Recurring Dreams: Why They Happen and What They Mean
Ever been on a similar dream journey over and over?
Many of us have experienced the same pattern repeating again and again in our dreams. Maybe you’re constantly being chased, trying to find something, getting lost or forgetting something important.
What are they?
Recurring dreams are not always identical, more commonly they contain one or more repeating elements with some variations to previous dreams. For example, a person dreaming of being late, may be late in every dream but perhaps the location changes or the people are different.
Even though the scenario can change, the emotional undertone tends to stay the same. In the above example, being late may always trigger the same feelings of shame and frustration for the dreamer. This gives us the biggest clue as to what the dream is trying to bring to our awareness.
Why do we have them?
From a psychological perspective, recurring dreams can highlight unresolved emotional material that has not yet been integrated into conscious awareness. They often occur more frequently during periods of stress, transition or healing, or when something in the psyche is seeking resolution or expression. They can repeat for weeks, months, years or even decades until the particular feeling, experience or belief that the dream is showing you, has been fully brought into consciousness and processed.
Case Study: Public bathroom recurring dream
In this example, the dreamer had a recurring dream over the period of about 20 years where she was constantly trying to find a public bathroom or use a public toilet. The dream was never identical but always contained these elements. Sometimes the dreamer couldn’t find a bathroom, other times she found one, but it was filthy and unusable, or the locks or flusher were broken. Oftentimes, people would burst into the cubicle or be watching through gaps or holes in the door, invading her privacy.
Through experiential dreamwork, the dreamer was able to identify underlying and repeating emotions of frustration and lack of control. It was discovered that the ‘toilet’ itself was a metaphor for basic needs, not literally needing the bathroom, but basic needs in relationships and the lack of privacy and boundaries the dreamer had when it came to interacting with people in public, or social and workplace settings.
Before this discovery, the dreamer had no idea what the dreams had meant or that they were pointing to something that needed to be resolved in life. Once the core issue became conscious, the dreamer was able to start bringing much more awareness into her social relationships and started advocating for herself and creating boundaries in real life, especially with coworkers, friendships and wider social groups.
With these new boundaries, 20 years of the same dream pattern started to change and evolve.
After making these changes in real life, the dreamer started noticing that her dream patterns were changing too. The new dreams saw the dreamer speaking up and saying “no, you can’t come in here” or pushing up against the bathroom door to stop people from invading her privacy. It gave the dreamer much confidence and empowerment to know that she did in fact have control, and that her needs are important.
This is a great example of how working with your dreams can uncover important messages from the subconscious, find deep hidden beliefs, and also tracking healing progress to see if the new behaviours and thought processes are being fully integrated.
So, what is dream therapy?
In embodied experiential dreamwork (EED) we don’t just analyse dreams, we feel them. We understand that dreams are not random or meaningless, they are lived experiences. Every image, symbol or expression carries a physical sensation which through dreamwork, we begin to sense and embody. In this way, dreams are like puzzle pieces which allow us to bridge the gap in the psyche between explicit and implicit memory (conscious and unconscious learnings).
How can this help in real life?
Just like the previous example where the dreamer gained self-advocacy, confidence and boundaries in her relationships, dreams enable us to embody and integrate the emotional process that we are being asked to complete, which has a direct effect on whatever real-life issue that we are facing. In the next example we look at how a recurring dream was the catalyst to uncovering the core imprint of a phobia.
Minimising fears and phobias
The following is a simplified and condensed example to give an idea of the process.The dreamer had a repeating theme in a series of recurring dreams of being trapped in a small dark room where the door is either locked or stuck and will not open, leaving the dreamer with no way out.
Through experiential dreamwork, the dreamer is safely guided to re-enter the dream and embody the feeling of being trapped in the small dark space. Feelings of overwhelm, helplessness and terror are identified by the dreamer, which invokes a forgotten memory of when they hid in a small dark cupboard as a child to escape the sound of their parents violently arguing downstairs.
The memory is vague, but the feeling is now strong, and it feels identical to the feelings in the dream. The dreamer can now viscerally connect the two experiences, both cognitively and somatically.
Now that the connection has been made and brought into awareness, the dreamer is guided to visualise a new ending to the dream of being trapped, one where they can open the door and let themselves out of the room. They were also guided to speak to their younger self and tell them they are not alone, and that they don’t need to be afraid anymore, updating the part of them that was stuck in the traumatic memory.
This process of integration has a powerful effect. It teaches the subconscious a new experience and changes the original emotional charge. This has an effect on the dreams but also reduces the real-life fear of small dark spaces. Since emotional resolution has been found, feelings of helplessness turn into feelings of empowerment, and the recurring dreams either stop entirely or change into more positive uplifting scenarios in the future.
How to work with your own dreams.
Record your dreams: Keep a dream journal and note recurring or important themes, emotions, characters or symbols.
Embodiment: Observe how your body reacts when recalling the dream, tension, heaviness, hope, excitement etc.
Explore emotions: Allow yourself to fully feel the emotions without judgement.
Find familiar patterns: Identify if any of the dream elements connect to the past, whether it be familiar people, patterns, situations, places, feelings or behaviours.
Are you interested in exploring your own dreams? Dream therapy sessions are available below. Australian and most international clients accepted.