Recurring dreams

I used to have a series of dreams where some everyday activity, like walking up a street became impossible - the street got steeper and steeper until it was a sheer wall.

They stopped when I worked out that even as an adult I felt my parents were influencing me to do things I at heart didn't want to.

Perhaps you need to think carefully about the thing that scared you as a child and try to see it from an adult point of view where I hope it won't be so scary.

I wake every morning at about 5 at what I can only call panic stations. This happens every day, I wake in a state of fear and dread, even when I don't need to do anything in particular, and with my stomach churning. Only occasionally do I recall dreaming. I have been told that this is due to a lack of self-confidence but my younger daughter tells me to think of all I have achieved since being widowed nearly five years ago. I did think about going for hypnosis to see if that works. Does anyone have any thoughts as to how to deal with panic attacks?

I have always been a 'dreamer' and find dreams fascinating. Many of them make sense when I think of what has been going on in my life or what I have read, or watched on TV. Lately, lots about DGC getting into trouble or having accidents because they won't listen to me (they don't in real life!!) I become quite distraught. However I do regularly have the dreams about houses/homes where there are rooms, or a garden, I have forgotten about. I would recognise them instantly if I actually saw them.

There are also those where I am walking a foot or so above the ground and I tell myself it must be a dream. I can also swim without effort in dreams though I am not a strong swimmer.

Does anyone else have the one where they are driving a car down steps or on an impossible road/lane where they pick it up and carry it? There is also another one where I am driving a huge lorry or double decker bus from the top floor and trying to park it!!

I won't comment on the 'packing' dreams when I can't find what I need or am stopped at every turn as time is running out before I have to be ready. I think that is fairly obvious!

Another recurring dream I used to have which I attribute to stress was that relatives were outside in the garden at night trying to come in. The door was locked, I’d forgotten they were coming and I’d not prepared the spare bed. I always woke up in a panic.

A couple of years ago, I started having the same dream night after night. In the dream, I was back living at home with my parents (they both died more than thirty years ago). I would arrive home at night park my car in the old cow shed and walk/run down the lane past the Dutch barn to the farm cottage where we lived. My mum and dad would be in bed, so I had to unlock the back door and walk through the house in the dark which I hated, go up the stairs still with no light and only when I was in my bedroom with the door closed could I turn it on.

The dream exactly mirrored what I had to do back then, but I couldn’t work out why I was dreaming about it all these years later. I told my husband about it and said I would like to go back to see the house one last time. It’s a long way from where we live now, but we thought we would make a day of it by having lunch in the local pub then walk around the village and eventually to the farm. Everything looked the same as it always had the old cowshed and Dutch barn are still there, but my childhood home is no more. The hedge, gate and path are just as they were, but the house is completely gone, not a brick or anything to show it was ever there. It was such a huge shock, and I’m still not really over it, but the dream has not recurred. I don’t know what it was all about but can only think my parents wanted me to know.

Elvive - I used to have a similar dream. My counsellor thought it was that the hidden room represented a part of me that I was keeping hidden; that I may not even be consciously aware of! Love the idea of the sunflowers.

Does anyone remember the case of Jenny Cockell? The BBC did a documentary about her. She had recurring dreams, even as a young child, that she was an Irish mother with several children whom she had to leave as she was terminally ill.

The BBC took her to Ireland and met the (now aged) children who all confirmed the truth of the many details Cockell was able to give about their Mum, including that she was deeply upset to leave them when she was dying of (I think) TB.

I remember seeing the doco and started looking into dreams being linked to past lives. It seems to be quite a common phenomenon all over the world.

I dread bedtimes because my dreams are so awful and exhausting. I’m always trying to get somewhere or drive somewhere but it’s never a good feeling. And I’m usually much younger. Also I keep dreaming of my house which is full of rooms that I didn’t know existed. It was so real that one morning I got up and tried to look for them! Weird.

I have two recurring dreams although they are not frequent. I know exactly the two anxieties that give rise to them.

One theory is that you are every thing in that dream, the wind, the animals, the person. Quite interesting.

I often dream of a large house and a hidden upper room. The seats have a sunflower print. Odd eh?

I had a complete phobia about pigeons as a very young child and had nightmares of them often - no idea why. I’ve handled and flown huge birds of prey as an adult but still intensely dislike pigeons.

I dream of my ex husband at least five nights a week. He left 32 years ago. Sometimes he's with the woman he left me for ( I knew her from school) sometimes he's with another woman I don't know and sometimes we're getting back together again. He always looks the age he was back then (33) not as he looks now. It's quite disturbing really after all these years.
Another dream I have sometimes and it's always the same. My daughter used to have rabbits when she lived at home and when she left she left the remaining two with me to look after. My dream is that we have one big rabbit loose in our shed at the bottom of the garden and I forget about it and it doesn't get fed for a week or more and the straw is full of rabbit droppings. I then think of the rabbit and panic that it's not been fed and is probably dead but it's still alive. I tell my daughter off and tell her to get some food and straw and clean the shed out.
I think I know the reason for the ex's dream but don't understand the rabbit one.

