Dreams

As I've aged, I have found myself less able to remember any dreams or nightmares I may have had, but what I will say is that they have always been in full technicolor glory.

I'm not so sure if I've ever had recurrent dreams, but there were recurrent themes when I was a child, such as running up or down a never-ending flight of stairs to get away from someone who was chasing me.

Sometimes I feel I am able to make sense of my dreams and determine what triggered them, but at other times I can't because they are just too nonsensical and bizarre.

It doesn't happen often, but if I've been watching something on TV with 'adult' scenes, I can sometimes have dreams based on those scenes. A close friend of mine once told me that this was probably my subconscious mind trying to tell me that my body was in need of some 'action' - if you get my drift. 

What I have found is that if I awake from pleasant dreams, I can never continue those dreams if I roll over and go straight back to sleep. 

This was interesting to read thanks for sharing :) 

They say we dream in black and white. Mine are technicolor.

Recurrent ones are common and commonly allied to our fears. I used to dream of stealing a fast car to escape a demon but the car controlled me. My visual special difficulties were making driving a real life nightmare. I gave up driving. The dreams stopped.

The going to the toilet one is recurrent when you need the bathroom at 2 in the morning, lol.

Now again (rare) I have dreams I know are spirit given. Unlike most which vanish within 5 mins of waking up, they remain with me for life and do have deeper meaning.

Most dreams are just our psyche sorting our junk out, now and a rare again they are something more.

Maybe 95% are either anxiety dreams or full on nightmares which wake me, the imagery is different every time with a different plot, hence not treatable by techniques such as EMDR, but the included emotions of fear and loss and catastrophe a consistent. I have an unusual presentation where usually I go from consciousness directly into REM sleep. I’m hoping the forthcoming sleep clinic consultation will help with all this. 

Sadly I've been struggling to sleep but when I do I get so many nightmares

I think it's anxiety causing it.

Maybe its good that I do not remember my dreams.  My wife has often said I shout and howl in my sleep.

I have dreams where the past gets mixed up with today. So I might dream that a deceased relative is with my current family, even if they weren't alive at the same time or I am in my childhood home today.

Does anyone continually dream about people they were in relationships with in the past?

I only had a very few boyfriends, but I tend to go through phases of dreaming intensely about one of them every night for weeks.

I don't understand why but this has been a lifelong trend.

I normally have the same reoccurring dream, I am being chased by a gang, I normally make it to a safe place but then I’m found so then the chase continues. Luckily when it gets quite grim it normally wakes me up.

Unfortunately I don't have any 'nice' dreams.

Your profile bio is fascinating. 

Thank you for sharing that.

I love, also, those dreams of flying hovering and visiting places. I always feel great after and like I had andventure.

I think they are visiting us. Hanging out. Sounds like a lot of love there.

those are my fav!

For, me dreams are often literal enactments of set expressions, like "let sleeping dogs lay" in which a dog is curled up sleeping, or "suck it up" in which someone hoovers up something with their mouth. There will be a string of these and I have to sort them out. My subconscious does not know the difference, just that it wants to participate in my cogitations.

I dream of things I'm concerned about at the time. that's always the case so.

For your dream: Perhaps showering could be "coming clean" about something, for example.

I posit this with the following caveat ...

Carl Jung said, I paraphrase,  Only the dreamer knows the meaning of the dream.

The other dream- repeated (phone) dream is just a garden variety anxiety dream.  They come when we are faced with exigencies pressing down that we don't feel confident to manage with our usual go-to skill-sets, or for which we can't be in our go-to happy places.

Everyone gets those.

Mine is missing a bus, or the bus is going the wrong way, etc.

A line cook friend of mine's dream is of more orders than he can handle or the food item is missing. etc

another friend sings, and in hers' the sheet music is wrong or her voice goes, or it sounds like someone else etc.

Do you have a recurring nice, or pleasant dream?

Mine is an beautiful, old style Mexican village I go back to in a recurring dream. It's hilly and I wend around the narrow streets with confidence. It feels like home.

I dreamt once about a Jeep at dusk, in the middle of a gently-inclined road that was lined with hedgerows. When I opened the passenger-side rear-door, an enumerable-amount of kittens clambered-out, once on the ground they set-off like baby-turtles into the hedgerows. There were so many than I couldn’t even think to grab one, before they all were disappearing into the foliage, and then were gone.  
I looked up the road and saw a single adult-fox slinking across the road, it stopped mid-way and I caught the glint of its gaze as we locked-eyes, it carried on until it was obscured by the opposing hedgerow and was gone.. then I woke up..

My condolences on your loss.

Thank you Debbie. We understood each other, a rare thing in my life, I miss them terribly. 

I have read that vivid dreams about loved ones who have died are quite common. It was so real though that it didn't even seem like a dream. I haven't had a similar experience before or since. 

I get violent dreams. 

*Possible TW warning*

I have a regular one where I get stabbed and have blood all over my hands and then I wake up and have to turn on my light to check my hands because it feels so real. That's a horrible one.

Who has violent dreams?

I've had some terribly violent ones but the one that stays with me because I don't really understand why I had it is when I was stabbing my best friend in the eyes with a pair of scissors

I think that's why I like my dreams so much and read them because it's escaping to a better place where the impossible is possible.

What could be better than that?

Sometimes I wish I could stay dreaming forever.

Yes, maybe it's escapism, as I really enjoy those dreams ...