Dreams - Recurrences and Meanings

[Gryffindorian]

Whether or not you believe dreams have meanings or that they reflect the subconscious mind, I always enjoy discussing dream interpretations for fun. I recall we've had a few dream discussions in this forum.

I often have recurring dreams that have similar or related themes. I remember reading somewhere that dreams are sometimes "summaries" of the day's events. They're always vague and disjointed, but I can at least recall some of the details.

* Being back or living in the old house where I grew up in another country. I find this very odd because I hardly ever dream about my own house here in the SF Bay Area. Does this mean a part of me yearns to visit the old country? When people ask me when or if I want to go on vacation to my country of birth, the notion doesn't really appeal to me. All my immediate family members are here in the U.S, and I certainly don't like going back to the rural area where I once lived.

* Working in a large office building (almost like a hospital or a hotel) with several floors, elevators, huge lobbies, and multi-level underground parking in a downtown area. This theme is more reflective of my workplace here in the Bay Area. In reality my place of work isn't that big (a total of nine floors), with approximately 800+ employees working at any given time. It's definitely not a skyscraper or a large corporate office building. In my dream I often use the stairwells to get from the top floor all the way to the ground floor or to get to different departments. Sometimes each office has some distinctive features, like immense hallways where one could easily get lost or elegant wall panels and office decor.

* Being in a distant place, e.g. Las Vegas, with family members. I've been to Vegas only twice in real life, but maybe my subconscious mind is telling me I should go again soon. Then again, I haven't really done much traveling in my life. In my dream I see enormous hotels and resorts and very interesting structures. Family members and I stay in an exquisite suite, and I always feel anxious that we only have a few days left before we leave town and go back to the Bay Area. There's a feeling of excitement and at the same time a sense of urgency.

* Taking a shower at the gym or seeing the men's locker room. I quit my fitness club membership two years ago, and yet I occasionally seem to have dreams of going to the gym and using the dirty shower area, with toilet stalls in them. Eww.

* Living in or visiting a very large house (or a mansion) with numerous rooms. This one is probably the most frequent dream I have (and I remember having it just recently). Sometimes I don't know the exact location of the house (or who the owner is or was); even its style or structure differs from time to time (Victorian, Tudor, Ranch). There are always two things, however, that are constant: the house has many rooms to accommodate everyone in my family, and it has several bathrooms. Now this is where it gets weird. Every time I try to use the bathroom (to take a shower), the large windows that are overlooking the street or the neighbor's house next door DON'T have any curtains or blinds. They're just made of transparent glass. So I always feel vulnerable or exposed all the time. Isn't that weird?

According to www.dreammoods.com:

Bathroom

To dream that you are in the bathroom, relates to your instinctual urges. You may be experiencing some burdens/feelings and need to "relieve yourself". Alternatively, it may symbolize purification and self-renewal. You need to cleanse yourself, both emotionally and psychologically.

Window

To see windows in your dream, signifies bright hopes, vast possibilities and insight. If the windows of a house is dark, then it indicates a loss in your perception or vitality.

To dream that you are looking out the window, signifies your outlook on life, your consciousness, point of view, awareness, and intuition. You may be reflecting on a decision and seeking guidance. Or you need to go out into the larger world and experience life. If you are looking in the window, then it indicates that you are doing some soul searching and looking within yourself.

It doesn't say anything about open or uncovered windows, however. Based on the two symbols, though, am I to assume that I feel vulnerable or exposed with regards to self-expression or purification?

House

To see a house in your dream, represents your own soul and self. Specific rooms in the house indicate a specific aspect of your psyche. In general, the attic represents your intellect, the basement represents the unconscious, etc. If the house is empty, then it indicates feelings of insecurity.If the house is shifting, then it suggests that you are going through some personal changes and changing your belief system. If you live with others in your walking life, but dream that you are living alone, suggests that you need to take new steps toward independence. You need to accept responsibilities and be more self-reliant. If you are locked out of the house, then it represents rejection and insecurity. You feel you are being left behind.

To see an old, run-down house in your dream, represents your old beliefs, attitudes and how you used to think or feel. A situation in your current life may be bringing about those same old attitudes and feelings.

Alternatively, the old house may symbolize your need to update you mode of thinking. To dream that your house is damaged, indicates your waking concerns about the condition of your house.

Interesting. Does anyone else have recurring dream themes or symbols?

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I dunno...some of that stuff on that site is WAY off. For instance...I have had a couple dreams in which I was ordained or soon to be ordained as a minister--and MAN, what it says about that is SO off from what I felt in those dreams. Those were very peaceful dreams, where I felt very comfortable and sure in my purpose. NOT all the threatening garbage that site put. (Heck, even the ceremonial clothing I was wearing in those dreams felt very comforting. The only one of those dreams where I was nervous was the dream in which I was actually BEING ordained...but that's no different than being nervous at one's graduation.)

