Did you ever have a recurring dream/nightmare?

[Kyriakos]

Recurring dreams seem to be at least somewhat common, at least in smaller ages. You can describe yours, if you had any. Personally i had a main one, lasting for (likely) 3 years, from mid to the end of elementary school. I must have seen that dream (with many variations) at least 100 times...

Tldr (i may present it in more detail later, if the thread has any traffic/interest) it was about being chased by an unseen horror, usually running in the corridor of my house (the corridor was formed out of four right-angled straight parts, thus it could be run continuously and run again perpetually without ever going the other way; entering the first part again after you run the whole thing), or attempting to escape (from the balcony, or from the main door).

 

[Synobun]

I had a recurring nightmare as a child that I'd get once per year from age 5 to 13. There was enough time between each dream that it was always fresh or unexpected.

It had a witch (or, well, a not-so-friendly looking deformed woman who had special powers). She'd break in through my window at night and make me watch as she tortured people I cared about, and then she'd kill me. Dream would end after I made the trek down to Hell.

Hardcore stuff for a kid. I ended up okay though.

 

[Cutlass]

I saw the movie Alien in the theater first run. I think I was about 13 at the time. I dreamed about being chased by that critter for years. Although I was being chased in a Mexican village, rather than on a space ship. Go figure.

The dreams ended after I saw the second Alien movie, as it was no longer a horror, and was then just another action movie.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I have two. When I was a lad, I played a D&D clone, and my friend and I made regular trips to the local hobby store to buy miniatures. In the dream, I've come to the store when they have a whole bunch of cool new miniatures, so I look into my wallet to see how many of them I'll be able to afford, and I have way more money than I remembered having.

In the other, I'm being chased by some menacing figures. They really want to kill me and I'm aware of that. But I'm really good at fleeing. I see all sorts of cool, clever ways I can evade them. I'm always one step ahead. So even though I know I'm being chased by people trying to kill me, the emotion in the dream in the dream is a positive focus on my cleverness: how slick I am at avoiding these goons.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I wake up sweating and screaming at least three or four times a week from nightmares. They all have some variation of my mother beating me with that big strap she had when I was young, and my father standing in the background quoting scripture and laughing at me. Sometimes Ma is a demon, and sometimes just herself. I usually wake up when she starts stabbing me with a sharpened cross.

I don't sleep much.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The weirdest one I ever had was that I kept dying in a volcano with the ghostbusters (why them??? I liked the movie well enough years prior but otherwise had long forgotten. No idea). I had that nightmare several times in high school and it made no sense to me. Finally one night I helped them "escape" and stopped having it.

One might think there'd be some real life parallel for that where my day to day situation or experience changed to allow it to stop happening...but nope. I distinctly remember being annoyed at the dream after waking too because even then I knew intellectually that the heat would have always killed me nearly instantly, but only the eruption ever got us.

Others are largely one off and unfortunately more convincing, IE I sit down in my car and someone holding a pistol lying in the back seat just sits up and pops me in the head. Rather than annoyed I woke up feeling happy to be alive after that one. Thankfully I don't remember these types of things almost ever.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Kudos to the OP for opening thread with apparently interesting topic.

When it comes to recurring dreams I do have experienced several kinds of them an there are in majority negative experiences - at least on first sight.

In one case I would even claim the dream or its effect or some hidden psychological shift of my consciousness of which this dream was some sort of symptom changed my personality.
In my early childhood I was a very lively child up to about six years of age and since about 7 years old I turned gradualy into more serious person, someone who experience psychological impact of his environment often as quite unconfortable leading me slowly becoming someone who wants to understand whats really happening in and around myself. Strangely enough this time also corresponds to several months or perhaps a year of dreams/nightmares recurring on something like monthly basis which were not really a visual experience but rather just a feeling. It was always the same: I felt like a portion of me or myself is being sliced and cut into pieces which resulted in waking up in terror and crying.
Quite bad in itself but not completely bad if the causation and effect is the way I think about it.

