Chapter 10

Recurring Dreams or Themes

Why do dreams recur? If our dreams give us information about our deeper selves, shouldn’t they disappear once the message has been delivered?

According to the Talmud, "A dream that is not understood, is like a letter not opened."

In our present world, where we have lost touch with the language of our dreams, the postman always knocks twice, thrice … or more, until we finally understand.

A dream message may slowly trickle through at a deep unconscious level, but until recognition of the dream’s meaning percolates through into our waking consciousness, we make minimal progress. If an important issue repeatedly comes up for us in waking life, but remains unresolved, it will continue to be addressed in our dreams.

Often, the dream seems to grow in impatience as time passes, becoming more insistently graphic or exaggerated. What we once regarded as a recurring dream may grow to become a recurring nightmare, causing us to wake in a sweat of fear and panic. For others, the dream trudges itself out in regular cycles, as they go round and round in never-ending circles, having the dream, doing nothing about it, facing the same issues in the same old (obviously unsuccessful) way, having the dream, doing nothing about it, facing the … How do we break the pattern and learn?

Many people find their recurring dreams are more recurring themes than exact word for word, scene by scene repetitions. These dreams can be easier to crack, to begin to understand once you focus on what the recurring dreams have in common. Often this will either be a precise symbol (a tidal wave, for example), or a feeling (such as loss).

The examples in this chapter illustrate some of the most common recurring themes and explain what they often mean. Check these categories against your own recurring dreams.

Chase and Escape Themes

Run and Hide from a Pursuer

We often run away from the things in life that we fear, and can spend much of our lives in avoidance and escape rather than confronting our fears and resolving them. Isabelle has been running for 15 years, and it is her sense of relief on waking to find the experience was ‘only a dream’ that prevents her from taking the dream message seriously. She wakes as if hearing her mother’s voice from the past, stroking her forehead and assuring her, ‘Don’t be silly, it’s only a dream.’ So, if it’s ‘only a dream’, why has it returned for 15 years to haunt and frighten her?

Tidal waves found their way into 19.4% of the survey dreamers’ dreams over the last two years, while 5.6% of these people dreamed of tidal waves more than any other kind of water situation.

Water represents our emotions, and the ocean itself can symbolise our unconscious self, which is the home of our deepest-seated emotional conditioning. A dream tidal wave therefore conjures up an enormous, overwhelming, inevitable wave of emotion that threatens to knock you flat. This type of recurring dream tends to suggest the dreamer is ignoring an emotional issue in his waking life. He keeps this issue dammed up deep inside, refusing to express his feelings by allowing them to surface and flow out. There comes a point where the pressure of unexpressed emotion becomes too great, regardless of the dreamer’s attempt to hold it back. The dream tidal wave symbolises this inevitable, mounting pressure.

Finding yourself ecstatically floating on a tidal wave, however, may reflect awareness of the freedom which is released through expressing your feelings. Facing a tidal wave in a dream usually results in the wave dissipating, paralleling a similar empowerment in waking life and signalling an end to this recurring dream theme.

Lost and Found

We spend much of our lives looking for what we feel we have lost or left behind or cannot find.

In dreams we often travel endlessly, through streets, roads, highways, towns, cities even foreign countries, sometimes with ease, but sometimes losing our sense of direction altogether. These dreams reflect our individual journeys through life. There are times when we know exactly where we want to be, but get lost or can’t find the way, like Lesley. As she says herself, ‘I can see where I want to be, but I cannot get there.’ Lesley’s dream reflects her frustration at, perhaps, being so near, but so far.

To dream of a baby or child generally either refers to some new (baby) project or idea which you are trying to ‘foster’, or is symbolic of your ‘inner child’, that tender, growing part of yourself which still needs attention, love, care and nurturing. Babies or children can also symbolise parts of yourself that you ‘left behind’ at the age represented: parts that you need to embrace, heal and bring into the present.

Sometimes the prospect of finding or discovering a lost part of yourself, or a memory, is scary and threatening. We may dream-picture lost skills, opportunities, emotions or past times as ‘dead and gone’. We may even have been guilty of the murder. It is common to go through a dream with that haunting suspicion that you have killed something which has remained dead and buried for years, but which is now threatening to be discovered:

A woman in a dream can symbolise the female side of ourselves (Yin): that creative, nurturing, intuitional, expressive aspect which reflects our inner world. Joseph has possibly killed off this aspect of himself at some time in the past. Although he has not consciously noticed the lack it seems he is now about to be confronted by the loss of these qualities from his life. The emphasis on water in this dream, particularly storm water, suggests stormy emotional times are ahead, and these circumstances are likely to confront him with this loss.

