Recurring dreams - can someone explain?

[nanabush]

Ok, I've been having several recurring dreams in the past few months, and I was wondering if anyone has had anything similar, or can explain what any of the 'symbols' in these dreams mean.  They freak me out, and I honestly have no clue why I keep having them:

1 - I'm walking down what looks like a hallway in a hotel, except it's about 3 times as wide, and has a large arched ceiling.  I keep passing mirrors on my left, and see a red hooded girl in it.  I don't see her face.  I look around, and she's never there.  I always quicken my pace, and keep seeing the same figure in the mirrors as I keep going down the hall.  I wake up after this relentless dream, and I have not once reached the end of the hall 

2 -  I am given an impossible task, such as rearranging where the rooms in my house are, or changing the patterns on fabric, or changing the text in a book on my shelf.  They're all absurd 'challenges' that I simply cannot do.  I always wake up half asleep, and start panicking because I know that I haven't solved the task yet.  I always get a horrible sleep when I have these dreams.  The worst was when I was challenged to change where the buildings sat  on the campus at my university.  When I wake up, I'm like "what the hell was that?".

3 - Crazy scenarios such as an island surrounded by clear blue water, but it's snowing, and the sun is out.  It's like completely different climates all in one.  These dreams are really vivid, but they are just more of a snapshot when I am about to wake up.

I've had these crazy dreams on and off for the past while.  There's been like 800 dreams threads, so I decided to start a new one.  If anyone can offer any insight on these random dreams, please do so  . Or just share your own.  I love hearing about crazy stuff that people come up with when they're asleep.

[goldentone]

Has there been any major change in your life since the dreams began?  Or did they just start out of nowhere?

[nanabush]

Minor things, nothing out of the ordinary.

[Bob]

The first one sounds like the dream where someone is following you.  I forget what that means.

The other two sound like your mind thinks some things in your life are difficult -- very challenging or bizarrely impossible.

On the other hand, they're just dreams.  Could be random brain firings.

[zheer]

We dream for a very good reason. One reason is problem solving, often we look for an answer in our lives but can not find it, so we allow the sub-conscious to find the answer for us, it's when we are sleeping that the sub-conscious reveals itself to us.

Secondly, dreams can be wish fulfilling, for instance you hate the job you're in, so in your dream you are doing the thing you love the most. It is a heeling device, away to deal with life.

So armed with this knowledge analyze your own dream.

[communist]

No.1, are you neurotic? do you think someone or something is following you in real life?

No.2, Sounds like anxiety.

No.3, I do not know.

[thalbergmad]

I once had a dream that i was in bed with Pamela Anderson.

When i woke up, i was cuddling me teddy.

Thal

[pianowolfi]

I once had a dream that i was in bed with Pamela Anderson.

Omg, poor guy

@nanabush: do you tend expect too much from yourself?

[nanabush]

Thanks for the replies, very interesting stuff 

pianowolfi: Not that I know of; I did start music this year at university, and I'm surrounded by all these amazing musicians - something that I haven't really experienced before.  During the day, I'm the opposite of stressed, and I really enjoy every part of university now (I'm actually relieved I'm out of economics).  It's could maybe be something subconscious about the pressure of having all these people with the same goal in mind around me.

[imbetter]

I think in the first one you seem some part of you or your life that you are trying to eliminate but you can't do it.

[goldentone]

I have heard that when you have a dream with different people in it that each person can represent an aspect of yourself. 

[prometheus]

Dreams don't have meaning in the sense some people think it has. Dreams are the product of our imagination running wild with certain imagery, ideas and emotions it just finds 'lying around' in our minds.


Evolutionary, dreams are like simulations that help us prepare better for certain events. They work the same as meditation/visualization which can be used as a technique to perform better. This is why Children have nightmares about wild animals and monsters. It's purely evolutionary. If you practice running away from dangerous animals in your dreams you will have an evolutionary edge.

But our minds are flexible and when we grow up our dreams reflect our actual lives rather than our genes. Then we start to dream maybe about being run down by a truck.