There are number of other reccuring dreams which interestingly I cant recall very well but whenever I dream them I know itsnt the first time and the places I visit are often familiar to me while they are not part of my waking real life and I am quite sure neither they represent anything from it. Yet they have some solid truth in them. It leads me to think about how wide our subconsciousness must be and its complementary spiritual/occult existence.

 

[Berzerker]

Recurring nightmares...hmm... Tetris! Or whatever that game is where dropping geometrical shapes need to be fit in at the base or they build up blocking their entry point. I played that game so much I was seeing it in my dreams.

My recent recurring nightmare (happened maybe 2-3 times in the last few months) is losing my golf clubs in a crowded airport... Now I wouldn't mind much if I did, but the dream wont let me off the hook that easy - I gotta find them and cant. And I dont play search and find games so I dont think thats related.

I wonder if nightmares stem from our evolution, for the last few hundred million years we've been dodging predators and looking for food.

 

[warpus]

I used to have a recurring dream when I was young. Basically it was always me lying in my bed, and deciding to tug on my sheets, to get a but more comfortable. Something pulled back, and the harder I pulled, the harder my sheets were pulled back.

I was still pretty young when this started happening, so I was usually scared and never pulled on the sheets too hard. But over years, as these dreams kept happening every couple weeks or months or whatever it may be, I got more and more bold, and got more and more pully. It got to the point where the bedsheets started pulling me down towards the end of my bed and the more I did this, the bolder I got, the longer I hang on, and eventually it got to the point where I was almost sucked in under the bed.

Then it happened. I'm not sure how or why but in one dream I did it. I went all the way. I got sucked under the bed and I faced whatever was down there. And.. nothing. There was a brief period of lucidity and understanding (that I was dreaming), but I woke up almost right away. Turns out there was nothing under the bed pulling my sheets (in the dream), nothing was there, it was just.. nothing.

From that point on each time I had this dream, I always woke up, because I always held on all the way. And sometimes (but not always) there was that brief period of lucidity. Like I said this dream happened once every couple weeks or sometimes months, but I wanted to trigger the dream again somehow.. so I could experiment more with what was happening. So I read into lucid dreaming and how to trigger lucid dreams. After doing research my plan became to basically always tug on my sheets when I was lying in my bed.. and to check if anything pulled back, as a test to see if I was dreaming or not. This is a method that's used to trigger lucid dreams.

So after a while of training myself like this, the dream started happening more frequently. Basically each time I happened to lie in a bed (in a dream), my mind would instinctively tug on my sheets, and the pull back would be a signal to my brain that I was dreaming, and the dream would transform into a lucid dream in which I am aware that I am dreaming and can control things to some degree.

The problem was that I would always wake up after realizing that I was dreaming. So I looked into some methods and kept at it and kept trying, and each time the lucid phase would last a bit longer. Believe it or not but the "method" is to just spin (in the dream). So as soon as you realize you are dreaming - start spinning. Eventually this worked for me, I stayed in a lucid dream for a decent amount of time. So for a while I was triggering these lucid dreams using the "pull on my bedsheets" method, which all started with that recurring dream about something pulling on my sheets while I was sleeping many years ago

Eventually it all stopped happening and I haven't had that dream in a while. Basically it seemed like the dream triggerred in me feeelings of vague fear. But the more I did this, the more I got used to it, and the less scary the thing pulling on my sheets was. So I guess eventually my mind just stopped associating the pulling feeling with fear, because I kept facing it each and every time and getting pulled under my bed.

The human mind is a weird thing

 

[Berzerker]

ah, the never ending battle for warm toes

 

[Yeekim]

I don't think I've ever had dreams I'd call nightmares. Sometimes my dreams are sad or frustrating, but never scary.

The frustrating ones can get really annoying though. When I had stressful times at work a while back, I had recurring dreams about doing something extremely simple or mundane and consistently failing. For example, I dream I'm typing something and misspell a word, as if I've accidentally hit a wrong key - and no matter how carefully I try to hit the right keys, I never manage to spell it correctly.
Or I'm in an elevator that never takes me to the floor I've pushed the button for... and when I try to push it like for the fifth time, I discover button for that floor does not even exist. This stuff could get really maddening.

