The Wonderful World of Sleep & Dreams

I sometimes dream about driving along perfectly happily until I realise I can’t drive (which I can’t) or about walking along happily until I realise I am barefoot. Fully dressed but no shoes on.

In both cases I panic when the realisation hits, although I was fine until then.

I’ve got a book about dreams somewhere, and I think teeth falling out is the no 1 dream.
When I’m not stressing about wedding outfits, my top dream is moving house, to anything from cottages to mansions, always in need of lots of work, but I’m always so excited. Then after we move in, I find whole parts of the house I hadn’t known about, extra rooms or floors, in one instance a whole American style diner, one such dream featuring a rather bleak several story terrace features often, and I actually get around to getting some work done in that one.
Then of course, the toilet dream, desperately searching for a loo, upon finding one it’s too disgusting to use, inaccessible, completely exposed, and then the naked, or being dressed totally inappropriately in public.
I love dreaming, and I always try and remember them, good or bad.

That's funny biglouis.

I'm on crutches but in my dreams they never feature and I have the freedom to walk normally. It's lovely. Last night I dreamt I was walking the coast path, which is my ambition to return to once I can walk again independently. Meanwhile the dreams never make me sad when I wake and remember I still need crutches. They're like a little overnight holiday. 😄

Many years ago, I dreamt of being attacked by a lady wearing a white shroud in my own home.

My daughter (she was very young then) had similar dreams. She told me the lady in white was European looking, she did not have a scary face, instead of walking she glided or floated.

In her dream, she would chase my daughter down the stairs and my daughter will be petrified, banging on the inner porch door trying to get out of the house until she woke up hyperventilating and crying.

I am not religious. Without my daughter’s knowledge, I started praying for her asking for protection against these nightmares. The next time she had the same recurring dream, she told me that when she was calling for help, I heard her and appeared in her dream and then she suddenly woke up.

One of her friends who is a hippy, free spirit type of person gave her a present from her holiday abroad.

It looked like a spider web in a hoop with feathers. Out of curiosity, I researched about it online. It was a dream catcher related to Native American belief. You suppose to hang it over your bed or the window and it will catch all your bad dreams and channel the good ones.

With some people, it had the opposite effect, it channels all the bad dreams, so they dreamt they were raped, murdered etc.

As soon as they take down the dreamcatcher, their dreams return to normal.

Mine are usually more weird than anything else!

But I’ve had recurring dreams about houses (always the same two) that I’ve never lived in.

Plus the waking up in a panic - followed by Phew! - recurrent dreams - a) it’s 4 pm on Christmas Eve and I’ve forgotten to buy presents, a tree or anything (I do know the origin of this one)
and
And b) an exam is imminent (it’s always German literature) and not only have I not read any of the books, I don’t even know what they are!

I don’t know why it’s only ever German Lit., I got a perfectly reasonable pass at A level - the last German exam I ever sat.

In a very recent memorable dream we threw a wild party. Everyone eventually left except one man, who just wouldn’t go. He announced he was staying and moved into one of the bedrooms. When I woke up in the morning I remembered we now had a stranger living in the house, and I was really annoyed but, in the strange way of dreams, accepted it as a fete accompli.

Witzend

If you're worried about something, maybe your dream is telling you that despite your "failure" in the dream, in real life you actually did just fine. So don't worry?!

Weirdly, (or maybe not!) having spent a few minutes looking at some photos on FB of folk I was at school with, I dreamt I was at a party with people I was at school with and haven't seen in probably 30+ years. At the time, in my dream, I knew/remembered them, but oddly now I can't. Which is unusual because I usually remember most things in a dream. I was also camping in a huge dome tent at the side of the road, in fact IN the road. I asked someone to help me move it, only because there was an equally large festival tent going up opposite me and I didn't want to be disturbed. Never mind getting run over!

SeaWoozle

Whitewavemark2

All goes quiet and then at cloud level huge alien craft fly overhead firing at the ground (think those films)

I have these too and like yourself I'm yet to work out what they mean. I never get taken away by any of them or see aliens, but it's usually like something from War of the Worlds.

I have dreams similar to that, too - the sky is full of alien 'craft' of many different shapes and sizes, some looking like old-fashioned sailing ships.
Sometimes some land and a gangway is lowered to the ground which the aliens start to descend (though I don't recall ever seeing what they actually look like), other times they don't, but just the sight of the craft in the sky fills me with terror.

I read something once about dreams which theorised that the feeling that the dream produced could the mind making sense of that emotion. Nothing to do with the images that you dream, all to do with the feeling !

From being quite a young child and up until I was maybe about ten, I used to have a recurring nightmare from which I would wake up screaming uncontrollably.

In the dream I was always alone and happily picking flowers on a grass verge next to a road. As I did this, a noise and a sensation that I can't begin to describe would build up in my head, and with it a terrifying feeling of imminent doom. Suddenly it would come to a head and I would wake up screaming uncontrollably and shaking, and it would take a long time for me to calm down.

Thinking about it now, it seems a bit strange to me that although I had many other nightmares at the same age, that is the only one which had me screaming out loud.
I just wasn't the sort of child to make a fuss or seek comfort from my parents after bad dreams normally - so I wonder what it was about those flower-picking nightmares that had that effect on me!