I guess if someone had a bad experience I can see where a minister/priest would become a negative symbol, but that stuff is SO subjective.

(And yes...I do believe there is a strong chance that at some point in my life it is my calling to enter the ministry.)

 

[Gryffindorian]

I hear ya. I only used that one site as a reference. I didn't check other websites. One other important thing to consider is that dream interpretation is speculation at best. It's more a New Age concept than a branch of psychology, but hey, I read my horoscopes every day.

 

[Kestra]

Does anyone else have recurring dream themes or symbols?

I remember a lot of my dreams and do the lucid dreaming bit a lot too, so I'm not sure if that says something in itself. Most of my dreams are pretty obvious to figure out.

I do have one recurring dream.

I'm sitting on the back of my parents' couch in front of a large picture window they have. Feet are dangling. Next to me is my cousin, just a kid. We're watching the snow fall even though it has already blanketed everything outside. We don't speak a word to each other, clearly just content to sit together.

She stretches out her hand, as if to reach for a snowflake. Then suddenly I realize that the glass isn't there, that she's reached out too far, and she's falling out of the second story window.

I reach out after her but she's already gone. Then I wake up.

I've had this dream since she committed suicide, more than ten years ago. It reappears at the oddest times, but the meaning is clear. I used to dread it but now I feel as though ... I'm grateful to know that I'm still thinking about her. That probably sounds weird but it's just how I feel.

 

[Hermiod]

I keep having two recurring dreams.

One where I'm lost inside a train station and the other where I'm being chased by zombies. In other words, I have clearly been playing too much Half-Life 2.

 

[Gryffindorian]

Wow. Kes, sorry to hear about your cousin ... Have you ever talked to a counselor or any professional about this before (your dream and its relation to your cousin's death)? It's almost very metaphysical. As I said to Nerys, I don't believe dream interpretation is an exact science, but those dreams have GOT to mean something.

 

[Kestra]

Wow. Kes, sorry to hear about your cousin ... Have you ever talked to a counselor or any professional about this before (your dream and its relation to your cousin's death)? It's almost very metaphysical. As I said to Nerys, I don't believe dream interpretation is an exact science, but those dreams have GOT to mean something.

Aww, don't worry about it. I know those dreams are just lingering feelings of guilt surrounding my relationship with her and the whole event. It used to be much stronger, but I'm more reasonable now and have mostly come to terms with all of it. If anything, now the recurring dream is a chance I have to spend time with her again, however fleeting.

 

[SilentP]

I wonder what your subconcious is trying to tell you when you die a fair bit in your dreams...

I'd check that site, but I got a bit horrified about the significane of your teeth falling out/shattering.

 

[Jadzia]

I don't believe for a minute that dream symbols have specific meanings. That's too much like horoscopes and fortune telling.

I think dreams can only be interpreted with any meaning by looking at the emotions you have in the dream. I think emotion is all important in dreams. Dreams almost always give you situations that evoke some kind of emotion. The dream follows that emotion heavily. The stories appear layed out to explore emotion from various angles.

Also important is how you respond to the situations in the dream; and how ultimately how your emotional and behavioural reactions are altered by your dream experience.

For example, one dream might involve something repulsive, but you cannot get away from it. By the time the dream is over, your instinctive feeling of repulsion has changed slightly. You are more knowing of the thing, and your emotional reactions have become more intelligent than they originally were.

I tend to believe that dreams have the function of strengthening us by allowing us to explore situations in a controlled environment. I believe they modify our emotional intelligence.


As for recurring dreams -- when I was younger I had a strongly recurring dream. It was a place I went to, a small town that I only knew from the dream, but over time the place became very familiar to me, and I knew my way around. I dreamed of this place maybe once every three weeks or so, and it recurred for about 5 years during the time I was a teenager. There was a mystery in the dream which I eventually solved. Solving it gave me an extremely pleasant sensation, like a tonne of endorphins. I haven't once had the dream since.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

The subject of dreams crops up quite often here.

There have been a few recurrences in my dreams, but thinking rationally they do relate in some form to events and experiences I have had, sometimes recently, often specific experiences, places or people in the past which I had noted in passing. (Quite often they are representations of whatever computer game I have been playing or TV show I have been watching.) On a very few occasions they have been things I have never seen or, specifically, people I have never met before.

I don't see them as particularly prophetic with any foreshadowing capacity. They can, possibly, be manifestations of gut feelings, thoughts, emotions, and deep-seated wishes.