So dreams don't have symbols. They don't have hidden meanings. If you dream about a castle with mirrors then maybe you have visited a house of mirrors. Maybe you have seen a movie that featured a castle.
Everyone knows about mirrors and castles so there is no need for a special reason anyway.

A single dream can be just something random. But if for example you dream about castles a lot then maybe you like castles. Or you have some sort of fascination with them.

Many people have dreams with some particular form of anxiety. You apparently have one that involves you being given impossible tasks. My father always dreams about getting lost in public transportation. My main theme in dreams is probably being in school again and always getting into really intense arguments with my teacher in that dream.

Now my father has no problem with public transportation at all. It is true I notice that when he has to use it he is always very well prepared. So often these anxieties are irrational.

It's not that dreams can't tell us anything about ourselves. Through dreams we can experience emotions and go through situations we can't otherwise.
Also, it's perculiar to notice, at least for me, which people do appear in my dreams and which do not.

If in a dream I require a generic friend it is often my childhood friend. Someone who I didn't have a lot in common and someone I haven't seen in maybe 10 years.

So dreams are not symbolism and it is not your conciousness making you aware of something you should be aware of. It shows what is on your on, or in, your mind.

One simple example. One of the most common themes in dreams is teeth that are falling out. I have had these dreams quite often. They seem quite odd and they make you wonder if your consciousness is telling you to take better care of them. But the reason you have this dream is because when you dream about this you are lying on your face and there is pressure on your mouth and teeth. This pressure results in more teeth-related impulses being present in your brain. So that is what the brain uses.
Now if you google this subject you see that throughout history people have come up with many different explanations for these dreams.

[wishful thinker]

Nanabush,

If you are repeatedly having the same type of dream, then its obviously something on your mind.

I'd say that the impossible tasks theme is to do with the challenges that you face at university. You probably perceive the other students as being ahead of you in terms of their ability/skills and you don't think that you can re-order the situation so that you are on top, maybe.

My recurring dream is about being late. A whole series of events will stop me from being where I am supposed to be at a particular time.  For instance its Monday morning and I should have been at work at 9, but because of a whole lot of reasons I'm not and its nearly lunchtime.  The later it gets the more stressed I get about it.  These kind of dreams I have had since I was young (when I would be late for school).

In "real life" I am extremely punctual, and I expect everybody else to be as well "punctuality is the politeness of princes".

[redragon]

This is the freakiest dream I have ever had:

I was in a building that looked like the lincoln memorial. Me and a group of people were huddling by the window. There was random explosions on the ground. Then, White lights exploded in the sky. I, not consciously, spoke the words, "they're bombing america." Then, everything went white. I might not have explained it the best, but it was extremely vivid, and it was the scariest dream I've ever had.

[nanabush]

I've had catastrophe dreams too, but they are usually after I saw an action movie or heard about something on the news.

No more recurring dreams for me  .  I think it was just an 'end of the summer, start of new school year' thing lol.

Yesterday I did have a pretty interesting dream.  We were watching a reality show about people trying to sell houses - the people (men and women) were bald and had a little patch of cotton on the tops of their heads.  Pretty random.  The main guy kept asking if the camera was on too, hehe.  That one made me laugh when I woke up.

[brianhoberg]

Ok, I've been having several recurring dreams in the past few months, and I was wondering if anyone has had anything similar, or can explain what any of the 'symbols' in these dreams mean.  They freak me out, and I honestly have no clue why I keep having them:

1 - I'm walking down what looks like a hallway in a hotel, except it's about 3 times as wide, and has a large arched ceiling.  I keep passing mirrors on my left, and see a red hooded girl in it.  I don't see her face.  I look around, and she's never there.  I always quicken my pace, and keep seeing the same figure in the mirrors as I keep going down the hall.  I wake up after this relentless dream, and I have not once reached the end of the hall 

Perhaps the hooded girl is how you may see yourself? Cloaked or hidden? Are you shy or do you find yourself staying away from larger crowds as to avoid confrontations? Mirrors are often represented as the many views we see ourselves, perhaps seeing so many mirrors explains you see yourself as vulnerable or open to people making assumptions or judgements about you. A wide open hallway can be understood as a "safety space", the area around you that is a safe zone, your own area that you are comfortable within. Faceless figures are not uncommon in dreams and are about as common as people seen with faces. It often can represent the unknown or the hidden, the inner. By looking around and never seeing her it may be because it is how you view yourself, or how you feel others may view you. With looking around and not seeing her, you may be experiencing that you are questioning your own self or your own thoughts, nothing wrong with it. Just my interpretation.