There are number of other recurring dreams which interestingly I cant recall very well but whenever I dream them I know itsnt the first time and the places I visit are often familiar to me while they are not part of my waking real life and I am quite sure neither they represent anything from it.

It's the same with me. I believe these dreams sometimes happen years apart, but there's that immediate realization "ah, it's that place again"...

 

[Borachio]

I have a recurring dream where I'm living in a house which is very nicely decorated with several bathrooms.

It's also connected to a house next door which is in a deplorable state, but as I own it too I feel obligated to do something about it.

I take the dream as an indication that I'm currently neglecting some aspect of my life.

 

[Kyriakos]

I used to have a recurring dream when I was young. Basically it was always me lying in my bed, and deciding to tug on my sheets, to get a but more comfortable. Something pulled back, and the harder I pulled, the harder my sheets were pulled back.

I was still pretty young when this started happening, so I was usually scared and never pulled on the sheets too hard. But over years, as these dreams kept happening every couple weeks or months or whatever it may be, I got more and more bold, and got more and more pully. It got to the point where the bedsheets started pulling me down towards the end of my bed and the more I did this, the bolder I got, the longer I hang on, and eventually it got to the point where I was almost sucked in under the bed.

Then it happened. I'm not sure how or why but in one dream I did it. I went all the way. I got sucked under the bed and I faced whatever was down there. And.. nothing. There was a brief period of lucidity and understanding (that I was dreaming), but I woke up almost right away. Turns out there was nothing under the bed pulling my sheets (in the dream), nothing was there, it was just.. nothing.

From that point on each time I had this dream, I always woke up, because I always held on all the way. And sometimes (but not always) there was that brief period of lucidity. Like I said this dream happened once every couple weeks or sometimes months, but I wanted to trigger the dream again somehow.. so I could experiment more with what was happening. So I read into lucid dreaming and how to trigger lucid dreams. After doing research my plan became to basically always tug on my sheets when I was lying in my bed.. and to check if anything pulled back, as a test to see if I was dreaming or not. This is a method that's used to trigger lucid dreams.

So after a while of training myself like this, the dream started happening more frequently. Basically each time I happened to lie in a bed (in a dream), my mind would instinctively tug on my sheets, and the pull back would be a signal to my brain that I was dreaming, and the dream would transform into a lucid dream in which I am aware that I am dreaming and can control things to some degree.

The problem was that I would always wake up after realizing that I was dreaming. So I looked into some methods and kept at it and kept trying, and each time the lucid phase would last a bit longer. Believe it or not but the "method" is to just spin (in the dream). So as soon as you realize you are dreaming - start spinning. Eventually this worked for me, I stayed in a lucid dream for a decent amount of time. So for a while I was triggering these lucid dreams using the "pull on my bedsheets" method, which all started with that recurring dream about something pulling on my sheets while I was sleeping many years ago

Eventually it all stopped happening and I haven't had that dream in a while. Basically it seemed like the dream triggerred in me feeelings of vague fear. But the more I did this, the more I got used to it, and the less scary the thing pulling on my sheets was. So I guess eventually my mind just stopped associating the pulling feeling with fear, because I kept facing it each and every time and getting pulled under my bed.

The human mind is a weird thing

So you were wrong to think that 'nothing' was under the bed; what was under the bed was the ability to gain lucidity inside the dream

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

I had recurring nightmares as a kid. Three in particular stick out to me. One involved a disembodied voice threatening to eat me while I was outside the house. I'd try to get inside but I always would move very, very slow, like the air was molasses. Another involved walking along a sidewalk in women's clothing when the sidewalk turned 90 degrees straight down and I'd fall into darkness while some voice laughed at me. The third involved skateboarding around town, sometimes with a friend, and having some kind of natural disaster (tornado, hurricane, tsunami) strike.

For almost the entirety of my 20s I've had nightmares 3-5 times a week. They were almost always very, very gruesome, involving violence, gore, torture, cannibalism, and pretty much any extension of those four things, often all of them happening to family or friends. I also had sleep paralysis about once a month. I can't tell you how many times I woke up my roommates or my partner at the time screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night. I'd often scream for help or for someone to save me or someone's name without realizing it until I jolted awake. I'd have nights where I'd crawl onto my floor and just lie there in panic and fear. My sleep paralysis didn't involve me seeing anything but I'd feel a presence in the room was going to kill me and being unable to even wiggle my toes was incredibly scary.

