Therapists Explain 11 Recurring Dreams to Never Ignore (2023)

FAQs

What are recurring dreams trying to tell you? ›

Experiencing recurring dreams may point at underlying issues regardless of the dream's content. Adults who experience frequent recurring dreams tend to have worse psychological health than those who do not, and many experts theorize that these dreams may be a way to work through unmet needs or process trauma.

While some things are universal, dreams can be complex and reflect different people's experiences and the culture and countries they come from. A therapist can help interpret dreams by helping you identify the things and analyzing them for their connection to each other and your subconscious.

Gestalt therapists believe that dreams are existential messages we send to ourselves. These messages are actively explored to bring dream content into a person's actual life. A major technique used in Gestalt dream analysis is the “Take the Part of” technique.

Behavioral psychologists focus on how an individual's behavior impacts their dreams and the behavior they exhibit within their dreams. Humanistic psychologists see dreams as reflections of the self and how the individual deals with their circumstances.

Falling. Falling is the most common recurring dream people have, according to a 2022 survey of 2,007 Americans conducted by mattress and sleep product company, Amerisleep.

Unresolved issues or conflict

These persistent dreams often occur during our REM sleep cycle, which has long been linked to our body and brain's emotional processing and memory production — unresolved issues and emotional distress are thus usually processed during this time in the form of a recurrent dream.

Scientists and psychologists, old and new, tell us that dreams reveal critical aspects about ourselves. Dreams are a reflection of your recent state of mind, future possibilities, and changes that you have experienced.

Dreams often reflect what we see and feel while we're awake, so after a traumatic experience it's common to have nightmares and anxiety dreams. The content of these disturbed dreams often incorporates similar feelings and sensations to those experienced during the trauma.

Not only do some of our best and most creative ideas come to us during the night, dreams also make a key impact on our mental health. Several studies in recent years have highlighted the connection between dreams and how we feel when we're awake.

Work in oneirology overlaps with neurology and can vary from quantifying dreams, to analyzing brain waves during dreaming, to studying the effects of drugs and neurotransmitters on sleeping or dreaming.

What psychologist believed dreams have hidden messages? ›

By uncovering the hidden meaning of dreams, Freud believed that people could better understand their problems and resolve the issues that create difficulties in their lives. In Freud's psychoanalytic interpretation, dreams center on wish fulfillment.

According to its survey, the two most frequently reported nightmares were falling and being chased. More than 50% of survey respondents also reported frequently having nightmares about death, feeling lost, and feeling trapped.

Dreams have a purpose but it may not be to send us messages about self-improvement or the future, as many believe. Instead, many researchers now believe that dreaming mediates memory consolidation and mood regulation, a process a little like overnight therapy.

There are three major theories: the psychodynamic theory of dreaming, the physiological theory of dreaming, and the cognitive theory. The physiological theories of dreaming discuss how the brain processes information, and how it manifests as a dream.

Most experts believe that lucid dreams are the rarest type of dreams. While dreaming, you are conscious that you are dreaming but you keep on dreaming. According to researchers, 55 percent of people experience these types of dreams at least one time in their life.

Frequent, vivid dreams may be related to stress, medications, sleep disorders, or early pregnancy. While we think of sleep as a time for recharging the body, the brain is actually quite active during sleep — dreaming. Our dreams can be soothing or scary, mysterious or helpful, and realistic or fantastical.

Joseph, the Dream Interpreter. The dreams of Joseph, the butler and the baker, and then Pharaoh, constitute the Bible's most prominent dream series. There are three sets of two dreams each. Joseph's second dream essentially repeats his first, and Pharaoh's dreams are identical to each other.

What does it mean when you wake up from a dream and go back to the same dream? The science of dreams shows that recurring dreams may reflect unresolved conflicts in the dreamer's life. Recurring dreams often occur during times of stress, or over long periods of time, sometimes several years or even a lifetime.

These repetitive dreams are called recurring dreams. Believe it or not it is extremely common. Recurrent dreams occur between 60 percent and 75 percent of adults and more often in women than men.

How do I stop repetitive dreams? ›

Maladaptive daydreaming usually occurs as a coping mechanism in response to trauma, abuse or loneliness. Sufferers create a complex inner world which they escape to in times of distress by daydreaming for hours.

Domhoff also emphasized that while dreams can have meaning, his research suggests they aren't symbolic. During sleep, people don't appear to be able to access the parts of the brain involved with understanding or generating metaphors, he said.

Dreams May Reflect the Unconscious

Sigmund Freud's theory of dreams suggests that dreams represent unconscious desires, thoughts, wish fulfillment, and motivations. 4 According to Freud, people are driven by repressed and unconscious longings, such as aggressive and sexual instincts.