2 -  I am given an impossible task, such as rearranging where the rooms in my house are, or changing the patterns on fabric, or changing the text in a book on my shelf.  They're all absurd 'challenges' that I simply cannot do.  I always wake up half asleep, and start panicking because I know that I haven't solved the task yet.  I always get a horrible sleep when I have these dreams.  The worst was when I was challenged to change where the buildings sat  on the campus at my university.  When I wake up, I'm like "what the hell was that?".

Perhaps this can represent pressure or the feeling that you are not able to accomplish something because you have set either your own aspirations too high and at this time they are unachievable at your level or this time in your life. It could also indicate that you feel you may not be living up to expectations or what you feel others may be wanting you to be or meeting where you think others think you should be. It's nto uncommon, especially within a work setting, academic setting or competition setting itself to feel as if you are being judged against others levels. You set high expectations and then struggle and struggle to reach them. When in reality, it may not be meant for you to achieve that level just yet.

3 - Crazy scenarios such as an island surrounded by clear blue water, but it's snowing, and the sun is out.  It's like completely different climates all in one.  These dreams are really vivid, but they are just more of a snapshot when I am about to wake up.

I've had these crazy dreams on and off for the past while.  There's been like 800 dreams threads, so I decided to start a new one.  If anyone can offer any insight on these random dreams, please do so  . Or just share your own.  I love hearing about crazy stuff that people come up with when they're asleep.

Different climates within each other can be something as simple as you seeing yourself differently or just seeing yourself as unique. I'm not sure what more I can derive from that without hearing more of it.

Again, this is just my opinion of it. For what it's worth, I studied way too much psychology and read too much on Freud and Jung's Interpretation of Dreams.
I attribute that to a boring college curriculum

[ted]

I have always paid attention to my dreams, sometimes to the extent of keeping diaries of them. Fortunately, I very seldom have unpleasant ones, perhaps one or two in my life, I suppose. I have had only one, vaguely tiresome recurring dream. When I finally realised exactly what it meant I no longer experienced it. It represented something very simple and mundane, quite different from the complicated,symbolic explanations I was thinking of. I hesitate to comment further as I do not have bad dreams and therefore am not competent to advise about how to get rid of them.

[stringoverstrung]

an interesting read is

"exploring the world of lucid dreaming"
by
Stephen Laberge & Howard Rheingold

ISBN 0-345-37410-X

I'm not an expert but for dream 2: Are you a perfectionist?

i know somebody who dreams like that and is a real perfectionist. (Don't be afraid of it, you'll never reach it). 

[nanabush]

I don't see myself as a perfectionist, but maybe I am subconsciously.  I can see in some cases how I could consider myself one, but I don't seem to strike myself as one in daily life.

[term]

Evolutionary, dreams are like simulations that help us prepare better for certain events. They work the same as meditation/visualization which can be used as a technique to perform better. This is why Children have nightmares about wild animals and monsters. It's purely evolutionary. If you practice running away from dangerous animals in your dreams you will have an evolutionary edge.

This is completely made up. A random theory about performance and preparation mixed with a little bit of evolution, and ready is the soup of nonsense.

One simple example. One of the most common themes in dreams is teeth that are falling out. I have had these dreams quite often. They seem quite odd and they make you wonder if your consciousness is telling you to take better care of them. But the reason you have this dream is because when you dream about this you are lying on your face and there is pressure on your mouth and teeth. This pressure results in more teeth-related impulses being present in your brain. So that is what the brain uses.