Since about October it's gotten better. I have nightmares maybe once every 1-2 weeks now which is annoying still but a major improvement. I haven't had sleep paralysis since... September? Right around that time there were two major life changes. One involved getting off my meds. The other is a bit more personal. I don't know if they're linked. But my mood and stress have generally been better since then.

I also have recurring non-nightmares. I can't tell you how many hundreds of times I've had dreams of being back in high school. I've had dreams like that for a decade. Particularly often my senior honors English class. Those are very mundane. But I have those super frequently, since even without nightmares I still remember my dreams much more often than not.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I don't remember much of my dreams. And if I do dream, my dreams are always boring and predictable, they follow the exact pattern of a blockbuster action movie with me being the hero, defeating some evil force in the end. I very much dislike it. Sometimes I actively long for nightmares. I watched so many horror movies as a kid -- Seems like it did nothing for me. I do remember a few nightmares I had as a kid, but they were never particularly terrible. Nothing that even compares to some of the dreams described ITT. I love dreaming and I very much feel like I'm missing out.

I used to think it was weed that made me not-dream, because smoking surpresses your REM phase. Then, after a day of not smoking you are supposed to have a so-called REM rebound and have even more intense dreams. I just doesn't happen for me. I'm sure I do dream, it's just that I never remember anything after getting up. I have had many phases of quitting drugs entirely for a year or longer.. Still no improvement, still no dreams. And then on the very rare occasion that I do remember something.. As I described above, my dreams are just boring and formulaic. It's strange really, because my day-time fantasies are extremely vivid and I often get lost in them.

I practice good sleep hygiene and am pretty physically active. I have zero problems falling asleep and an extremely tight sleep, nothing disturbs me. I used to have an apartment next to several nightclubs, I can sleep on the floor, in a chair, in an airplane, in a bus, I could probably sleep while standing upright.

Since we are being armchair psychologists here: Anyone have any idea why I don't remember much of anything? I know it can be trained, but I just need something to get me going. I can barely convince my body to take a jog in the morning, heavily doubt I could manage a "dream diary" or anything of that sort.

 

[warpus]

So you were wrong to think that 'nothing' was under the bed; what was under the bed was the ability to gain lucidity inside the dream

True I guess. I wish I had this power still, I haven't had a lucid dream in over a decade. They were kinda fun

 

[civvver]

I have recurring themes, though the specifics of the dreams seem to vary.

Main one is I show up for a college course on what I think is the first day. I'm my current age, taking a class for my masters. It turns out the class has actually been going on for a couple months and I know none of the material and there's a test that day. I fail and end up dropping the class.

Another similar one is I'm my current age but I go back to my high school to do a community theater production. I'm supposed to just be a backup to one of the main actors, but the actor is sick and the performance is that night and I don't know any of the lines. I never actually dream about the performance, I always wake up before that happens, but it's more like the panic of having to cram lines.

I think these are definitely related and just general anxiety about not being prepared for something. They seem to occur more often when I'm stressed with a deadline at work.

The other main theme I have is I will be younger, like in my early 20s, and I am at a party or something and trying to impress girls and it turns out I can fly. I'm not really sure why that's supposed to impress girls, but it does, I'm like watch this, fly away, sometimes take them with me like Aladdin on a magic carpet ride except more superman style. I always wake up before anything physical goes down. It's more a dream about flirtation. Kinda weird since I'm married. The girls are also never anyone I recognize from real life or celebrities or anything.

I don't know what this one means, but I think it's just trying to relive high school/college/dating years and the excitement that comes with meeting new people.

 

[Kyriakos]

I don't remember much of my dreams. And if I do dream, my dreams are always boring and predictable, they follow the exact pattern of a blockbuster action movie with me being the hero, defeating some evil force in the end. I very much dislike it. Sometimes I actively long for nightmares. I watched so many horror movies as a kid -- Seems like it did nothing for me. I do remember a few nightmares I had as a kid, but they were never particularly terrible. Nothing that even compares to some of the dreams described ITT. I love dreaming and I very much feel like I'm missing out.

