So sorry, Lucille...I know that bad dreams can be disconcerting. They are often triggered by something going on in one's life, by a movie or TV program watched shortly before bed, or a book being read. Have you figured out the reason behind yours?

I have had bad dreams every single night for as long as I started remembering my dreams.....a child.. They are always a little different from each other, but have exactly the same 'theme'. Since I understand the reason behind the dreams, I can pretty much turn over and go back to sleep.

I've been dreaming more than usual, or at least remembering them when I wake. I attribute mine to taking Valerian root for tight, sore muscles.

Lucille, a bagel remediable dream is maybe not so very bad? If the dream is still current in your head as you're waking up, you can sometimes make conscious decisions and direct the dream to go in a direction you favor.

I agree with Rhizo about the triggers, though they're not always obvious. For instance, the people with bad intentions in your dream could be a worry that you have termites, or that the members of a group you belong to are pushing for actions you don't like, or talking about you behind your back. Or it could be literal, like you're worried about walking through a bad part of town, or getting a Trojan Horse on your computer and having your data stolen. Or it could be from a fictional book or TV show that left something unresolved in your mind that you played out in a dream to analyze. If you don't press too hard, but ask yourself what triggered it, you might tell yourself the answer.

My bad dreams are far and away caused by eating spicy food before bed. Weird, but true. Here's a link to site that I like to have fun with. It'll tell you what your dreams mean. Often, people know that when they're dreaming about houses, the house represents themselves, but did you knows spiders can be representations of mothers? I didn't! Meaning, don't be too liberal in agreeing with their assessments.

I usually have bed dreams when I'm too warm at night, which has been rather often lately.

Just make sure your doors are locked and your windows too. I rarely dream. I'm lucky to actually sleep. But the bagel sure sounded good to me.

That's a fun link and I love this topic. I have a recurring dream about shopping at this shopping mall. I know this place and sometimes part of my dream is telling people how to get tothis dept or this store or whatever. I mean, I KNOW this mall, lol. Sometimes I am shopping for perfume and the counter looks the same each time I dream about it. The place is always so familiar. I'm gonna freak out if one day I go to a mall that looks like the one in my dreams.

What dreams mean is so personal! I think a dream symbol dictionary must be more about cultural norms. The spider being the mother actually reminds me of a children's book which was very popular when I was little. Very maternal spider. Though, I suppose it could be a black widow (venomous) or someone who has you tangled in a web too.

I looked in the dictionary Rob linked for something that often appears in my dreams that I remember: A toilet! Usually standing in the middle of a big room, white, pristine, closed, with no hint of plumbing hookups or water (not bathroom--never the same room or any place I recognize). The site said all kinds of esoteric stuff about toilet symbols, but that's not it for me at all. It's always one of two things. One is that I really need to go to the bathroom, but IRL I'm in my big bed in my big room. The other thing, which usually comes with a feeling, in the dream, of being exposed in the big room, even though I'm merely an observer of the scene with the fixture standing there in the middle of the floor, is that my bum has, in reality, escaped from the covers. :)

No more bad dreams and I never did figure out what brought on the ones I had. But Plllog's list above, including termites, gives plenty of food for thought so I'll probably stock up on bagels :)

I often go on vacations in my dreams, especially if I am in the process of planning one! I have had terrible dreams that when I wake up, I am crying. Prefer the former, obviously...

I took a Naproxen for pain and inflammation and had a headset on to listen to the television without disturbing anyone. I fell into a deep sleep and incorporated the characters on Modern Family into my dream. I remember it very well and slept about three hours. My kitties had left my lap and I wonder what I was doing and you can't ask.

I don't think dreams have any meaning at all. I think vivid dreams with a story line are the result of the brain freewheeling with thoughts, something it can do when sleep frees it from the oversight of a person's conscious self.

I'm also devoutly skeptical of anything alleged to be a result of implausibly unexplainable or paranormal phenomena or forces, so I see my view of dreams to be consistent with that.

Snidely

If that is so, why do you think so many people have similar sorts of dreams?

I think dreams are fascinating. I believe that most don't mean anything, but I also think that there can be more to them. I also believe it's possible for those who have passed to communicate in our dreams.

My grandpa has a cool story about it. My mom died of cancer in 2008, and a few months before she died, he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, which has an extremely grim diagnosis. He started treatment, and he got so sick and grey and every time I left him, I thought it would be the last time I saw him. He was realistic and getting his things together in preparation of death.

Then after my mom passed, he had a dream where they were running through a field, happy and carefree, and my mom dove in a hole in the ground, and he tried to follow her through but she kicked him out and said, "It's not your time yet." And after that, he started improving and all his scans have been clear ever since, 7 years now. It could be a coincidence as some people do survive that stage and type of cancer, but our family believes otherwise.

What an awesome story, Chi83! I love to hear about dreams like that! I just had one recently where my younger brother (who is living) was grilling hamburgers for my mom, my dad, my niece, my friend and 2 brothers, all of whom have passed. I was so happy to see all of them and get to spend time with them again.

Lucille, I don't know.