Reproducable in an experiment? Details, examples, does it have relevance with regards to the many different types of dreams people have?

[prometheus]

term, just keep believing dreams have some deeper meaning then.

There is nothing magical about dreams. They are just as 'boring' as everything else in this universe. You may want more mysteriousness, but the world is as it is nonetheless.

[redragon]

People can go to sleep thinking about an issue that they can't solve while asleep. You can occasionally wake up to find that you now know what you couldn't remember before you went to sleep. On multiple occasions, I've woken up thinking, "Oh! That's what it was!"

[m19834]

There was a time in my life (when I was mentally grappling A LOT with life) when I had dreams about Bears almost every, single night (for about a year or more) !!  I never got hurt by them, but sometimes I was scared ... sometimes I just walked through a bunch of them ... there were always different scenarios but it was always about Bears.  I haven't had them as recurring for a few years now, but have had Bear dreams once in a while over the past few years, and they were back again last night !  Quite a few of them !!  Anytime I have a dream about them, when I remember that I dreamt about them I say in my head "The Bears are back !"  .

[ahinton]

There was a time in my life (when I was mentally grappling A LOT with life) when I had dreams about Bears almost every, single night (for about a year or more) !!  I never got hurt by them, but sometimes I was scared ... sometimes I just walked through a bunch of them ... there were always different scenarios but it was always about Bears.  I haven't had them as recurring for a few years now, but have had Bear dreams once in a while over the past few years, and they were back again last night !  Quite a few of them !!  Anytime I have a dream about them, when I remember that I dreamt about them I say in my head "The Bears are back !"  .

That sounds pretty unbearable, if I may say so - and it reminds me of "ada" who rarely posts here but who once used as a sign-off the old chestnut about "the right to arm bears". A word of advice; avoid Canada!

Sweeter (and bearless) dreams...

Best,

Alistair

[m19834]

That sounds pretty unbearable, if I may say so - and it reminds me of "ada" who rarely posts here but who once used as a sign-off the old chestnut about "the right to arm bears". A word of advice; avoid Canada!

Sweeter (and bearless) dreams...

Best,

Alistair

haha ... I remember that signature !  

We happen to have loads of bears around where I live (not Canada) and when I hike in the hills right by town, there is evidence of them on the trails !  I've had students who have bears (and cougars) show up on their doorsteps ... hee hee.  Plus, I don't mind the bears in my dreams ... I think that they are supposed to represent healing or medicine or something like that ... and, having bears in my dreams always leaves me feeling like something "happened" or something ... I don't know how to explain it.  But, I appreciate the wish for sweet dreams .

[rc]

Two nights ago I had the most disturbing dream.  It was set like a movie: an ace detective had put many criminals in jail, two genius criminals (master and student) wound up in the same high-security cell and started brainstorming ways to get back at the dective, it was like an entertaining challenge to them.  So from jail they mastermind ways to ruin the detectives life.  They get an assassin to murder his entire family while he's at work, in the most gruesome way, my dream spared no horrible detail.

Years later the detective is in the process of recovering from this, meets a girl and starts to fall in love - she gets murdered.  Makes a friend - he gets murdered.  At some point in the dream the detective figures out who the assassin is and gets someone to kill him.  I got the impression that the detective would eventually figure out who's behind it all, but the dream never got that far and it was mostly about everyone he cares about being killed in some gruesome way.

Probably the worst dream I've had yet.

Every so often the story literally became a movie, I'd put it on pause, go do something else, then come back because I had to see how it ends.

[m19834]

The Bears were back again last night.  This was an interesting one (to me) !  I was actually riding one like it was a horse, and I rode it down a deserted highway in the middle of the night until we reached a small town in the forest by morning.  I rode it straight up a long driveway and into somebody's garage, after passing the playground of an elementary school that was absolutely packed with kids.  I met with the people in the garage very briefly, and then another wild grizzly bear was spotted, walking up a path with her cub.  That grizzly had seen better days and was pretty worn down, but she was one tough mama.  She walked up a path, aware that all of us people were there, but didn't look at us at all.  She just went her way up into the woods.  I got back on my Bear and rode it down the driveway and into the playground full of elementary school kids (we just went through them, nobody minded) --which is when I actually discovered in my dream that I had been riding a Bear-- and then up an embankment and onto a road to be on our way.  I was heading to a piano lesson.  This is the first time I have had a very tame bear like that in my dream, and it's especially interesting as there was also an extremely wild one, too ... hmmmm

[thalbergmad]

I keep having this dream where i am playing the Elliott Carter Concerto backwards and nobody notices.