I used to think it was weed that made me not-dream, because smoking surpresses your REM phase. Then, after a day of not smoking you are supposed to have a so-called REM rebound and have even more intense dreams. I just doesn't happen for me. I'm sure I do dream, it's just that I never remember anything after getting up. I have had many phases of quitting drugs entirely for a year or longer.. Still no improvement, still no dreams. And then on the very rare occasion that I do remember something.. As I described above, my dreams are just boring and formulaic. It's strange really, because my day-time fantasies are extremely vivid and I often get lost in them.

I practice good sleep hygiene and am pretty physically active. I have zero problems falling asleep and an extremely tight sleep, nothing disturbs me. I used to have an apartment next to several nightclubs, I can sleep on the floor, in a chair, in an airplane, in a bus, I could probably sleep while standing upright.

Since we are being armchair psychologists here: Anyone have any idea why I don't remember much of anything? I know it can be trained, but I just need something to get me going. I can barely convince my body to take a jog in the morning, heavily doubt I could manage a "dream diary" or anything of that sort.

Diary is the main tool, although it also will help if you at least make some conscious attempt to recall a dream. Usually it is difficult, cause they tend to move away swiftly. "Nature loves to hide itself", as Heraklitos said ^^

Another recurring dream i have, since 18 (even have it now from time to time) is that i supposedly didn't manage to graduate from the final year of highschool. Sometimes in the dream it is revealed that i got a uni degree, but somehow never had finished highschool. At other times i am even trying to complete an MA.
While the obvious meaning would refer to academic aspirations, those dreams are more generally about carrying over unfinished business from the past.

 

[Hrothbern]

as a kid my favorite recurring dream was that I climbed mountains and found myself suddenly flying ("like an eagle" )
For my feeling hundreds of them through all kinds of landscapes

I had two kinds of nightmares, perhaps a dozen of each,
one being to fall of a cliff
the other kind of weird: I dreamed that one of my arms was in a bucket with worms and my fingers were much thicker.... when I woke up with that dream, I was lying so that one arm had fallen "asleep" because of the way I was lying (less blood)

Since we are being armchair psychologists here: Anyone have any idea why I don't remember much of anything? I know it can be trained, but I just need something to get me going. I can barely convince my body to take a jog in the morning, heavily doubt I could manage a "dream diary" or anything of that sort.

There is ofc lots on internet on this,
including all kinds of food and micronutrients that could cause either more vivid dreams or nightmares (bad food, too much eating just before sleeping typically), also nootropics that interfere directly for more vivid dreams.

But skipping all that, my general understanding is that you have more vivid dreams if your day/night/sleep structure is more or less the same every day. Roughly same time you go to bed, wake up etc, and early enough time in the evening you start sleep, following the natural day/night rhytm incl sunlight.
Could be that this comes from your natural sleep hormone melatonin, produced every evening, that gets better in sync with your actual sleep.
If you use melatonin supplements for better sleep, many people also experience more vivid dreams.

This is a good article for laymen on that natural circadian rhythm: http://sustainablebalance.ca/serotonin-melatonin-and-your-circadian-rhythm/
"Moreover, timing of sufficient melatonin concentrations has a large impact on sleep quality. This means that even if you do manage to fall asleep with low melatonin concentrations in your blood, you will experience less of the critical stage 3 and REM sleep stages that are the most physically and mentally restorative processes"

EDIT
the fact that you do not wake up during sleeping and can sleep "long enough", does not necessarily mean that all restoring processes can unfold as intended by mother nature.
(BTW If you have a "fitbit" watch, a new gadget, you can read from your smartphone app how deep and good your sleep actually was, besides all kind of heart pulse, cardio, etc etc, when you jog, work out whatever)

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Thanks a lot Hrothbern. I have a horrible sleep cycle, I used to go to bed at around 5AM every day and wake up around 12. If I do work it is always at night so that doesn't help. Lately I've been getting it under control, I go to bed somewhere before 2AM and get up at 9 or 10.