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Recurring Dreams and Dreams that Cease
Over on DocJay’s post discussing magical thinking, the topic of dreams came up. Member K of MT described a dream that allowed her to prevent an car accident; she ended her comment with ” Hopefully this will be the end of that darn recurring dream.”
As a psychologist, I never used the information clinically and I don’t know the symbolism of what different dreams represent. I just assumed that they represented stress, misfiring, ways of processing a days event or emotions, but, to be honest, I just did not think about them that much.
But something happened a few years ago that is quirky and made me a little more intrigued by dreams.
For most of my adult life, I had a recurring dream whenever I was stressed or had too much going on. I would dream that I was looking for my glasses and couldn’t find them. Just for context, I had 20/2400 vision with a mild astigmatism so I always had either my glassed on or contacts in if I was awake. And when I didn’t have them on, I couldn’t see much besides colors and movement. In the stress dreams, that’s what I saw; colors, movement, sometimes other people, sometimes not. Then I would finally find my glasses (usually by feeling around with my hands), as I went to put them on, just before my vision was cleared, I would wake up. No big insights… just awake.
The dream promptly stopped recurring when I had Lasik surgery seven years ago. Not had the dream since, or any replacement version of it. And trust me, it’s not because my stressors went away.
So, do you have recurring dreams? Can you predict them? Have they stopped?
Published in General
Yeah, I tried that on ’em. It didn’t work.
I’m perfectly able to argue with the characters in my dreams as to why it must be a dream. Perfectly capable of arguing that real life doesn’t work this way, so I must be dreaming. I just don’t win the argument. Honestly, their comeback, “You may not think it’s real, but it’s happening, so whatcha gonna do about it?” is a pretty good one.
After all, in real life, when something “unrealistic” happens, there’s no point in arguing over whether it’s really happening. You’ve just got to deal with it.
Dreams where I’ve been murdered. Happens now and then; I wake up cold.
Having sleep apnea adds another dimension to dreaming–the sensation of being strangled causes a rush of adrenaline that can keep me awake for hours. These are rarely nightmares. Usually they’re arguments with an emotional intensity that only rarely occurs in my waking life. Maybe I’m squabbling with my mother in law, and then I’ll lie awake in bed for a couple of hours going through that dans l’escalier feeling, re -hashing the situation over and over, wishing I could let go of it and go back to sleep, because there is no mother in law.
oh, lawdy. The dreams I know have meaning are those ones that are processing. Such as when I was studying for the bar exam, or when I dream about something that is an actual reminder of work I need to do, then pop out of bed and write it down. or if I’m reading a book or playing a video game and then dream about that.
The recurring dreams have always been the same – me running away from someone and then getting pummeled with bullets. Tend to never actually die, though, and they get kind of weird. I’m thinking stress or something of the sort because those dreams have all but ceased over the past several years. Used to have dreams about my wife deciding to not marry me and I’d just sob and then wake up to see her sleeping next to me… those are insecurity (which, with my wife, is wholly unwarranted). Then, there’s the dreams where you run into some old person who hurt your parents years ago and you [expletive] rip into them, either physically or verbally.
Then there are those dreams that are like fully scripted movies. Extremely elaborate and vivid.
Do they have meaning? Processing… brain straightening things out … that’s why when you study, it is best to stop early and go to sleep rather than study through the night. As for seeing people in advance – well, I think that is largely tricks of the mind. Case-in-point, my wife and I went through a starbucks drivethrough and I said the girl looked like some actress. My wife disagreed and pulled up a picture of that actress on the phone. Ok, so I was wrong. Of course, if it was a person from my dreams, I can’t pull up the picture. So, as I said, I’m skeptical.
Doncha hate it when you wake up, only to realize you’re still in another layer of dreams? Those meta-dreams can be startling.
After my dad died my mom kept dreaming about him, and he was angry. (not his usual state, only saw the guy angry 2 or 3 times in 50 years. And trust me, I gave him cause.)
