Once you have a better sense of what your worries are, writing about them before bed can be helpful to alleviate negative recurring dreams and stress in general. There can be environmental triggers as well, such as a car alarm down the street or a dripping faucet, he added, which can set off dreams with imagery of those things. “People with sleep apnea will report dreams of, like, drowning, suffocating, giant waves, gasping for air, being underwater or being choked,” Dimitriu said, when they’re actually experiencing breathing interruptions because of their condition.
Sometimes recurring dreams can point to biological sources, too. … And that’s why it recurs - it’s unfinished work.” And that becomes the problem because the dream never gets processed. But “in people with PTSD, their dreams are so vivid that they wake them up from sleep. “The brain is trying to resolve something and lay it to rest,” he added. A PTSD dream stems from a trauma so severe it keeps returning as a nightmare. People with post-traumatic stress disorder or anxiety are more likely to have recurring dreams, especially ones with anxious natures, Dimitriu said. Mouth breathing might be ruining your sleep. “I definitely think it’s fine to do informal dream interpretation, either on your own or with a close, trusted person who may just sort of see things to question in it that you don’t,” Barrett said. What is your relationship to the things or people in the dream? What are your fears and belief systems about those things? What are the top five things in your life that might be triggering it or related to it? What are you really worried about? When faced with a recurring dream, ask yourself what the message could be, Dimitriu said. Dreams of tooth loss or damage might have to do with loss of something else in your life, feelings of hopelessness or defenselessness, or health concerns. It can reflect a general fear of failure or a sense of being judged by authority figures. Some people have dreams revolving around test anxiety even if they haven’t been in school for years, Barrett said. In addition to unpreparedness, other common themes of recurring dreams include social embarrassment, feelings of inadequacy compared with others, and danger in the form of car crashes or natural disasters, Barrett and Dimitriu said. “In interpretation, we really don’t believe there are universal symbols, but that (it’s) what an individual’s own sort of personal symbol system is and their associations to something are,” Barrett said. But others, despite their commonness, might not have a universal meaning, requiring you do some soul-searching.
#Vivid dreams meaning how to
Here’s how to figure out what’s triggering your recurring dreams.įor some recurring dreams, the message is straightforward - if you repeatedly dream about running late for school or work, you’re probably just often nervous about being unprepared for those things.
And I think when you do, you might be able to put the thing to rest.” And the answer, then, might be to figure out what that is. “As a psychiatrist, I’m inclined to say that there is some message that might be trying to be conveyed to you. “People have this kind of touch-and-go approach with things that are uncomfortable or fear-inducing, and I think dreams are, in some way, the same way,” Dimitriu said. Alex Dimitriu, founder of Silicon Psych, a psychiatry and sleep medicine practice in Menlo Park, California. Regardless, anything that comes up repeatedly is worth investigating, said sleep medicine specialist Dr. Sleep starts: Why your body 'hiccups' as you fall asleep “And when people are asked about past dreams in their life, they may be influenced by memory distortions, interest in dreams (or lack thereof), or other factors.” Nirit Soffer-Dudek, a senior lecturer in the department of psychology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, via email. “It is difficult to assess the prevalence of recurrent dreams because it is not something that happens on a regular basis for most people,” said clinical psychologist Dr. Recurring dreams might be the same every time, or they might just recycle the same types of scenarios or worries, experts said. And recurring dreams don’t always happen in close proximity to each other - they can pop up multiple times per month or years apart, Barrett said. They’re more common in childhood, Barrett said, but can last into adulthood. Since our dreams typically don’t repeat themselves, all it takes is dreaming the same dream twice or more for it to be considered recurring, Barrett said. Recurring dreams that tend to be negative can be stressful.
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