Decoding recurring dreams from a psychological perspective

Dreaming of a previous dream, also known as a recurring dream, is a fairly common phenomenon. 2 out of 3 people report experiencing this phenomenon. These dreams not only have the same theme, but can repeat all the details from night to night.

They find themselves being chased by a stranger, facing a storm, getting naked in public or simply forgetting to take an exam are the most common scenarios. Repeated dreams mostly bring about negative emotions such as fear, anger, sadness, and guilt.

But there are also some recurring dreams that are quite positive, even bringing a sense of euphoria such as dreaming that your house has a secret room, some people dream of flying or dreams related to love. sex.

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But where do recurring dreams come from? Dream scientists say that repeated dreams often reflect unresolved conflicts in the dreamer's real life.

They often appear during times of stress. While some dreams may repeat only a few times, some people are faced with recurring dreams for several years from when they were a child to adulthood, or even for the rest of their lives. remaining when they are old and old.

Unresolved real-life conflicts

Scientists have long thought that dreams are a mechanism that helps us regulate our emotions and adapt to stressful daytime events. The emotions you experience in your dream can help you process a painful or difficult event that you are experiencing in real life.

So, in the case of recurring dreams, its content could represent an unsuccessful attempt to solve this difficulty. Many theories agree that recurring dreams are related to unresolved difficulties or conflicts in the dreamer's real life.

Evidence is that recurring dreams often appear when they are going through a period of psychological instability, have symptoms of anxiety and depression. Dreams tend to repeat in stressful situations and end when someone has resolved their personal conflict.

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Interestingly, recurring dreams often metaphorically reflect the dreamer's anxiety. For example, someone who has recently suffered a trauma such as sexual abuse often dreams of a tsunami. This is an example of a typical metaphor representing feelings of helplessness, panic, or extreme fear.

Similarly, a person who has just experienced feelings of shame often dreams of being completely naked in public. A person who is stressed with a new project may dream of being a high school student again and preparing for an exam. People who have just experienced failure will dream that they fail college or interview.

These metaphorical scenarios often work to help us resolve or "digest" the emotional conflicts of the dreamer in real life. Therefore, even though the circumstances you are experiencing are different, if they trigger the same emotions you will likely experience the same dream again.

The steps of the dream repeat

William Domhoff, an American psychologist, said that recurring dreams do not necessarily repeat the entire content or details of the inner story. The most important thing that these dreams share is the dominant emotion, which revolves around the problem that the dreamer has not yet solved in life.

For example, during the stressful phase of a new project, you may frequently dream about being late to a deadline. But the dream will metaphorize your anxiety into many situations, such as you will dream that you are late for the train, arrive late for the exam, get lost, or are chased by a stranger or evil beast. …

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In some situations, the repetition lies not in the event, but in the character. You may meet the same person many times in different dreams. Or it is also possible to dream of an object appearing many times in many situations.

There are only a handful of dreams in which every detail and content of the story is repeated in the same way night after night. Often these are extremely strong psychological traumas that affect the dreamer, such as when they have to witness the very heartbreaking death of a loved one.

Domhoff says the degree of repetition of each dream reflects the dreamer's attempts to deal with emotions. The most intense repetition shows that they are really struggling in life. As repetition fades into increasingly faint metaphors, it shows signs of an improving state of mind.

Physiological phenomena behind repeating dreams

There's a mystery, though: If everyone's feelings and problems are different, why do we sometimes dream of the same theme in our dreams over and over again? One possible explanation is cultural background.

Every day we come into contact with and share a lot of current events, such as wars, epidemics, romantic novels or zombie-themed movies, etc. These cultural products encode a lot of emotions. situations that your brain can use to create dreams.

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For example, many people share a recurring dream most commonly when they find themselves being chased. The chase situation provides a lot of space to express the feelings of anxiety, fear, and nervousness that we all experience when we are stressed.

Some other dream themes can be partly explained by physiological phenomena that take place during sleep. A 2018 study by Israeli scientists found that many people dream of breaking their teeth, simply because they grind their teeth while sleeping.

When we sleep, the brain is not completely turned off, it continues to register external and internal signals in your body. Your hearing, touch, and even sight continue to register stimuli.

It means that other common dream themes, such as not being able to find a toilet or being naked in the street, could actually stem from the fact that you are really upset to go to the bathroom, or that you are not sleeping. dress or wear clothes that are too loose.

Some of the other physiological phenomena that characterize REM sleep, in which your motor nervous system is turned off - a function that keeps you from sleepwalking - can also cause similar dream themes between multiple people, especially dreams with sleep paralysis or in which the dreamer is paralyzed.

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Similarly, some researchers have suggested that the flying dream, in which you see yourself able to fly, is related to the vestibular system - the area that controls balance in your ears - being disturbed. have trouble. Dreaming of falling off a building or an abyss is basically the same thing.

Of course, these feelings are not enough to explain the recurrence of these dreams in some people and their sudden appearance during times of stress, but they can play an important role in building the most typical dreams of all of us.

Break out of loops

As mentioned, recurring dreams often bring negative emotions to the dreamer. Having a strange dream over and over can be confusing at times. So do scientists have a way to help us get out of these loops?

A simple but quite effective therapy is to rewrite your dreams. You can visualize the nightmare and write it down in your journal while you are awake. But when writing it down, intentionally change details that you don't want to repeat again, making your version of your dream brighter and more positive. Many people have used this method and have had success.

Others may try remedies to trigger lucid dreams, or lucid dreams. Lucid dreams are dreams in which you know you are dreaming and are able to control yourself. This ability allows you to make repeated dream decisions and have the ability to choose what happens next instead of an old scenario.

However, one thing you need to know is that not all recurring dreams are bad. They may even be useful to some extent. Carefully analyze your recurring dream, see if it is a metaphor for any problem in your real life?

Paying attention to recurring elements in dreams can help you understand yourself better and deal with life's torments. It can be a guide from the unconscious, until you get rid of the difficulty the dream will no longer repeat.

Micah Soto

Update 29 August 2021