Oldnproud

That sounds horrible! Maybe it was because you'd been told (whilst awake!) that you shouldn't pick wild flowers (as we were when we were children) and whilst you were enjoying it in your dream, your subconscious was telling you that you were being "naughty"?

Kind of goes with what

keepcalmandcavachon

was saying.

SeaWoozle

Oldnproud

That sounds horrible! Maybe it was because you'd been told (whilst awake!) that you shouldn't pick wild flowers (as we were when we were children) and whilst you were enjoying it in your dream, your subconscious was telling you that you were being "naughty"?

Kind of goes with what

keepcalmandcavachon

was saying.

Maybe, SeaWoozle, though I seem to remember that the flowers in question were only buttercups and daisies, so nothing that I would have been in trouble for picking.

This probably sounds a bit far-fetched, but I have wondered in recent years if it actually stemmed back to my birth. One element of the sound that would build up in my head was like an extremely and increasingly loud heartbeat, and the suddenness of the terrifying finale could be the trauma actual birth.
Not sure where the picking flowers would come into that, though. 😁

I have as lways had vivid dreams. I regularly dream of things in my childhood like being at the beach withy Mum and sisters. My Mum has been dead for over 10 years but when I wake up after duch a dream I feel like I've just spent a day with her. I mentioned it to my sister once and she cried because she says she never dreams and would love to spend time in her dreams with our Mum. I wished I'd never mentioned it she got so upset.

I had a series of dreams about my ex.
In each one, we spoke a bit more about him leaving.
In the last one, he asked "so, do you forgive me"?

And I said "nope. Never!" and that was the end of the series.

Thats the only time my dreams have seemed to have purpose.

I never used to remember my dreams, but since starting to take statins a few weeks ago, my dreams have been far more vivid - not unpleasant - and I feel as if I'm more relaxed at night. I take the statin just before going to bed. Just wondered if anyone else had made this link? My husband has been on statins for years, and he always seems to have vivid dreams.

I get all kinds of dreams I can't interpret but I get some regular ones. One of which is hubby and I have booked a B&B, he has to go to a business meeting so will be out a few hours. I go to the local supermarket and buy all of their sandwiches and wraps, go back to our room them scoff the entire lot one after the other. Tons and tons of wrappers left over! Hubby comes back some time later and asks if I've had anything to eat so I tell him no, I went shopping and had drinks but no food. I must have bought 25 sandwiches and 25 wraps, veggie and non-veggie! So he said in that case he'll take me to a restaurant that night.

Another is I'm in a library and am pushing one of those 4-wheeled shopping trolleys, the sort with a lidded bag in a metal cage, and I start nicking the books by shoving them all in my trolley and handbag, there are hundreds and hundreds of all sizes, hardback and paperback, adults, kids, teens, babies, Braille, but somehow the trolley and bag are bottomless pits, I take all and every one, no matter what the subject, and by the time I leave all the shelves are bare and the librarian hasn't noticed!

Theyre unusual.
Are they pleasant, or with that awful sense of panic?

keepcalmandcavachon

I read something once about dreams which theorised that the feeling that the dream produced could the mind making sense of that emotion. Nothing to do with the images that you dream, all to do with the feeling !

That’s interesting because I often wake up knowing that I’ve had a certain reoccurring dream again (there are several) I can’t remember the actual dream but recognise the feel of it. On The Rest is Politics one of them ( Rory perhaps?) says they have a pen and paper next to the bed and write down their dream the minute they wake up because it fades so quickly.

I used to regularly be able to float at will at rooftop level and descend steep stairs at speed without my feet touching the steps. I never experience this now I am in my eighties. I used to dream I was on stage and couldn't remember my lines. The worst one is wanting to go to the toilet and not being able to find one and if I do there is no door and I am exposed to all and sundry. Thankfully I don't have these dreams anymore.

We had two healthy children, a boy and a girl, but for some years I used to dream that we were all on holiday in our tent, and I could hear a little voice outside calling "Mummy, let me in."
I did resist the urge to have another child, but the dream always brought tears to my eyes.

I very rarely remember dreams but one night I dreamt I won the lottery. Told DH and bought a ticket just incase. Woke up at 3am to a message on my phone the night of the draw saying I'd won a prize. Woke up DH all excited to find it was only £70. Very disappointing and DH not pleased at me waking him up.

One dream I have had many times : I am on my own . I get off a bus/vehicle. It is dusk and there is a faint drizzle. I see lights of a village. I make my way towards it and then find I know no one there. I feel lost.

Doesn't need a psychologist to work that one out. I was brought up in a village where I knew everyone and where I was always welcomed. Now I know no one in my birth- village.

My unusual recurring dream is of standing on a small stone bridge, in fields, and the river flowing under the bridge is bright blue going under the bridge and bright orange when it comes out the other side!

I wish I could go to a dream group with most of the posters on this thread!

The recurring themes that are are common to a lot of the posters are especially interesting, and some of these posters might write short stores with human interest, if they don't already do so.
The two themes of inadequacy, and protecting their own house especially interest me and they already have the bones of good short stories. These stories could be fleshed out as ghost stories, or stories full of symbolism e.g. the story about the silver sword.