Dreams sometimes can be very strange. When you wake up from a particularly weird or vivid dream, you might feel relieved that it’s all a dream and you’ll never have to go through it again. Well, it might not always work out that way. It is possible to dream a certain dream not once, but over and over again. Sometimes, you may wonder why you have recurring dreams and whether your brain is trying to tell you something.
Recurring dreams are strange dream themes experienced frequently and quite repetitively in an individual’s lifetime. These dreams indicate stress, anxiety, underlying conflict, trauma, and a lack of emotional healing.
Oftentimes, recurring dreams have common themes. Some of the most usual recurring dreams are generally stressful: falling, being chased, getting lost, dreaming of snakes, being late, and losing your teeth.
What Do Recurring Dreams Mean?
Whenever your dreams seem to be trying to tell you something about your life, you could not be further from the truth. Dream recurrence occurs as the result of unresolved issues that are stressing you. Avoiding the problem for as long as possible increases your chances of having the same dream over and over again.
Having recurring dreams can also occur as a result of trauma. In this situation, you might stop having the dream once you have dealt with the trauma. It’s natural to feel anxious about these dreams because of their repetitive nature. But whether it’s triggered by specific events or underlying causes, recurring dreams may persist until they are addressed and resolved.
We have listed a few of the most popular recurrent dreams and their meanings.
Recurring Dream Teeth Falling Out
If you’ve been feeling insecure lately and it’s been affecting your self-esteem, it can manifest as recurring dental-related dreams. Teeth falling out in our dreams can be a sign of losing our sense of self, whether we give it away deliberately or lose it to others through misperceptions. If you’re someone who feels inferior or feels like other people walk all over you, it’s not a surprise to have this kind of dream over and over again. The key is to take that power back. Believe in yourself or don’t let other people bring you down.
Teeth falling out in your dream can also symbolize your worries about aging. People who struggle with coming to terms with getting old often have recurring dreams of their teeth falling out. You have to understand that aging is an inevitable part of life. We are all young once, and we all eventually grow old. Unless you come to terms with this fact, this recurring dream will keep happening like a nightmare for you.
Recurrent teeth dreams can also be caused by major life changes or the feeling that time is quickly passing. Considering moving or starting a new job? Then it’s expected that you’ll have recurring dreams about your teeth falling out. While this seems to be a symbol of your physical appearance changing, it actually relates to the changes happening in your life.
Recurring Dreams About a House
In the world of dreams, a house is often a symbol for yourself. When the house appears too small for you to enter in your dreams, it represents low self-esteem. The size of the house can be associated with how you feel about yourself. When you dream of a house, it represents your inner self. The rooms in a house can reflect different aspects of your psyche. A recurring dream about a house can be a sign that you have unresolved issues within your own self. A recurring dream about an empty house, for example, can mean that you have been feeling empty.
If you keep having dreams about a house you’re not familiar with, it means there are certain parts of yourself that are waiting to be discovered. You may have talents and skills that you haven’t tapped into. This recurrent dream is calling to you to get acquainted with yourself over again for you might find something new about yourself.
Dreaming about your childhood home repeatedly is a sign that you have an unresolved issue or trauma as a child. Perhaps something bad or tragic happened to you as a child that you haven’t come to terms with. Perhaps you have a childhood memory you’ve been burying all these years. Recurring dreams about childhood homes is your subconscious telling you that you have to go back to the past, examine your childhood, and resolve whatever it is that’s been haunting you.
Recurring Dreams About Snakes
Dreaming about snakes repeatedly represents a deep-seated emotion that affects your waking life. The snakes appearing in your dream are a symbol of toxic behavior by significant people in your life. Simply by their bad attitude or behavior, these people are taking away your peace of mind. It means there is someone toxic in your life who is continuously trying to emotionally harm you. It can be your partner, a friend, or even a superior who is threatening your inner peace.
