Recurring dreams

Thanks all for your helpful input. OK here's my nightmare. Have you ever seen a Spanish religious procession? I have as when I was a child we used to go to Spain for holidays. They are impressive but I guess to a child also frightening. So I started to dream about this back then but oddly enough that still crops up now! I see the procession approaching and I try to hide but I'm usually found and brought back to the street to watch it. It's just annoying that a childhood experience should haunt me now to the extent that before booking holidays abroad I make sure there are no religious festivals going on!

Readymeals, I too used to have an execution dream. In mine I was being walked towards a scaffold. I was held by two men and there were others around as well as a lot of onlookers. I knew I hadn't done anything wrong but nobody would listen to me.
Always woke up as I put my foot on the first step.
I had it regularly for a few years, then it stopped than goodness.
Terrifying!

My dreams have been bad recently, - being covered in fleas - lost and alone in a city, asking people to help - but my recurring one is a plane going over low and crashing just over the hedge. I hear it split open and am too scared to go and see what I will see..but they are all there - just over the hedge. I long for my bad dreams to end but am going through some counselling at the moment around childhood stuff and am coming to terms with that and processing it and I guess this is my brain trying to work things out. It's all very upsetting tbh.

Thanks for sharing your nightmares they sound a lot worse than mine! That's why I find it weird that something like that would still disturb me!

I have the usual dreams that probably indicate some worry in the subconscious. However from the age of about 3, I don't remember any earlier, I dreamt of a scene where I am being held as a baby by a well-dressed lady on some kind of throne in the sunshine while DM is running away (separation anxiety?). I had it on a regular basis until about 11 years old, when I think I just dismissed it from my mind. These days I'm mostly able to think 'this is just a dream' and 'switch it off'.

Now that you're adult, maybe facing up to the problem and booking a holiday in Spain that includes a religious festival would be the solution.

I very frequently dream I am choking. I either wake up sitting bolt upright and coughing to try to dislodge the object or even with my fingers down my throat. I have been having this dream for years and its very frightening. I have never actually had a choking incident.
I also occasionally have a dream where I am going to do an exam and I have not done any revision! It's over 40 years since I did an exam.

Direne yes I thought about that they do say you have to face your fears to overcome them! So far I haven't had the nerve to do it. Bonnie sure you are not suffering from some degree of sleep apnea? Are you aware of snoring loudly too?

I have spells of dreaming about trying to find my way to somewhere. I roam around, up and down streets, through shopping centres, sometimes in empty rough areas.
It usually happens when I have something on my mind, especially if one of the family has a problem. I am probably searching for a solution.

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.

BonnieBlooming, could you have sleep apnoea?

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.

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.

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!!!

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!

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-

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/

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?