I wonder if it's the case that comparing two people living in different or dissimilar cultures it would be that they don't have common dreams to the same extent those who have common experiences would.

Your brain of course knows what you know, feels what you feel, and those puzzle pieces can be put together in new combinations for dreams.

There are some themes that are cross-cultural and part of the human condition, like flying dreams and running dreams, tests or trials, being unprepared, being naked in public, and, of course, sex and love with it's oh so many splendors of opposite genders and thrills of romance (okay Austin Lounge Lizards aren't cross-cultural and, yes, my dreams often have background music).

People from the same culture do often share symbolism. I've only skimmed some of the research, however, and don't have a firm grasp of the conclusions. If I understand right, there's a lot of language basis to dreams. Other kinds of dream research have shown that often items in dreams make up puns, often complicated ones. From a linguistic point of view, this makes sense in terms of the visualization of thinking. It's all fascinating. Right now we're in a period when a lot of bits of knowledge about cognition are finally coalescing into some understanding of how it all works. Stay tuned...

I used to dream that my mom and I were riding motorcycles in my hometown. That is completely implausible as were are both afraid of riding motorcycles!

I dream often of my childhood home with two giant shumard red oaks in the front yard. The trees seem to have importance, maybe just pleasant memories of whiling away summer afternoons in their shade looking at the sky. In my dreams, I am always looking at the blue sky and clouds and also stormy skies, but the trees are always there!

I rarely dream any more - at least that I am aware of - but when I do, it is usually after my brain has had a good rest and then its play time; The weirdness usually begins in the early morning hours. I recall that in the past I have dreamed I was falling just before I hit the floor. I had rolled out of bed. That hasn't happened in the past 10 years.

When I was growing up, my sister and I discussed our dreams. We found it fascinating that we both dreamed. We found that many of our dreams were in black and white and we'd ask, "Did you dream in color last night?" We decided our dreams should have color and after that, all our dreams were in color.

I think dreams are definitely the brains way of making sense of certain things. Just over a year ago I had a severe brain hemorrhage caused by an aneurysm and while I was in hospital I barely understood what was going on around me. I do remember though, waking up from the most intense dreams I'd ever had (but it's like my brain was so messed up, I couldn't tell what was a dream and what was reality). Aparently it was happening a lot (the nurses asked my husband if I was in the army since I kept talking about all these missions I'd been on). I also remember having an arguement with a nurse for calling the cops on me after I came to and saw a couple of male orderleys at the end of my bed and had woke up from a dream about it. Strangely though, after that I didn't dream for over a year, but I've had a couple of dreams over the last several months.The strange thing is, before all of this I used to dream frequently but now I rarely do.

If a brain injury affects dreams like this, it's seems to me that dreams are just the brains manifestation of what it thinks is going on at any particular time.

Trancegemini, that is exactly correct: dreams are just the brains manifestation of what it thinks is going on at any particular time. This is what the experts who study it say, more or less. Your dreams let you work out problems and issues and sort through the huge amount of input they get every day.

To be specific, everybody dreams every time they get a decent amount of decent sleep. People who truly don't dream start losing their marbles very quickly.

When we say we "don't dream", it's that we don't remember our dreams. You can train yourself to remember your dreams. When you remember spontaneously, but haven't always, it may actually mean that you're having disruptions to your sleep. Often dreams are remembered if you wake right away, and especially if you start to rouse during the dream, but it's more normal to go through other sleep stages before waking, during which your dreams usually get tucked away as being over and done with.

I did rouse during a dream this morning. I was, in the dream, at a conference, and in the lounge in the (strange and rundown) hotel (which may be an artifact of watching Hotel Impossible this week) talking to colleagues. I wasn't a character in the dream, however, but really, recognizably me, and I was seeing the dream from first person perspective, rather than as an outside observer, which is pretty unusual for me. The odd part, however, was that while everyone else was pretty normal, I was lounging on a big sofa, with twisted draperies around me like an odalisque. I tried to change it but just ended up, in the dream, on top of the bed in the (really weird series of rooms) hotel room. Then I woke up and found myself in the exact same position with the covers so draped about, as any model of a 19th C. orientalism painting.

I remember highly detailed, visually, intensely colored dreams, but for the last few years the ones I most remember are the ones which are telling me about my current condition. :)

dreams are just the brains manifestation of what it thinks is going on at any particular time.

I don't think I agree with this statement. Whenever I was pregnant, or taking certain medications, I would remember my dreams upon waking. The thing that irritated me the most, were that almost every one of the dreams were "repeats". They would be the same dreams I had anywhere from a few months to many years earlier. Some of them were on at least the sixth to tenth showing--and those are just from the periods when I remembered them! I hardly think a rerun from a dream I first recall from forty years ago is resolving anything in my mind. I would be disgusted upon waking that I dreamed that boring, unoriginal dream yet again. Nine month stretches of bad reruns was very unpleasant.

I have weird dreams including "bad" ones all the time. They are very vivid. I try to learn from the ones I remember. But I do know not to take them at all literally. I think dreams have all kinds of sources. But I know that often it seems that it is my subconscious trying to resolve things or even warn me of things.

