The idea that dreams have hidden meanings in their content was a popular component of Freudian dream theory
But, there is little evidence to support the idea that dreams with the same content or themes have the same meaning for everyone. However, examining what your dreams mean to you personally can still be meaningful, particularly in a therapeutic context.
Many experts theorize that these dreams may be a way to work through unmet needs or process trauma. It certainly seems to be true that individuals under more psychological stress tend to have more negative recurring dreams.
Recurring Dreams and Mental Health Disorders
Most people experience recurring dreams from time to time but they can also be symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). People who experience these disorders tend to have other significant symptoms as well.
For people living with PTSD, the recurring dreams they have tend to involve or be linked in some way to the trauma that caused their PTSD.
Recurring Dreams and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
For individuals with Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) it is believed that recurring may be caused by nocturnal seizures or the effect of REM sleep on the temporal lobe. People who have TLE tend to have recurring dreams that are intensely frightening, extremely vivid, and may produce strong emotions or feelings of dread. These dreams often begin soon after a person’s first seizure and are less common in people undergoing successful treatment.
Coping With or Stopping Recurring Dreams
Although they may be a normal part of sleep for many people, recurring dreams that provoke negative emotions can be deeply upsetting and difficult to live with.
Other than discussing your dreams in counselling, there are other strategies that you can try to see if they may help you to cope more effectively with recurring dreams. These include:
- Exercise: People who exercise regularly have better emotional resilience and find it easier to cope with stressful situations. Exercising regularly also appears to improve sleep quality and duration.
- Relaxation Exercises: Breathing exercises, meditation, and guided visualizations are a few of the relaxation exercises that have been shown to help reduce stress. These exercises can also be part of your nightly sleep routine.
- Maintaining Good Sleep Hygiene: Good sleep habits and a relaxing nightly routine might make it easier for you to sleep properly, even when you are concerned about recurring dreams. Poor sleep can worsen anxiety and stress, so focusing on improving your sleep can also improve your mood.
Freud
According to Freud, dreams represent a form of wish fulfilment and hold the key to a person’s desires. He indicated that the subject of a person’s dreams stems from reality, but dreams are not identical to waking life and cannot be taken at face value. Instead, the underlying meaning of a dream is hidden in a person’s unconscious mind, the thoughts and feelings that lay outside of their conscious awareness.
Jung
Carl Jung was a contemporary of Freud and was greatly influenced by Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. But as Jung matured, his thoughts on dream interpretation began to diverge from Freud’s.
Jung believed people experience different types of dreams that can be viewed through the lens of “compensation.” According to his theory of compensation, dreams are a mechanism that allow the unconscious mind to fully develop or balance parts that are in conflict with one another.
Hall
Psychologist Calvin S. Hall theorized in the 1950’s that dreams were images that represent a person’s thoughts or ideas. Hall proposed that dreams are akin to plays or enactments based on the ideas a person has about themselves, other people, conflicts, impulses and urges, and their external environment.
Hall suggested that dream interpretation could help a person better understand themselves as well as to inform their behaviour in daily life.
Domhoff
William Domhoff’s career spanned from the 1960s to the publication of The Emergence of Dreaming in 2018 and combined the analysis of dream content with brain imaging techniques and electroencephalogram (EEG) .
According to Domhoff’s research, dreaming is similar to the daydreams most people experience in waking life. His work suggests that dreams do not serve a specific function and are most likely a by-product of the way the brain works.
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Modern Theories
The complex theories developed by early pioneers of dream interpretation have largely been replaced by a neuroscience-focused approach.
- Emotional Processing: One prominent theory suggests that the contents of a dream may help the dreamer process difficult life experiences. In particular, the vivid dreams of REM sleep may help the brain process waking experiences and regulate emotions.
- Memory Consolidation: Dreaming may also play an important role in forming new memories. This theory asserts that dreams are a key part of the nervous system process that converts short-term memories formed during the day into long-term memories.
- Performance and Creativity: According to the overfitted brain hypothesis, the typical experiences of daily life do not prepare the brain for unexpected events. Dreams offer people a hallucinatory narrative that serves to improve cognitive performance and boost creativity during waking hours.
Common Dreams and Possible Meanings
Individual personality and interests can influence the narratives of a person’s dreams. However, certain consistent themes are known to arise in dreams for many different people.
Teeth Falling Out
Dreams about teeth falling out are one of the most common dream narratives. Numerous theories have been proposed to explain the deeper significance of dreams involving teeth.
The ancient Greek Artemidorus believed these dreams could be interpreted based on which specific tooth or teeth a dreamer loses. The early twentieth-century psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud theorized that dreams about teeth had a sexual basis. Other experts have proposed that this type of dream represents anxiety around ageing.
Recent research suggests that dental irritation from tension in the teeth, jaw, or gums while sleeping may contribute to dreams about teeth.
Sex and Cheating
Dream narratives that include sexual content are frequently reported, with more than 70% of people experiencing dreams about sex. These types of dreams may mirror a person’s feelings about sex and sexual behaviour including unsatisfied desires.
A similar topic that finds its way into people’s dreams is infidelity. One study found that dreaming about a cheating partner may be linked to low levels of intimacy or feelings of jealousy in a relationship.
Natural Disasters
Dreams about natural disasters may involve a flood, fire, earthquake, or apocalyptic narrative.
Natural disaster dreams are a type of nightmare and may be related to the traumatic events and stressors of a person’s lived experience. People affected by natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes may experience feelings of depression, anxiety, or fear about the storm in the form of nightmares.
Falling
The feeling of falling through the air while dreaming is a frequent theme that has emerged from dream research.
Falling is a common sensation people experience before a hypnic jerk. Hypnic jerks are involuntary lurches that can involve a part of the body or the body as a whole.
Dreaming of a Previous Home
If we subscribe to the theory that everything in our dreams is symbolic of some part of us and/or some part of our life, then these dreams are not really about the house but rather who you were when you lived there. Therefore we might understand these dreams as signifying that there is some part of you that needs your attention and focus right now. Perhaps there is something from back then that you either need to bring into your current life or that you need to leave in the past.
We can understand more by looking in detail at what happens in the dream and even the rooms that are focused on. What do those rooms represent for you? What happened there?
What therefore might these dreams be trying to tell you? E.g. ‘This old part of you is back. Continue to do x and enjoy it. Don’t stop like you did before.’
- How would you describe yourself and your life when you lived in that house?
- Is there anything in your current life that seems or feels similar to back then? If so, do you need to nurture that or move on from it?
- How are you feeling in the dream? What in your current life causes you to feel the same way?
- Is there any particular room that your dream seems to focus more on? If so, what was that room typically used for? e.g. a bathroom is used to clean and relieve yourself – what from back then do you need to clean and relieve yourself of? A kitchen is used to prepare, eat and feed others – is there anything from back then you are hungry for now?