Juliet27 - I have exactly the same dreams as you; being naked in public and not having revised for exams. I think the exam dreams are a result of the pressure put on us by the education system, a type of post traumatic stress syndrome. But being naked in public? No idea where that comes from.

Readymeals & Hannahloisluke, I too have an execution nightmare. I am in a waiting room & I know I am going to be taken to be executed very soon. The nightmare part is that I desperately need to tell my husband something about our daughters but I can’t get a message to him. I wake up deeply sad and it stays with me for hours.
It’s quite a shocking subject to dream about but the mind is such a deep mysterious place.

Notentirely thanks didn't know of such a therapy. In my case I actually remember being scared but felt I couldn't say anything to my parents. Will have a look cheers.
Sus4n when I have dreamt of periods is with anxiety as it would be in real life should you suddenly have one after the menopause and relieved when waking up. I also have the usual anxiety dream where I lose my bag with all my precious belongings, or not finding my way and being late to catch a plane, or trying to alert my DH to some danger but can't get my phone to work. All fascinating stuff!

Does anyone else have period dreams even though they’re years past menopause? As if the body cycles are continuing.

Recurring dreams are always trying to tell us something - they're usually symbolic, so it's useful to look at how the dream is being presented. For example, for at least 10 years, I had a recurring "packing" dream where I was packing to go on a trip and there was so much packing to do - and I kept finding more - that I got more and more panicky that time was running out and I'd end up missing the holiday! I discussed it with a counsellor who encouraged me to answer certain questions like: if you hadn't woken up then, what would have happened next? How did you feel when you woke up? Are there parallels between the dream and what's happened in your life? How were you in the dream (happy, scared, panicked, fearful?) and where are you like that in your real life? Do any of the people in the dream look familiar and what do they say? If you think about different people as different parts of yourself, how do they relate to each other - are they arguing, for example? What about the objects in the dream? (For example, if you're in a car - who is driving the car? And what does that say about your life - who is "in the driving seat"?) It's about really unpicking it symbollically. As for me, I had to let go of a lot of stuff (both physical, mental and emotional, plus people who I should have let go a long time ago) before the dream stopped and I was able to "travel lightly" (the trip being a metaphor for my life's journey). Hope this helps.

Bluesky with my tin hat on (!) I think a dream such as yours is what would now be defined as trauma. Its got stuck in your brain memory banks rather than being processed.

There is a simple therapy called 'rewind' which many psychotherapists now offer which lightly hypnotises the person and aids them to move the memory on. It works very quickly in one or two treatments, it might be worth looking out for if you want to get rid of the dream. Here's a link to the professional body www.iartt.com/

Loss of gravity- My husband debunked it with science, much in the same way as BradfordLass, and I've yet to have the dream again- But it still creeps into my thoughts during the day on occasion- And when I engage it, I imagine ..

My husband truly was my hero, while he was alive and even after he died-

I've had countless weather related dreams, ever since I was a child, that are not the same except for the type of weather -- from natural disasters to beautiful breezes weaving through fields of grass and wild blooms- I am totally in the moment in each dream and sometimes become the weather itself-

When I was a child and we lived in southeast London I had a recurring nightmare where I was on the platform at Sydenham Hill station with a very powerful wind blowing me towards the edge. However, that didn't matter because there was a train standing in the station which stopped me from falling off. But then the train pulled out and I found myself being blown closer and closer to the edge, at which point I realised that it wasn't just a normal drop to the rails, but a drop of about 100ft. When I was finally pushed off the platform and falling through the air I would wake up with a pounding heart and feeling terrified. I suppose it was an anxiety/insecurity dream. Anyway I finally told my Dad about it and his response was: "Well, that can't be true because the train wouldn't be able to leave the station ... if the rails really were 100ft below the level of the platform the train would need to have huge oval wheels which wouldn't be able to turn." I never had the dream again, whether because my fears had been allayed or because cold logic put paid to it I don't know!

It’s not a dream as such but I'm asleep when the following happens, but I know when a relative has died during the night. Same during the day but it's just a flash in my head and an odd sensation at the same time.
Write hugh!!!

Used to have a recurring dream when I was in school of soldiers shooting at me and I was trying to get away and there was more and more of them. Exam stress. Stopped after me having the dream about 5 or 6 times.

I used to have a recurring dream which started shortly after I got married. I would be going to visit my mother in my childhood home, I would walk up the path and just before I got to the door it changed to a block of flats. About 15 years later she moved into a block of flats exactly like the one in my dream.

BonnieBlooming, could you have sleep apnoea?

For years I had a recurring dream where I stood before a white clapboard farmhouse with stairs going up the side of the house. Looking at it from the outside didn't affect me at all, but when I went inside I always had a feeling of dread. Next to the kitchen was a small room with a door that led to a corridor with many bathrooms. Bathroom after bathroom, all the fixtures were made of the same dreary cement.

In the dream I dreaded going on, so I would turn back and the dream would end with me closing the door that led to that part of the house. Not exactly a nightmare, but disturbing because I had that same dream quite often during a period of several years and then it stopped. That was about twenty five years ago.