Recurring snake dreams can also signify feeling stuck. Your focus is clouded and you cannot keep moving forward. There are things or situations in your life that are holding you back. This dream tells you that there are roadblocks and unless you resolve them (and drive through them), you won’t reach your destination.
For Freud, on the other hand, snakes are symbols of sexual desire, mystery, fear, and deepest insecurity. Repetitive snake dreams can represent feelings of being repressed sexually. It also relates to feeling inferior or scrutinizing one’s self. In contrast, snakes recurring in your dream can also represent your desire for something new and exciting.
Recurring Dreams About Spiders
Dreaming about spiders all the time means you’re ignoring red flags. There’s a situation or person in your life that you don’t agree with, but you’re choosing to ignore or avoid it. It can be that you doubt someone’s motive for getting close to you, or you’re feeling unsure about making a certain decision. Unless you confront this red flag, it will keep manifesting in your dreams as spiders.
You probably need to work out something if spiders keep haunting your dreams. Dreams are a reflection of what you’ve experienced during the past few days. Recurring dreams often reflect waking issues that worry you and you are yet to resolve. To identify a pattern, you need to think about what normally happens in your waking hours before you have spider-infested dreams. Dreams that scare you may be the result of your subconscious trying very hard to get your attention. It sheds light on an annoying problem you need to resolve.
Recurring spider dreams can also have a significant meaning that deeply affects you in real life. Spiders weave webs which are intricate traps to catch their prey. Spiders, therefore, are symbols of manipulation. If you keep dreaming about a spider getting caught in a web, it might be a sign that you are feeling manipulated in real life. This dream can signify that you are feeling controlled by someone in your life.
Recurring Dreams About Someone
Having recurring dreams about someone indicates you may have unresolved issues with them. If it’s someone you know and you’ve been estranged for a while, it’s common to dream about them repeatedly. If in your recurrent dreams you find yourself engaging in a conversation with this person, this is your mind telling you that you are ready to confront these issues and start the healing process.
Repeatedly dreaming someone may not also be directly linked to that person per se. This individual may represent a part of you that needs healing or attention. For instance, if you keep dreaming about a shy friend, it might be your subconscious telling you that you need to be more confident in life.
It is also common to have repetitive dreams when you have wronged someone. While the person may be unaware, your mind continues to reflect the action. As a result, guilt develops, and you fall victim to it. As you sleep, your subconscious mind plays out your guilt in the form of dreams.
Recurring Dreams About School
Dreaming about school repeatedly can symbolize that you need to learn an important lesson. Typically, if one dreams of being back at school, it indicates the dreamer needs to learn some important life lessons. This dream could suggest you need to pay attention to issues in your waking life, or it could be associated with gaining new knowledge that could make your life better.
The school appearing in your recurrent dreams also directly affects the interpretation of that dream. It could suggest that your attitude in life is somewhat immature at times if you dream of attending either an elementary, junior, or primary school. When you dream of being at elementary school again, it shows you need a mature perspective on life. Having dreams about high school reflects what you think of yourself and how you learn. Seeing yourself in a college setting, or being back at college, means that something new must occur to move forward.
It is not an accident that you keep getting dreams about cramming for a test, standing in your high school cafeteria, or not being able to find your locker. Recurring dreams involving school often signify that you may be feeling stressed, anxious, or not giving yourself exactly what you need. Our schedules get busier and we let the things we want to do for ourselves slip through the cracks, that we end up taking self-care for granted. These negative thoughts and emotions end up manifesting as recurring themes in our dreams.
Recurring Dreams About an Ex
Repeatedly dreaming of your ex means you’re dealing with the parts of yourself you associate with your ex. Having dreams about your ex indicates that you are getting back the parts of yourself, whether good or bad, that you gave to them, or you lost in that relationship. You are putting back the pieces together to become whole. Recurring dreams about an ex doesn’t mean you miss them and should call them, but it’s a way for your subconscious to tell you that you are on your path to healing.