Restrictions and Hesitations

Would you believe that a recurring dream involving being late for everything is usually the province of very successful people, or, at least, people who are always on time for their waking life appointments? These dreams can hinge on anxiety born of being overworked and under pressure to perform and run to deadlines. The greatest fear of such people is often failure, and it can be that very fear of failure which urges them ever onward to achieve success in the eyes of the world.

This type of dream also belongs to those who feel constantly under pressure of time, perhaps not so much in work, but in terms of feeling that life is running away from them and that time is running out. On the surface, they would like to achieve more, but something always holds them up. Unconsciously they are likely to be loading their timetable in one area of life to avoid something they fear facing in another area of their life (the very area they claim they wish to devote more time to!)

Recurring dreams of going upstairs often symbolise ascending to the higher mind, intellect or higher consciousness. Lainey, like others who share this common recurring dream, wants to understand more about her life from a higher point of view, but hesitates. The door is the gateway from one place to another: an opportunity.

Since water usually represents emotions, dirty unclear water tends to symbolise unclear emotions. Stella is perhaps having difficulty getting in touch with murky emotional areas of her life.

Meaning:
Swimming on top of the water can show your hesitation to really get into difficult emotional areas. You may be ‘skimming the surface’ of an issue, for example.

Urine, being water (emotions), can be seen as waste or toxic emotions. We all need time and privacy to process and let go of our emotions, and Cassie obviously feels she doesn’t have this. A full bladder can cause a dream like this, with the hesitation about relieving yourself stemming from the fact that you know you are in bed and would end up with a wet mattress! However, people frequently wake themselves up from such a dream, get out of bed, go to the toilet … only to find that there was no need.

Overburdened and Stressed

This can be a variation on the ‘late for everything’ dream described earlier in this chapter, but it usually belongs more to those who become overburdened by the demands of others. Michealla is a natural therapist who is much in demand both by her clients for her healing skills, and also by her young family. People are dependent on Michealla to provide and the dream shows her feelings of inadequacy when she occasionally finds she cannot nurture and feed everyone. As a result, she is unable to sustain and nourish her own needs either. She might ask what she is unconsciously avoiding within herself through choosing to take on everyone else’s burdens.

Cars are often today’s symbol for the way we go about our life journeys. Seeker travelled his working journey in expensive style indicating the extravagant approach he continued to take in his business even though he was aware, in his dreams, of the threatening storm clouds ahead. His dream showed that hope alone would not be sufficient to get him through the storm, and that his expensive all-risks attitude would cause him to skid and crash, which he did, all the slippery slope way to bankruptcy. If Seeker had fully comprehended the message in this recurring dream, he could have perhaps pulled back on his expenditure and got out of his business without the crash.

Back to the Past

Recurring dreams set in places or houses we have lived in before generally compare how we were then to how we are now. They give a time scale, or may even pinpoint a past event such as the birth of a particular attitude or behavioural response, or the loss of an aspect of the self.

Lesley’s experience of room sizes possibly reflects her feelings at the time. Walls that seem to close in leaving only a small exit indicate the feeling of oppression that she must have felt in those days, and her perception of being trapped, with only a small chance of escape to the outside. When her rooms are large, this may indicate the room for potential growth or enlargement that was there at the time (whether she took advantage of it or not). Alternatively it may be the dream’s way of emphasising and drawing attention to the room, in the same way that dreams will produce huge birds or oversized spiders and so on just to make sure we don’t forget them!

Past Traumas

Specific events and traumas such as incest or violence may be the cause of recurring dreams or nightmares, but it is easy to translate a dream too literally and jump to conclusions about terrible things which happened in your past, when, all along, the dream was symbolic of something else. Nevertheless, this aspect of dreaming of the past is important, and if you feel a dream is trying to focus your attention on a blocked trauma, you would be wise to seek professional counselling to guide you through your interpretations and discoveries.

Attackers and Presences

This terrifying dream experience is very common, right down to the dreamer’s feelings that the presence is Death. While presences and twilight experiences are addressed later in this book, we also dream of presences in a symbolic way. Our emotions and feelings are accentuated in dreams, and since most dreams are also visual, we seek pictures or symbols to represent those powerful feelings. The very word ‘presence’ conjures up a feeling that is so close it sticks to the bones, a feeling that we cannot escape, that pervades the air. Presences in dreams may be good or bad, angelic or evil, god-like or demon. They may be inescapable because they are indeed a part of ourselves, our own feelings which we disown, preferring to see them as separate from ourselves and belonging to some other entity or presence. Polly may have an overwhelming sense of mortality and fear of death, which lingers and will not dissipate and leave her in peace.

