Hi Donna,
Welcome to the Dream Forum and thank you for posting. Keep checking in as others will add their replies here too.
You've listed some of the most common recurring dream themes. I'll look at one with you and I'm sure other people will give their interpretations, suggestions, questions and personal experiences on the others you've mentioned.
You'll also find plenty of general information on why dreams recur (and much more) on the FAQ page here:
http://www.dream.net.au/library/faq.cfm
Okay, I'll go for the house dreams with the hidey-secret rooms:
If the houses in our dreams are not houses known to us in waking life, they tend to symbolise our mind.
The many 'compartments' of the mind become the many rooms of the dream house. For example, the dark basement of the dream house can represent the unconscious, whereas the higher levels of the house can symbolise the higher levels of the mind (higher intellect, spiritual levels and so on).
The various rooms can reflect the various areas of the mind: the kitchen often symbolising nurturing, the bathroom tending to represent emotional cleansing and so on.
A common house dream is to find an extra room in a house, or a house with many rooms crying out to be used. This dream often comes up when the dreamer is beginning to acknowledge extra room for growth (unused potential).
House-hunting tends to symbolise the dreamer's search for new ways of thinking, being and expressing. In your dreams you are attracted to hidey-secret places, suggesting that you have a desire for more privacy or a need to hide from some aspects of life ... or from some aspects of yourself.
Our dreams show us where we're at. They are reflections, not judgements.
Your hidey-secret places dream could be explored to see why you feel drawn towards secrecy, privacy or hiding from something in your waking life. This is a process you can explore yourself. The more detailed your dream report is, the more likely an interpreter can help you to discover the motivations behind the hidey-secrets within the dream itself.
Anyway - that's a starting point, Donna. Over to others ...
Jane Anderson |