Your dreams are telling you something. Are you listening to them?

Do you have a recurring dream? Do you find yourself naked in public, or facing a tsunami, losing teeth, falling, being chased, or running late to catch a plane? Do you wake up and brush these off as anxiety dreams based on common fears? So what about that baby (the one you don’t have in waking life) that you keep forgetting to feed, or that dead body you buried that keeps resurfacing, or the way you keep getting your arms tangled in the overhead power cables every time you fly?

What are recurring dreams?

In most recurring dreams nothing is solved: by the end of your dream you’re still trying to cover your nakedness, the plane leaves without you, you misplace the baby, or the police have arrived on the murder scene and you wake up sweating with guilt, resigned to life imprisonment, until relief washes over you and you realize it was that dream again and you are free.

Sometimes I feel guilty or anxious in my dreams, but that’s just a dream right ?

That guilt you felt in your dream is real guilt, in this case for something that you thought you’d ended and buried (your feelings about a relationship, a course of study, your spirituality, a particular goal) but that resurfaces at regular intervals. That dream resignation to life imprisonment relates to a severe restriction you’ve created in your life, perhaps to assuage those feelings of guilt.

Your recurring dreams may be dramatic and surreal, but, as with all dreams, strip them down to their basics and you’ll see they’re metaphors for some area of your life.

What does a dream actually do ?

Your dreaming brain processes your conscious and unconscious experiences of the last 24-48 hours. Dreaming is like updating your hard drive, neatly filing your recent experiences away as memories, beliefs and personal memos on how the world works – or, to be more accurate, how you think the world works.

A recurring dream theme comes up because you have a recurring issue in waking life that you can’t resolve.

How do I handle recurring dreams?

Remember that all dreams reflect the last 24-48 hours, so every time you have your personal recurring dream, note what issues came up for you during the preceding two days.

Ask yourself what changed in your life when you first started having your recurring dream. That change is a clue to the issue your dream is processing.

What do the neat endings mean ?

Have you ever had a recurring dream suddenly come up with a neat ending, a solution? After years of missing the plane you catch it, or you stop hiding your nakedness and joyfully pose for an art class, or that dead and buried body turns up alive and well, or you fly in a power cable free sky, or calm the raging tsunami? These dreams mark the point where you resolve the old recurring waking life issue.

What is a slo-mo dream?

You know the one where your legs weigh a ton and you can hardly walk? The going gets tougher and tougher and you think you’ll never get to wherever you’re going? This common recurring dream usually reflects your self doubt and hesitations weighing you down, holding you back. These doubts are based on your unconscious limiting beliefs about yourself, your abilities, your goals, what you think you should or shouldn’t be doing. When you seriously dissect a dream, you can identify that limiting belief, examine it to see where you got it from (the clues are all there in your dream), and, if you wish, you can change it into a belief that works for you rather than against you, a belief that assists you to fly towards your goal rather than drag your feet and never achieve it.

What about the dreams when you are being chased or when you just keep running ?

You are running from a waking life issue or worry. The more you run from an issue, the more it chases you through your waking hours, right? Review the couple of days that precede each return of this dream for clues.

What about all those other symbols popping up in my dreams?

That tsunami may be an overwhelming wave of emotion that threatens to knock you off your feet because you are not facing it. That neglected baby may be something new in your life that you are neglecting to nourish. Those power cables that tangle you when you want to fly high may be your issues around power (your dreaming brain is clever with word play) that are limiting you from reaching your highest potential.

What should I look for in my recurring dream

Instead of flicking your next recurring dream off as ‘just that old dream again’, look for the parallels between your dream and your waking life so you can identify the limiting belief that is keeping you stuck in the same old cycle. Then … break free!

Have you had a recurring dream? Do you think it’s related to something in your everyday life?

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