It was really bothering my mom. As luck would have it I met a woman I had heard about for years, a friend of a friend who claimed she could talk to your dead loved ones. Just to make conversation I mentioned that my dad had died, and she explained she could see him and actually described his looks pretty accurately. She then described his personality in very general terms, which would fit about 90% of the guys born in the 1920s.
So I told her about my mom’s dreams, and she explained that my dad was frustrated that he had never told any of us that he loved us, and that’s why he was angry.
I told her my mom and all us kids were pretty sure he was mad because my mom waited til after he was gone to buy a flat screen. She nodded knowingly and agreed that might well be the case.
Most of mine are either like those fully-scripted movies, totally surreal, or my talking with people in various forms, often while sitting together somewhere.
I know of too many incidents, including some of my own. In my own case, it is more than just faces, but names, too, where I write things down in my dream journal and later confirm it all. Just as one example, I write multiple types of things: poetry, science-fiction, business/consulting books, etc. I had a dream where I was talking to my agent, Jim, and he told me he had sold my book to “Paul” for a certain amount of money. Later in the dream, I was speaking with Paul, and he was telling me that he thought we’d make a lot on the book, etc.
The thing was, I didn’t have an agent. So, I went to a Website for a society of literary agents and searched for guys named Jim who represented science fiction. Well, there was only one, and he was younger and had more hair than the one I had seen in my dream, but he was the only Jim representing science fiction. So, I went ahead and sent in a proposal. Rejected.
So, I went back to the Website and broadened my search for any old James. And I found the one I had been talking to in the dream. He doesn’t represent science fiction. He represents business books. Go figure. Well, I write those, too.
Did she have an unusual first name?
Nope. Mary something. Lives in Chicago.
To her credit, she also told me she could see army boots and asked if we had a loved one in the service, as that was the person my dad was tasked with looking over.
Son #1 was (and still is) in the Marine Corps. When I told son #1 he had two responses:
1) Army boots and Marine Corps boots are TOTALLY different. (to which I explained Mary something could hardly be expected to know the difference)
2) “I’m totally screwed. My grand dad lost me in a toy store when I was only three and from there on I kept an eye on HIM.”
Werewolves. Freaking werewolves. Long before they became vogue. There’s a tremendous story behind it while trying to sleep in a carnival trailer filled with large purple elephant stuffed toys with a rainbow sweater on them. But I’m not going to tell it. It does end with werewolves though and it’s been with me ever since. Freaking werewolves.
Ever seen the movie Big Fish?
I would have expected the first response, The second is also hilarious.
I asked about the name because my mother is very strongly psychic and has been known to communicate with dead people. But, nope, not a Mary.
Arahant, a vague recollection of some Albert Finney movie….is that right ? Nope I have not. Should I and will it stop the dreams if I do.
My daughter has been approached twice by complete strangers and was told they could see and old guy hovering over her, keeping an eye on her. My dad bore a striking resemblance to Sean Connery, and at least one of them mentioned SC.
When daughter told son #1 he just rolled his eyes and said “Typical. Knew he was going to get distracted.”
It might. Danny DeVito plays a werewolf who runs a circus. A very friendly werewolf who likes to play fetch.
Your son sounds like a character.
He’s a lot of fun. My dad had the habit of losing his own kids wherever he went, stories of which are told often, and he lost most of his grand kids at least once. So they knew from a young age they were in charge.
When son #1 and he got split up at a toy store (my dad was engrossed in a video game), son #1 marched up to a clerk and said “my grand dad’s lost. Somebody better go looking for him.”
Oh, I wasn’t suggesting it’s a universal exorcism. Besides, I know perfectly well the demons we’ve created are the hardest to exorcise.
“What do you see when you turn out the light? I can’t tell you, but I know it’s mine.” — John Lennon & Paul McCartney
You could tell them that you’ve taken advice from the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. After all, he pretends stuff he doesn’t like isn’t real all the time!
When I’ve had bad bosses, my husband says I sit up in bed yelling at them, saying all the things I can’t say to them face-to-face. I haven’t argued that way (except ocassionly with my husband : ) since my mid-20s. Anyway, I never have any recollection of the dreams that go with them. I just wake up really tired.