Thal

[m19834]

Just remembered that I had another Bear dream last night !  I was in some house and there were other people there, and we were in danger because of some tigers outside that were stalking and trying to get in, and my Bear was protecting me and scaring away the tigers, keeping them from getting into the house.  Once in a while I have large cats in my dreams, but they are almost always trying to get me and they aren't there nearly as often as the Bears.  Thanks, Bear !

[goldentone]

Thanks, Bear !

 

[thalbergmad]

Just remembered that I had another Bear dream last night !  I was in some house and there were other people there, and we were in danger because of some tigers outside that were stalking and trying to get in, and my Bear was protecting me and scaring away the tigers, keeping them from getting into the house.  Once in a while I have large cats in my dreams, but they are almost always trying to get me and they aren't there nearly as often as the Bears.  Thanks, Bear !

Pleased to be of assistance.

[ahinton]

I keep having this dream where i am playing the Elliott Carter Concerto backwards and nobody notices.

Which one? (or hadn't you noticed yourself, in that recurrent dream of yours?) - and "nobody notices" what, exactly?...

Best,

Alistair

[ahinton]

Just remembered that I had another Bear dream last night !  I was in some house and there were other people there, and we were in danger because of some tigers outside that were stalking and trying to get in, and my Bear was protecting me and scaring away the tigers, keeping them from getting into the house.  Once in a while I have large cats in my dreams, but they are almost always trying to get me and they aren't there nearly as often as the Bears.  Thanks, Bear !

Some of your dreams must be quite unbearable! I am reminded of member ada's sign-off about the right to arm bears...

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

Which one? (or hadn't you noticed yourself, in that recurrent dream of yours?) - and "nobody notices" what, exactly?...

Did not know there was more than one and i cannot play it now as i gave the score away.

Thal

[ahinton]

Did not know there was more than one and i cannot play it now as i gave the score away.

In Carter's catalogue of works the concertos for solo instrument and orchestra / ensemble include those for piano, violin, cello, clarinet, flute, bass clarinet and oboe; there's also a concerto for cor anglé from around 1938-39 which was apparently unfinished and there are other works for solo instrument and orchestra / ensemble such as Dialogues, Soundings and the like and there's the one for piano and harpsichord. He's not yet written a concerto for banjo, however.

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

He's not yet written a concerto for banjo, however.

Then let us hope he does.

Thal

[ahinton]

Then let us hope he does.

He'll almost certainly expect a commission for it - so I'll leave that to you.

Best,

Alistair

[bella_brito]

I'm having some recurring dreams in the past few weeks, and the subject is a bit random, what made me curious about the meaning - if there is one.

In the first dream I was diving in a coral, with my camera, and I was taking pictures of the small colored fishes swimming around me. Then a lot of hammerhead sharks appeared around me, and I didn't know if I should take some great pictures of them or run away.
In the second dream I was in the beach with my sister, swimming, and the waves were big
Then 2 big white sharks appeared, and they ate a boy that was next to my sister. Again, I had the camera hanging on my neck. And again, I had the thought of "whoa, nobody ever took a picture of a shark attack that close from it! It's an unique situation!" instead of doing something to help the poor guy. At the same time I was fascinated and terrified.

I didn't watch any movie about sharks or something like that, what makes it even weirder, and the presence of the camera is interesting.
I'll be glad if someone has any clue about the meaning of this, I'm curious. 

[thalbergmad]

Check this website, the name of which in the circumstances is rather uncanny.

https://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art18618.asp

Thal