issues.
Recurring Dreams and Psychological Growth
When a recurring environment appears in a dream but the other elements change, this indicates psychological growth. The environment or character represents an aspect of the dreamer’s self, while the varying events reflect changes in their personal development. Conversely, when no change occurs, as in the examples above, it suggests that the dreamer’s emotional or mental state is stuck in a habitual response.
Resolving Recurring Dreams
Sometimes, recurring dreams can stop simply by gaining new information or insight. For example, one woman had a recurring dream from childhood, where she would walk past railings and wake up in dread. When she shared the dream with her sister at age 40, her sister revealed that, as children, they had been attacked by a group of boys near those same railings. This revelation helped the dreamer connect her fear with the childhood trauma, and the dream never recurred.
Recurring Dreams and Trauma
Some recurring dreams are a form of self-regulation, where the dream process attempts to present unresolved emotions or situations to the dreamer’s conscious mind for resolution. One example is a young woman who repeatedly dreamt of a piece of cloth touching her face, causing her to wake up screaming. After discussing the dream with her brother, she realized it was connected to her grief over her grandmother’s death. Once she acknowledged this grief, the nightmare ceased.
Why Recurring Dreams Matter
Recurring dreams can be highly useful and important to analyze for several reasons:
- They may reflect an unhealthy pattern of behavior or thought in real life, signaling that your current approach is not helping you achieve happiness.
- They may represent unresolved emotions, such as anger or sadness over a past situation that has not been fully healed.
In many recurring dreams, your sleeping mind is trying to solve a problem or confront an emotion that you are unable to face in waking life. Whatever the dream's subject, it likely reflects an aspect of your current life situation, even if the dream takes you back to a past event.
Repetitive Dreams and Life Transitions
Recurring dreams often coincide with transitions in life, such as moving to a new phase or encountering an unfamiliar situation. These dreams can serve as signposts, offering signals about where you are heading and how you are feeling. Identifying the themes within these dreams can help you understand which part of your life needs attention or resolution.
Recurring Dream Themes
Although recurring dreams may be associated with stress and trauma, they also provide a unique opportunity to explore your motivations at the deepest level. Here are some common recurring dream themes:
- Feeling trapped or confined
- Being chased or pursued
- Falling or sinking
- Arriving late to an important event
- Seeing familiar but unsettling locations
Conclusion
Recurring dreams are often a reflection of unresolved emotional or psychological issues. They provide valuable insights into our habitual responses, emotional conflicts, and personal growth. By analyzing the symbols and themes in these dreams, we can better understand our current life situations and work toward resolving the issues they present.
See also: recurring dreams, trauma, psychological growth, dream symbols.
[1]A cenain theme may have begun in childhood and continued throughout our life—either without change, or as a gradually changing series of dreams. It might be that the feature which recurs is a setting, perhaps a house we visit again and again, but the details differ. Sometimes a senes of such dreams begin after or dunng a particular event or phase of our life, such as puberty or marriage.
Example: ‘This dream has recurred over 30 years. There is a railway station, remote in a rural area, a central waiting room with platform going round all sides. On the platform mill hundreds of people, all men I think. They are all ragged, thin, dirty and unshaven. I know I am among them. I looked up at the mountainside and there is a guard watching us. He is cruel looking, oriental, in green fatigues. On his peaked cap is a red star. He carries a machine gun. Then I looked at the men around me and I realise they are all me. Each one has my face. I am looking at myself. Then I feel fear and terror (Anon.).
The theme of the dream can incorporate anxious emotions, such as the above example, or any aspect of experience. One woman, an epileptic, reports a dream which is the same in every detail and occurs every night. In general such dreams recur because there are ways the dreamer habitually responds to their internal or external world. Because their attitude or response is unchanging, the dream which reflects it remains the same.
It is noticeable in those who explore their dreams using such techniques as described under dream processing that recurring themes disappear or change because the attitudes or habitual anxieties which gave rise to them have been met or transformed.
A recurring environment in a dream where the other factors change is not the same. We use the same words over and over in speech, yet each sentence may be different.
The environment or character represents a particular aspect of oneself, but the different events which surround it show it in the changing process of our psychological growth. Where there is no such change, as in the examples above, it suggests an area of our mental emotional self is stuck in a habitual feeling state or response.
Some recurring dreams can be ‘stopped’ by simply receiving information about them. One woman dreamt the same dream from childhood. She was walking past railings in the town she lived in as a child. She always woke in dread and perspiration from this dream. At 40 she told her sister about it.
The response was ‘Oh, that’s simple. Don’t you remember that when you were about four we were walking past those railings and we were set on by a bunch of boys. Then I said to them, ‘Don’t hurt us, our mother’s dead!” They left us alone, but you should have seen the look on your face.’ After realising the dread was connected with the loss of her mother, the dream never recurred. Another woman who repeatedly dreamt of being in a tight and frightening place, found the dream never returned after she had connected it to being in the womb.
Recurring dreams, such as that of the railings, suggest that pan of the process underlying dreams is a self regulatory (homocostatic) one.
The dream process tries to present troublesome emotions or situations to the conscious mind of the dreamer to resolve the trauma or difficulty underlying the dream.
An obvious example of this is seen in the recurring nightmare of a young woman who felt a piece of cloth touch her face, and repeatedly woke her family with her screams. Her brother, tiring of this, one night woke her from her screams and made her talk about her feelings. His persistence gradually revealed that she associated the cloth with the burial shroud of her grandmother. This brought to the surface grief and feelings about death she had never allowed herself to feel before.
The nightmare never returned.
See also: nightmares; dream processing. [2]
Some people experience an entire series of dreams in sequence. Again, it’s a good idea to identify the underlying narrative and what it might reveal about your life. For example, a story that outlines two people, falling in love and eventually getting married, might suggest the dreamer is looking for a of ‘happy ever after’ ending in real life. [3]
• If a dream continues to repeat itself, it is worth exploring it’s meaning as it needs your conscious understanding and action in order to resolve something in your emotional make-up.
• Recurring dreams can be a trauma relieving response to the original event that triggered them. [6]