Last night I dreamt I was in England and a man in a suit handed Prince George to me and told me to take him to the potty. This morning the word ‘dreamt’ is in the daily crossword puzzle. Uncanny.
The dreams I hate are where, in my dreams, I hear a loud knocking or pounding, or hear the doorbell or telephone ringing, and wake bolt upright in the middle of the night hearing nothing but stark silence.
Dreams within dreams are annoying, where you awake within the dream to something urgent then find you are still in some sort of mind madness.
I have never had a dream within a dream…that is mind madness.
A few of my recurring dreams:
I’ve had a number of recurring dreams, and the recurring ones are never good. Whenever we’re going on a trip, I will have multiple dreams in the weeks leading up to it, where we get to where we’re going and I realize I forgot my camera. I’m always angry at myself that after all those times dreaming it’s going to happen, this time it really did.
Like a lot of people, I dream that I’m back in school and unprepared. I’ll dream that I have to go back and I’m expected to just pick up like I’ve never graduated. I don’t know my class schedule, where my locker is, the locker’s combination, but I’m expected to know it all.
My parents have been divorced for well over 20 years and they each have their own business. I work for my mom. I will often dream that my mother is on vacation or something so my dad shows up and acts like he owns the business and starts bossing people around. He’s kind of an intimidating guy so people just follow his orders, and it’s up to me to tell him he doesn’t own this store and he’s got to leave. But the dream always fades out before I actually have the confrontation with him.
When I was single I would often dream I was on a date (never with someone I knew, just a generic girl) and we decided to have sex. Something always came up that prevented it, though, like being locked out of the house or something.
Under the category of non-recurring but interesting, in the last year as I’ve gotten to know people on Ricochet, I’ve had several dreams about Ricochet members, most of whom I haven’t met in person. The most recent one (that I can remember) was that Jason Rudert and Fred Cole were going on a double date with Barkha Herman and Midget Faded Rattlesnake. Fred and Jason were arguing over who gets who, but I don’t know if they both wanted Barkha or Midge.
I lived in the S.F. Bay Area at the time. For many months I awoke from sleep (I didn’t keep track, but it averaged more than once a week) “knowing” that there had been an earthquake which is what had awakened me. That stopped after the Loma Prieta quake in 1989.
My recurring dreams all involve traffic tickets.
When my kids were small, I’d dream that something was about to happen to one of them and I could see it coming but couldn’t save them. That would result in a wake up. I’d also dream that I lost one. Now that they are grown, they’ve ceased.
When I was in school I’d dream that I had a new schedule at the beginning of the semester but couldn’t find the schedule or the class. Those dreams ended when school ended.
And lastly, I used to have the type of dream where I’m in a public place in my underwear of similar mode of undress and have to get somewhere else public. I think my solution was usually just to pretend nothing was untoward.
When I was small (early elementary-school aged and before), I had a recurring dream of being in my dad’s parked pick-up truck with an invisible man (only his muppet-like hat and mustache could be seen), while water rushed across the road. The invisible man was scared, and I was trying to calm him down.
I remember reading once (maybe on Lileks’ website) that someone has claimed that recurring dreams don’t exist at all. That they’re post-hoc false memories of having experienced the same dream before. I don’t buy it, of course, since I am sure that I’d told my parents about the above dream before another recurrence (I think…it’s been many years).
I don’t know why that claim makes me angry or indignant, but it does. Probably because it attacks my own experience in a way that the person making the claim can’t possibly know.
I danced next to Danny and Rhea in 1995 at some Christmas charity event at Squaw Creek. My ex was a star gazer and I was embarrassed. Small people.
Diversion over, back to a great topic. I never know what to make of people’s dreams or premonitions. There are some that are quite prescient so it’s silly to dismiss them but then again, so many people are just plain crazy.
The worst is when you wake up from a dream, get ready in the morning like you usually do, checking the clock to make sure you won’t be late…
… and it turns out you’re still asleep. You’re not really awake at all. You thought you were going through the motions of being a responsible adult living in reality, rather than some idler still living in dreamworld, but you though wrong. Now you’re late for everything and nothing you thought you got done is really done, because waking up was only a dream.
I hate it when that happens.