Often in my dream I encounter things that are extremely familiar, that I believe I had dreamed that very setting or event before. I think it's due to the fact that I believe that I forget dreams a lot, even dreams I have had on that very morning which are hard to recall minutes later. However, a few days later I might have a dream that revisits aspects of the previous dream which seems extremely familiar. I think in those moments I subconsiously remember the dream, only to access it later. On the other hand it might be due to my dreaming it several times during the night and not realising I have woken up in between dreams. I'm not sure.

 

[Jadzia]

As for recurring dreams -- when I was younger I had a strongly recurring dream.

Thinking back to that...
The dream often started in the same place. It was a old small quarry, about 100 metres across, and the stone rock face on the north side was about 20 metres high. The site was aged and weathered, and the ground had a fair depth of soil.

Dotted around this site were some small stone platforms, upon each of which was erected a sturdy door frame, with a closed door. Each door was a different shape and colour and condition, but each had metallic numbers screwed to it. Door 4 for instance was the most striking and was the one I was more often stood in front of. It was bright red and in good condition.

Some of the doors were locked. Each door was a portal, and if I walked through it I'd emerge in a different part of this town, which saved me walking. Except for door 3, a mangy turquoise door, since going through this one instantly woke me up, but I only went through it twice.

The mystery was related to a shadowy figure who appeared on the cliff top above the quarry. The figure often appeared but I could find no way of ascending the cliff to get to them. Until the last dream.

 

[Spot's Meow]

I don't think I've ever really had a recurring dream. I've definitely had some strange and interesting dreams, but no recurring ones that I can think of.

I did have a weird dream last night though...I was watching Rocky Horror Picture Show, except that it was called the "remastered version." New actors and songs had been added. Janet was now played by Mariah Carey and Brad was her real life husband Nick Cannon. The movie was way too long with all the added stuff. I only got through the wedding scene, which had two new songs, because it was so awful.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I had vivid recurring dreams throughout my childhood, which I now realize were highly significant; it was my mind "speaking" to itself, reassuring me as to how it was directing itself to ensure my survival. I used to dream about a great wave, a tsunami, towering over me on a stormy night as I stood in a tiny alcove on the shore. There was a ladder- rope ladder- leading up, and I would try to climb it but never made it in time. However, as the years went by I slowly got higher and higher with each dream before it hit and washed me away and, eventually, around about age 12, I reached the top and the wave washed underneath me rather than hitting me. At around the same time, my experience of the world around me changed dramatically. My mind...opened. My sensory abilities changed or were enhanced greatly, and I could now detect a great many forms of energy I couldn't previously. My spiritual and creative traits were enhanced considerably, and I went through a personality change of sorts. I had always been empathic and highly imaginative, but also very inflexible, attracted to maths and the sciences and obsessive about order (I hated my things being out of place, I might have had OCD). Now, I was attracted to the study of literature and the arts, and while I still enjoy science enthusiastically, I approach it in a far less rigid fashion. I now know that my mind spent its childhood years so rigid and tight and controlled because if it had let itself experience the full range of sensory input I now experience it would have destroyed me. I needed my mind to be mature and powerful enough to endure it and let it enhance me rather than washing me away. My dreams about the wave demonstrated my progress. It is very comforting, knowing that as a child I was protected by myself in that manner. This probably sounds odd, but I don't believe minds work in a fully linear fashion, and I've suspected that these dreams, which demonstrated my progress and warned me it was not yet time to "open up" my mind to its surroundings, were evidence of my later knowledge of this, as I'm describing now. It gives me comfort that one day, hopefully, I reach the degree of mental sophistication and experience that my childhood self drew upon. My mind simply works like that- it was the same with morality/conscience. I never had to develop a conscience, it was simply...always there. I knew from infanthood what was right and wrong, and if I didn't do as my conscience dictated I would feel terrible. I've always had the sense that my mind was...arranged...rather than developed by its own random progression.

I also had recurring dreams throughout childhood of falling. Even now, those parts of films where the camera drops suddenly to give the impression of falling...wow, the effect on me is amazing. As one of my dreams, about age 12 again, featured me dying after being thrown from a height, and since in my family we occassionally have prophetic dreams (if you don't believe in such things, that's fine, but each to their own experience, eh?) I've always been wary of heights. I think I know what the dream was signifying to me (symbolically, and again my mind informing itself of what needed to be done), and it wasn't my actual death (nor was it prophetic, I'd know if it was), but I've never been fully able to put it aside...

Anyhow, that's my experience of dreams and their significance. I'm an odd fellow, me.

