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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
1. Searching for a classroom. It’s time for class, and for 50 years no one will help me find the right building.
2. Flying. It is so easy; why doesn’t everyone fly all the time? You do not flap your arms, you just stand up real straight and think about zooming upward. That makes you zoom upward. Gosh, it’s fun.
That dream has come out in way higher production values since google Earth came out.
3. Tooth loosening up and falling out. Have other ladies had this one in late pregnancy? I am 3 for 3 on that one. Horrible. Realistic.
If I have music playing in the room where I’m sleeping it sometimes serves as the soundtrack to a dream.
If I go to sleep with the tv on I sometimes act out the action of the show via the dream, with the audio coming from the tv.
They never fall out, but I often have loose tooth dreams.
I am not a lady.
I forgot about that one. Haven’t had it for quite a while but many, many times I dreamed that for no particular reason my teeth became loose and just fell right out. You’re right, it’s horrible.
Please – how do you keep them from falling out? I want to be ready if there is a next time. Thanks; you’re a real gent.
I also have that recurring dream where my teeth are loose or keep falling out. Somewhat related I think is that I often dream that I’ve cut my hair very short and am mad at myself for doing such an irrational thing.
Ew, ew, I got another one. The “naked in a classroom” dream.
A few recurring dreams —
1. Flying by means of just flapping my arms. Not frantic, fast flapping, but gentle, graceful, powerful strokes. Marvelous going over trees.
2. Getting into horrible car accidents. Usually these have the effect of waking me up, often just at the point of impact.
3. Visiting former houses we’ve lived in and seeing how they’ve been modified. Usually this takes place at the house we lived in when we were first married, a small expansion bungalow. I’m amazed to see how really spacious it was!
I had a dream once that I think may have been a glimpse of heaven: it started out with me walking along a country road in Ireland (a place I’ve never been to). There was a bank along the left side of the road, with lush vegetation along its crown. The colors were incredibly rich and saturated, with bright fall colors mixed in with spring greens and summer flowers. I always dream in color, but these colors were intensely vivid and pure. The scent was fresh — the freshest, cleanest, most green fragrance imaginable (this was the only dream I’ve had in which I’m aware of scent). I was aware of joy bubbling up within me to the point I could hardly contain it. There appeared a small but picturesque cottage on my right, and a smiling woman called to me and told me that the banquet was about to begin and I was welcome and expected.