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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
Hah, that depends on what the beautiful woman wants to do. If you think the holodeck would be boring because it isn’t real, you’re not creative enough. Of course, when this used to happen to me, it would end up being too realistic. I realize it’s a dream and think “ok, now I can get pervy,” then we’d end up just talking, anyway… My wife would say, “oh, you’re exactly the same even in your dreams – I’ll bet you dream about podcasting and talking politics!”
Ack! horrid. My wife and I, with both kids, ended up having the lucid-wake moments, where she would crawl into bed in a daze (at about 3am) and I’d say “where’s Kieran?” and she’d say, “he’s under the covers down at my feet,” and I’d jolt out of bed… (he was obviously safely in his crib) I did the same thing to her a few times. When you’ve got an infant at home, you’re always on high-alert, so strange things happen when you mix sleep with real life.
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.
Ummmmmmm…..
Yes, I have had those.
I’m afraid to read the comments in this thread! It might give me nightmares ;)
I had a doozy last night. Thanks for nothing folks. And no I am not going to tell it, grumpy I can still remember it.
I think, in the case I can recall, the problem was precisely that “she” didn’t “want” to do anything, because there was no “she” to “want” anything. I mean, this was a very lucid dream, so poof, there she was, and I guess I defaulted to making her walk, because we were, after all, on a sidewalk. But since all that was going on was that my subconscious and conscious minds were teaming up, as it were, without the interruption of photons on the optic nerves, all I got out of it was that sense of boredom I mentioned.
Failure of the imagination? Um, no; the great thing about this conjunction of the subconscious and the conscious is that, hey, what you conjure up is neither more nor less than the best your subconscious has to offer. Think of it as an enforced honest answer to the questions posed to Schwarzenegger in “Total Recall.”
But at the end of the day, the hottest marionette in the world still comes with strings attached.
Recurring dreams…
1) Being chased but able to fly and get away. Really fun, but I can’t fly very high. Don’t want to get too far off the ground lest the ability fail.
2) Searching and searching but I can’t see. It’s too dark. Then I wake and…it’s pitch dark and I can’t see. I say to myself, “Go figger.”
Do you have to flap your arms to fly? I sometimes have to flap my arms to fly. Also, sometimes while I can fly just fine, I can’t steer all that well.
Also, sometimes I have the problem where you can’t run, or even stand up. It sucks. But then, I can still fly! Weird.
I have had almost this exact dream in my childhood and into adulthood. In my late thirties I actual learned how to fly (general aviation) and now the dream has morphed into me flying my plane. If I dream of flying now it sort of seems like a flight review of some past trip and a personal critic of my performance. It is no longer accompanied with the exhorting joy factor I had before I learned to fly. It has more of the feel of the reoccurring test dream.
On the other hand the waking thrill of flying definitely has the feel of the experience I had when dreaming. So I guess the trade was worth it. Especially since I seem to be dreaming less the older I get.
Do our brains get tired of the daily processing and memory filing the older we get? I have been told that dreaming is the encoding of the relevant tidbits of the day into your brain for later retrieval.
Have you tried telling yourself to have a dream of flying without the plane before you go to bed?
Why does that thought seem really scary now that I know how to do the flying with a mechanical beast.
And that is probably why you no longer dream of flying without the plane.
GLDIII,
Flying is no longer a dream for you it is real. and involves a mechanical beast.
Dream flying is less expensive, though. :)
This has got to be the most common recurring dream around. I’ve had it many times too. And heard so many other people describe the same dream, it’s almost a cliche.
I used to have the flying dream quite often. I just willed myself to levitate and could fly around. Sometimes it came with the power of invisibility. It was fun, but it’s been quite a while.
My favorite variant: You did study for a test, but not the test you are made to take. For example, someone makes you take the AP French exam when you’ve never had a day of French in your life and were all prepared to take the AP Chem exam instead.
Of course your pleas of “I was supposed to take a different test!” fall on deaf ears. They – whoever “they” are – assert they know better than you which test you’re supposed to take, and since there’s no convincing them otherwise, your choice is either take the test you never studied for and probably fail, or not take a test at all and fail by default.
Anyone noticing a pattern here?
My recurring dream is, I am walking through our house and discover a room I never knew existed before. I am dumbfounded that I never opened this door till now. I walk into a large enclosed porch, golden sun streaming through tall windows. There is some furniture, lovely old warm wood tables and shranks like in my grandparents home in Allentown. Some of the furniture is covered with sheets like you see in old movies when rich people are returning to their summer home. I am immensely happy that I have found it. I guess it’s sort of a ‘heaven’ dream?
When our three kids were little and we were always running around to school activities, doctor visits, & extracurriculars I remember frequently dreaming that I was trying to call someone on the phone but when I’d pick up the receiver I’d hear other voices already talking on the line, like a party line, and they wouldn’t hang up. I’d shout at them and try hanging up again and again but I could never make my call. I just wasn’t being heard.
My happiest dream was right before Father’s Day last year. I dreamed I was typing at the computer, right where I am now, and my dad walked into the room smiling, with his arms out to me (he passed away 4 years ago). I leaped up from the chair and in the split second before I threw my arms around his neck I thought “If I can feel him, he must be real.” I got a warm hug in, and I could feel the bones in his shoulders – he was always quite thin and bony. Then I woke, and my forearms were actually tingling.
Dude, get a CPAP. Best thing I ever did. Sleeping well beats the hell out of nocturnal strangulation and adrenaline rushes.
“Dude, get a CPAP. Best thing I ever did. Sleeping well beats the hell out of nocturnal strangulation and adrenaline rushes.”
Oh, I do. My nighttime buddy. This stuff I was referring to was more before.
Wow. There’s a peak behind the curtain. :)
Oh dear friend . . . that is tender and poignant beyond expression.
I get the dream in two variants — the most common one is I forgot to go to the class all semester — didn’t just fail to study for the exam. The other one is that I sometimes just can’t find the exam room.
Glad to hear it! They tell me the years I spent desatting all night probably weren’t good for me.
I reckon the anxiety dreams depend on what one is anxious about or was in the past. I never had the test dreams or anything school related.
Ok, I’ve now been through all the comments and have two new ones to add:
1) (and I’m surprised no one else said this yet) is just a dream where I’m trying to accomplish some mundane task and various bizarre obstacles just keep getting in the way — walkways stretch out and get longer, doors are locked, hands fail to grasp things, people interfere and distract me, etc. I never accomplish the task in these dreams and usually wake with a palpable sense of frustration and often gritted teeth.
2) (this one might just be mine, it’s a little weird) but when I was in law school, I had a recurring dream where I had to go to prison for a while (reason never explained) and I couldn’t finish law school. In the dream, the need to serve a prison term was always a given, and the dream was about trying to make arrangements to finish my classes and take exams etc. from prison.
Basil Fawlty (at crisis of expanding chaotic situation): Maybe it’s a dream That’s it its a dream! [Bangs head on desk, twice; sits up again elation gone]. No; not a dream. We’re stuck with it.
Some of us have been doing that for over six years now.
With two more to go. Rats
Most of the dreams I remember are recurring. In no particular order ….
1) Having fights with my stepmom.
2) Before my wedding I would have nightmares about my wedding dress being awful. Now after the wedding I have dreams about other parts of the wedding going terribly awry.
3) Back in school and having forgotten to study for an exam, or worse not knowing I was even registered for the class until the final exam. This probably stems from the fact that I actually did sleep halfway through an exam in college…
4) Being at my grandparent’s home or my mother’s home. There are a couple of variations… one being that the home is under attack, the other being that I am speaking with my grandfather, who passed away almost 10 years ago.
5) Flying.