Recurrent dreams about an ex might also have nothing to do with an ex at all. It can represent wanting to change your current position. Dreams like this can also be a means of escape. If you find yourself trapped in a bad situation in real life, for instance, a recurring dream about an ex can be your mind’s way of escaping what’s happening in your waking life. It’s your mind expressing its need to break free from that situation.
An ex appearing repeatedly in your dreams can also be a symbol of your vulnerable self and being afraid to get hurt again. Many people find it difficult to get over an old relationship because they fear being hurt the same way again, especially if the breakup was a bitter experience. Your ex is the main star in your recurrent dreams because they represent the part of yourself you want to shield from pain.
Recurring Dreams of Being Pregnant
When you are anxious about becoming pregnant in real life, you may repeatedly dream about becoming pregnant. The recurrence of dreams often indicates that we are stressed or worried about something. This dream is our mind’s way of telling us that we are feeling anxious about pregnancy.
It’s not surprising for someone to have recurring dreams about pregnancy when they are thinking about having a baby soon. Someone who desires to become pregnant in their waking life plays out these desires in their dreams. If you are trying for a baby, you’re unlikely to be freaked out by pregnancy dreams, but they can leave you feeling discouraged if it doesn’t happen in real life.
Recurring pregnancy dreams might not even be related to children. Your dreams might involve a plan or a project that you’re bringing to life. A pregnancy dream means that in your real life, you have conceived an idea you plan to execute, but requires a lot of work. It’s often a labor of love a woman wants to bring into the world, and it most likely involves their professional life. This explains why women in their twenties and thirties are more likely to have recurring pregnancy dreams, not because they want to have kids, but because they’re busy establishing careers.
Recurring Dreams of Being Chased
Being chased in dreams is a fairly common theme when it comes to recurrent dreams. Dreaming of being chased generally indicates your subconscious is trying to communicate that you are avoiding an issue or a specific person. It is important to understand the context of these dreams, including the identity of the chaser. Who is chasing you? Is it a man, a woman, or is it a looming dark entity? You could be running away from how you feel to avoid something that is scaring you or worrying you, or something painful.
If you keep dreaming about someone you know that keeps chasing you, it signifies that they remind you of a part of yourself that scares or worries you. Is that person controlling in real life? Do they have anger issues? Don’t they respect your boundaries? This repeated dream is your psyche communicating with you that you tend to be too hard on yourself. You have a rigid sense of wanting to control everything in your life. You dream about people chasing you because they remind you of qualities that scare you about yourself. It is natural for us to project our negative traits to others.
Repeated dreams about a dark shadow stalking you symbolize a trauma you haven’t recovered from. Something tragic happened in your past and instead of confronting this trauma, you buried it deep down. You haven’t come to terms with it that it ends up becoming a looming presence in your life. It’s always there, and though you might not see it, it’s just hiding beneath the surface, waiting to be released. What you need to do is to deal with this trauma. You need to confront it for you to come to terms with it. Unresolved trauma can affect your life so it’s important to reconcile with it so you can learn to accept and acknowledge what happened to you, heal and move forward in your life.
Recurring Dreams About Death
Frequently dreaming about death is a sign that you are experiencing something in your life which will very soon end. Perhaps you turned in a two-week resignation at your job. Perhaps you are about to move out of a place you’ve lived in for years. Repeated dreams about death or dying might simply your subconscious coming to terms with the fact that something that used to be an important part of your life is coming to an end.
Recurring death dreams may also symbolize the real fear you have about death and dying. If you have a phobia about death, it’s not unusual to keep dreaming about it. You constantly worry about it and it takes root in your subconscious and manifests itself in your dreams. What you need to do is to confront your fear of dying to stop having this type of dream.
If you keep having dreams about dying, it doesn’t signal that you’re going to die in real life. It signifies that something in your life is directly affecting you. You need to introspect and figure out when and how this recurrent dream started. What happened that could trigger such a dream? When did it start happening? Once you find that out, the next step is to figure out what you can do to resolve that. How can you contend with that? What can you do to let it go and move on? As soon as you no longer worry about it, the recurring dreams will stop.