PS: My dreams tend to be very vivid and complex, anyway. I dream in stories- lots of detail, ongoing continuity and plots, if sometimes very random and odd, very realistic at times, others in unusual visual styles, and very strong emotional atmospheres to those which are significant (which tend to be less story-like and shorter).

 

[Laren]

The other night I had a dream where I was wandering around in a strange house, trying to find a place to sleep, but I couldn't since people kept interrupting and disturbing me. Then I woke up. Prophetic dream?

I don't think I have any specific recurring dreams, but then I don't usually remember my dreams. When I do and try to analyze them, I usually recognize a lot of elements that trace back to things I experienced that day.

 

[Geckothan]

I have recurring dreams that take place in schools I used to goto, though they don't usually have anything to do with school, the buildings are just used as settings for completely unrelated things.

 

[Gryffindorian]

Interesting dreams, everyone. Jadzia, I assume you were referring to the secret behind the doors when you said you were able to "uncover a mystery" in your dreams? Most dream interpretation books that I've seen or read are pseudo-science, but I still can't help thinking that, from a psychological perspective, they are manifestations of some aspects of our minds--e.g., fears, insecurities, desires, etc.

One other recurring dream that I forgot to mention has to do with living in the old house in another country. The only difference is that sometimes I see this big STORM on the horizon. The storm comes in the form of a dark cloud or a big tornado (although tornadoes aren't common in my birthplace). Everyone in my family braces for impact. I scurry to try to close all the doors and windows in the house (for all the good that would accomplish in real life) while neighbors do the same. Then as the storm hits the area, I can feel the powerful winds that could basically destroy everything in its path. This happens for only a few minutes, and when it's over, there appears to be no visible damage to the surrounding areas.

Sometimes, while dreaming about the same old house, I appear to wake up at dawn while other family members are asleep. There are times I worry about being late for work (or school, and I don't even go to school) because I seem to count the hours before I "get up" and get ready for work. Everything feels so real, but the difference is that I'm in that old house, not the current house that I live in.

Other dreams have to do with going to school. (I used to take classes at night many years ago). The school appears to be an amalgam of the college campus and the high school that I graduated from, and I see friends, co-workers, and even old classmates. Sometimes I'm late for class. Sometimes I end missing a class and feeling bad about it. Sometimes I see myself skipping a particular because I don't like it. (None of these ever happened IRL.)

 

[Kestra]

Does anyone have dreams that seem connected to RL? Where you dream something, and then encounter it that day? Or have a connection to someone else through your dream? My sister and I have often had dreams that seemed to be connected to one another, and sometimes it's freaked me out a bit.

Like one night, I had a dream about coming home and finding her lying dead in a particular spot in our house, seemingly from an intruder. It was an unusual dream for me, and unsettling.

I related this to her the following day and she told me she had had a dream that same night about being chased through the house by an intruder, and her dream ended up with her dying ... in that exact same spot in our house!

I'm sure there are RL explanations for these things and our minds work in odd ways but sometimes it's unsettling nevertheless.

 

[Goliath]

I have had an anxiety nightmare that crops up from time to time.

In this nightmare, I'm an undergraduate again. It's February, and the school year is three-quarters complete.

Suddenly, I remember that I registered in a course, back in the fall, and have forgotten to attend it all this time.

I'm screwed. there's no way I can catch up, and pass the course. I'm going to get kicked out of the Honours program. Worse--I may flunk out of university.

I vividly remember having this nightmare soon after I graduated. As I struggled up to wakefulness, I was telling myself, "no, no--it's not real--I didn't forget... wait a minute--I've fucking GRADUATED!"

Stupid subconscious.

 

[Gryffindorian]

That's a very scary notion, Kes. I hope it's not a precognitive dream. Then again, the "intruder" might symbolize something else in real life than an actual intruder.

 

[Kestra]

^^^ Well that happened a long time ago and no one's been murdered yet, so I'm not worried about that! I think the connection between our dreams is what has spooked me more at times.

I have had an anxiety nightmare that crops up from time to time.

In this nightmare, I'm an undergraduate again. It's February, and the school year is three-quarters complete.

Suddenly, I remember that I registered in a course, back in the fall, and have forgotten to attend it all this time.

I'm screwed. there's no way I can catch up, and pass the course. I'm going to get kicked out of the Honours program. Worse--I may flunk out of university.

I vividly remember having this nightmare soon after I graduated. As I struggled up to wakefulness, I was telling myself, "no, no--it's not real--I didn't forget... wait a minute--I've fucking GRADUATED!"

Stupid subconscious.

I have dreams like that from time to time! Within my dream, I'll suddenly realize I've completely forgotten I was enrolled in a class, or that we had a final exam, or something completely ridiculous. It's highly stressful!