Another recurring theme is that of being under attack, either in a house, like Evelyn, or in a war or siege of some kind. This usually indicates the dreamer is feeling unsafe and vulnerable to attack from others, mentally, spiritually or physically. Evelyn describes her attackers as ‘extremists’, suggesting, simply from her choice of words, that she fears extremist points of view. She may be dealing with extremists in her waking life, or she may be fearful of her own growing extreme attitudes. Such dreams frequently point to inner conflict and confusion which robs the dreamer of a sense of stability and confidence, leaving her feeling ‘under attack’ from outsiders.

Alison’s description of finally facing up to her fears and coming to terms with them is classic. The sense of absolutely knowing that in confronting an issue, even in a dream, she had robbed it of its power to harm her was totally freeing, not only in her dream state but also in her life. She had finally ‘come to grips’ with both the snake and the fear. She is healed.

Physical Warnings

There is great practical potential in learning to recognise the onset of recurring physical symptoms through their preceding recurring dreams. Further examples are given throughout the book.

Potential and Progress

Not all recurring dreams are bad, let alone nightmares. The survey dreamers were asked what feelings their recurring dreams gave them. These ranged from fear, worry, confusion, loss, panic, frustration, claustrophobia, dissatisfaction and anguish, to tranquility, great love, happiness, pleasure, mystery, magic, relief, serenity, warmth, achievement, exploration and resolution.

A dream house is often symbolic of the mind. In Hannah’s own words, she has worked hard to create her present mental attitude and to develop her creative skills.

As a university student I had endless dreams of going to the station and buying a ticket, only to see the train departing without me. (I didn’t travel by train in those days.) On the night before I sat my Finals, I dreamed I caught the train. I sat back in the luxuriously padded carriage seat, looked at the man sitting opposite me, and laughed myself awake!
(Jane Anderson)

This marked both the end of that recurring dream and the end of one phase of ‘training’ (studying as an undergraduate) and the beginning of the next (the rest of my life). Instead of being ‘stuck at the station’ I had earned a new freedom: a new journey meeting the outer world (man) face to face.

Practicalities

The most obvious way to get rid of undesirable recurring dreams or nightmares is to understand their meaning through interpretation, although if you share one of the common dreams described here, you may be well on the way to seeing yourself and your attitudes in a different light. Realise that these were given as general guidelines only, and that each dreamer’s situation is individual. Remember also that interpretation alone is not enough, and that you need to act on your new understanding to make the changes in your life which bring personal growth and relief from the old recurring dreams.

Keep a record of the dates of your recurring dreams, and write down any events, feelings, arguments or issues that came up in the day or so before the dream. Then note the same for the day or two after the dream. Once you have recorded this information over several repeats of your dream, you will begin to see a pattern in your waking life which is associated with the dreams. It may be that the preceding days show tension or the recurrence of an issue which the dream then addresses. It is then easier to relate the interpretation of the dream to the problem itself.

It is possible to program yourself so that next time you have that recurring dream you will turn around and face your enemy, grab that snake, take that other road, or whatever dream action you feel might conquer a fear, or explore a new facet of your inner self. Simply spend time during the day visualising the normal course of your dream and then seeing yourself take this new action. Soon this habitual vision will happen in the actual dream too, often putting an end to the recurring series. This visualisation process will also change your waking life attitudes in a beneficial way.

It is better to let children sleep through a bad dream so that they can get closer to the end of the ‘story’, to experience what the dream is telling them. They will always awaken if it gets too much to bear. Take steps not to dismiss the dream. Hold the child close to give comfort and security, and encourage her to tell you as much about the dream as she can. Alternatively ask her to draw, paint or model something from the dream. A tiny child may pick a colour that seems to be ‘like the dream’, or may even dress up or act out a character from her nightmare. Children are more tuned to an innate understanding of their dreams which becomes clearer to them as they relive their dreams through these methods. In a safe, loving environment she can come to terms with the emotions and feelings brought up by her dream, and act to ‘kill the demon’ by acknowledging it. She can playact beyond the story-line of the dream and slay her dragon, throw magic potion on the witch, or whatever it takes to regain control.

Adults can do the same! What we can role-play and experience in drama, visualisation, paint or clay, we can take forward and apply in ‘real’ life.