Some dreams might be so fragrant that you’d wish that it could visit you every time you close your eyes. But alas, it does not.
Yet, there might be some dreams that come back to your mind – once, twice, then again and again. Why do these dreams occur? What is their significant meaning?
Let us bring you into the obscurities of recurring dreams.
What Is a Recurring Dream?
A recurring dream is a dream that is experienced repetitively over a short period of time or a lifetime. They can be enjoyable or terrifying and is distinctive to the person and their experiences.
Recurring dreams might not be completely identical every time you have it. They might alter gradually over time to reflect the changing experiences of a person.
What Are Some Common Themes of Recurring Dreams?
Even though the dreams that people experience are unique to themselves, psychological investigations and analyses do identify some themes that are consistently and frequently revealed throughout recurring dreams from one person to another.
The most abundantly recounted themes include:
Losing control of a vehicle
Losing the ability to speak
Being chased or attacked
Being stuck or trapped somewhere
Being naked
Flying
Falling
Drowning
Escaping
Losing a teeth
Moving in slow motion or being unable to run
Having to return to a place that you have left to finish unresolved issues
Missing an exam that you didn’t know about
Discovering new rooms that didn’t exist before in a familiar place
Finding lost items
Being with a significant other
Why Do Recurring Dreams Occur?
Scientists believe that there are two main causes of recurring dreams, both which concern the important events happening in your life: areas of stress, and unresolved issues.
Areas of Stress
You might endure stress when you face something that stands as an obstacle before achieving your goals. And that frustration you feel could swirl as the center of your recurring dreams.
This theory is supported by the experiment conducted in the research of ‘Linking Psychological Need Experiences to Daily and Recurring Dreams’, led by PubMed.gov in 2017.
In this experiment, a group of 200 adult students was requested to evaluate whether their psychological needs were met or unmet. These psychological needs were described as:
Autonomy: the need to feel like you have control over your life
Competence: the need to have a momentous influence on your life
Relatedness: the need to care for and be cared for by others
Then, the researchers asked these students to express the recurring dream that they had the most, using terms such as ‘exciting’, ‘sad’, or ‘frustrating’ to determine how positive or negative the recurring dream was.
After examining the statistics, it was concluded that more students with unmet needs managed to report negative themes and emotions for their recurring dreams.
Unresolved Issues
You might have encountered hostile or traumatic events in the past, including family conflicts and disasters, but you’ve never fully realized, acknowledged, or processed the experience. This may result in the disturbance associated with the trauma to loiter in your emotions and ultimately be reflected in your recurring dreams.
For example, dreams of discovering new rooms that didn’t exist before might represent a discovery of new potentials, and dreams of drowning might suggest an overwhelming sense of vulnerability. The recurring dreams in this case might not stop until the problem is corrected or addressed.
The Gestaltist dream theory backs up this principle by stating that recurring dreams symbolize a person’s current state of mental imbalance. Thus, it is possible for a person to restore their self-balance by bringing this inequality to cognizance through recurring dreams.
How Do You Stop Recurring Dreams?
Although it is very hard to directly control recurring dreams, it is usually possible to take indirect action to resolve the problems triggering strain in your life.
A therapist could guild you on identifying the unwanted emotions and recommending effective methods in managing anxiety and stress.
Lucid dreaming is another potential strategy for controlling recurring dreams recommended by Popular Science in an interview in 2013. A lucid dream is a dream in which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming, watching the dream as a bystander. It is suggested that people could use this awareness to feel relief and gain control over the dream to adjust its course.
Bibliography
Raypole, Crystal. (2020, July 21). Recurring Dreams: What Do They Mean? Retrieved August 23, 2020 from https://www.healthline.com/health/recurring-dreams
Barret, D. (2001) Trauma and Dreams. Harvard University Press.
Written by Never Is Forever
The Anonymous Helpers (TAH)
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