People with PTSD often experience nightmares or anxiety-provoking dreams that replay the traumatizing event or represent major threats and themes associated with it. The characteristics of these dreams vary based on the trauma experienced.

Nightmares are a feature of PTSD. Even general nightmares can feel life-threatening, but with PTSD, they are actually tied to an existing trauma that happened in the near or far past. Replaying traumatic events over and over can cause a struggle for someone to cope.

Nightmares, dreams and other sleep disturbances are a common symptom of complex trauma with nightmares recognised as a principal feature of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The treatment of nightmares not only alleviates those symptoms but is shown to help reduce PTSD symptoms in general.

Since the 1900 publication of Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, dream interpretation has been a widely used therapeutic technique in psychoanalysis.

Yes, depressed people tend to dream more. In fact, one study found that people who are depressed can dream up to three times more than people who are not depressed.

Anxiety dreams tend to occur in rapid eye movement sleep, and usual themes involve incomplete tasks, embarrassment, falling, getting in to legal or financial trouble, failed pursuits and being pursued by another, often an unrealistic entity but other human beings can also be the pursuer.

What do you call a person who interprets dreams? ›

oneirocritic. / (əʊˌnaɪərəʊˈkrɪtɪk) / noun. a person who interprets dreams.

Noun. oneirophobia (uncountable) The fear of dreams.

In the clinical realm, Image Rehearsal Therapy (IRT) is used with dream work to help ameliorate symptoms of PTSD and night terrors. In short, the goal is to rewrite the nightmares story. With the help of a therapist, you write down the unpleasant aspects of the dream and alter the content to something pleasant.

"People tend to think that dreams reveal hidden emotions and beliefs and they often find them to be more meaningful than thoughts they might have when they are awake," Morewedge tells WebMD. "But we also found that people don't attribute equal meaning to all dreams."

Freud therefore identified two types of dreams: manifest dream and latent dream. He stated that the latent dream is the real dream, and the goal of dream interpretation is to reveal it.

Correct answer:

The most pervasive theory of dreaming is that dreams are a result of electrical impulses in our brains that occur only while we sleep.

Results: Pharmacological agents affecting the neurotransmitters norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine are clearly associated with patient reports of nightmares. Agents affecting immunological response to infectious disease are likely to induce nightmares in some patients.

Nightmares about falling were followed closely by dreams about being chased (more than 63 percent). Other distressing nightmares included death (roughly 55 percent), feeling lost (almost 54 percent), feeling trapped (52 percent), and being attacked (nearly 50 percent).

Turns out that no matter where you live in the U.S., the most prevalent dreams are the same. Falling is the No. 1 dream everywhere except for the Midwest, where it ranks No. 2.

If you can seek out a qualified dream therapist, then they will be able to analyze your dreams for you to help determine certain things about your life. Your dreams are potential indicators of certain types of stress in your life, as well as how your brain is processing and dealing with life.

Can therapists Analyse dreams? ›

Dream therapy is a term used to describe a therapy technique where dreams, especially recurring dreams, are explored, interpreted, and analyzed to help an individual understand the underlying stressors of their life.

Some of the most common dream themes are about: falling. being chased. dying.

Scientists and psychologists, old and new, tell us that dreams reveal critical aspects about ourselves. Dreams are a reflection of your recent state of mind, future possibilities, and changes that you have experienced.

Jung saw dreams as the psyche's attempt to communicate important things to the individual, and he valued them highly, perhaps above all else, as a way of knowing what was really going on. Dreams are also an important part of the development of the personality – a process that he called individuation.

Experiencing recurring dreams may point at underlying issues regardless of the dream's content. Adults who experience frequent recurring dreams tend to have worse psychological health than those who do not, and many experts theorize that these dreams may be a way to work through unmet needs or process trauma.

One treatment option is psychodynamic psychotherapy, in which patients meet regularly with a therapist to discuss their nightmares and consider any emotional problems that might be causing them.

Recount your dreams.

If you're having trouble coming up with topics to discuss in therapy, look no further than your dreams. Lots of people are having vivid, weird pandemic dreams, and even if you don't regularly look at dreams as windows into your psyche, they're at least effective conversation starters.

EMDR is proven effective for treating nightmares

EMDR treatment has been proven effective in reducing the frequency and intensity of PTSD symptoms, including nightmares because it can help your brain process your traumatic memories efficiently and effectively.

Other things to avoid during a therapy session include: asking about other confidential conversations with other clients; showcasing violent emotions; or implying any romantic or sexual interest in your therapist. The number one job of a therapist is to keep you safe and protect their clients' privacy.

What should you not say in a therapist? ›

In general, therapists are required to keep everything you say in confidence except for the following situations: planned suicide intent. planned violence towards others. past, present, or planned child abuse.