I used to have a recurring nightmare. But that stopped after almost two decades of nightmares after I was forced to face the real life fear behind it. Some would say it was a PTSD thing. I think that is a bit of over-dramatizing it personally. But I'm all over it now and the answer was in the dream all along.

I was going to start a new "dream" thread, but I felt it was better to revive this one instead. I wanted to start recording some of my more memorable dreams in one place, and I haven't been good at keeping a dream diary, although I used to do that.

Anyway, this morning I woke up from a disturbing dream in which I was taking an adult art class, and I believe I was living in Venice at the time. Various friends of mine from various places were in this class with me, and we all sat in old style school desks. We also had to bring our own art supplies to the class, and this was the first class of the season/semester.

To begin the class, the teacher told us to draw something - anything that we wanted - and then he would critique it when we were finished. I chose to draw a man's face, and I used a photograph of Barbara Stanwick (whom I hate) as a guide. I used a pencil for this drawing, and when the teacher came by and looked at what I was drawing, he said that a pencil was not good for this type of drawing. I told him I would bring charcoal next time, and I starting erasing parts of my drawing (especially the mouth) that I thought I had drawn too dark. The mouth looked like it had lipstick on it, and so I needed to lighten it.

After the class was over, I went to work at the furniture company where I used to work, but there were almost no employees left working there, and I had returned to work part time. When the work day was over, I went to the parking lot to drive home, but I could not find my car there even though I remembered where I had parked it. So I asked for someone to give me a ride home and told her to take the freeway that went by the airport to save time. This was supposedly on the way to Venice, but in reality, it is not. Then I remembered that I lived in Westchester instead of Venice and could have walked home, as that was only 1.3 miles.

I woke up because I was disturbed by not being able to find my car. This happens often in my dreams. I was not upset about the class (as I usually am), but I was depressed about the condition of the furniture company where I used to work.

I'll agree with sjerin. I'm likely to have a bad dream if I'm too warm in bed. We usually sleep with a window open a bit, but not when temps get below freezing.

Lars, dreams about not finding your car are pretty common. I’ve had them many times. I’ve read they can symbolize something in your real, waking life is making you feel somewhat lost and uncertain about a direction to take. Who knows!

My dreams can get pretty convoluted. One of my recurring dreams is I’m carrying something, like a purse or book, that I can set down on the ground and use to drive anywhere. It stays in the form of a purse, book or whatever and never becomes a car.🤷‍♀️

My most recurring dream of all is looking for a restroom, public or private, that’s either not in working order or is completely open with no walls/privacy.

cloebud, your recurring dream is a nightmare that I have had fairly often. When I was a child I used to have a dream that I was in the back seat of a car and some force was pulling me backward. It was terrifying. As an adult I have dreams where either the brakes in my car don't work, or the steering doesn't work. Equally terrifying. Lars, I'm curious, why do you hate Barbara Stanwick? I remember her vaguely from The Big Valley.

I hate Barbara Stanwyck for the way she treated her ex-husband, Robert Taylor. She forced him to pay alimony when he was deathly ill in the hospital, and she was making much more money than he was or had. She came off as heartless and greedy. She did not need the money, but she made him pay her anyway, and I felt that that was just mean and cruel. She was not a nice person. She comes across as a misandrist.

gigi, if you look up cars and dreams there are lots of interpretations. I once read a book about dreams that had a chapter on ”The Most Common Recurring Dreams.” I can’t remember all of them but the one I mentioned about difficulty finding a useful restroom was called ”The Toilet Thief.” Another one mentioned loosing your teeth. I’ve had that one, too. My teeth all become soft and kind of disintegrate.🥴 Then there were some about flying, falling, being naked in public and being back in school. I’ve had the flying one that’s funny. I start running and flapping my arms really hard. It takes awhile but I start flying above trees and houses. LOL, I read it’s a good sign if you can actually get off the ground. With the school dream I’m always there with no schedule of classes, no locker and totally lost.

I had a lot of dreams about flying when I was a child, and I also had a lot of dreams about falling, but when I was falling, I would fall into another dimension and not get hurt, except for the times I dreamed about falling off of bridges, and then I would wake up before I hit the river or creek.

As an adult, I've had a lot of dreams about being back at university, and those are always bad - much worse than my real experience, since I was a good student and always kept up with my studies, although in my dreams, I am always behind.

I never had dreams about losing my car until I actually did misplace my car for three days and had forgotten when I had parked it. This happened when I drove to the university stadium parking lot with a large portfolio that I needed to drop off at a studio, and after that I went to my Italian class where I had to perform in a skit that I had helped write. After Italian class, I took the bus home, having forgotten that I had driven, and so my car stayed at the stadium parking lot. I very seldom drove, since I had a bike and I was also close to a university bus line. Anyway, this is where my fear of losing my car comes from. I did not have a car until I moved to Austin to get my design degree - I did not need one in San Francisco.

i've had strange dreams, to be sure, but my most recent one is one i think i won't ever forget.

i dreamed i was awakened by my female great dane standing in my bedroom doorway, snarling at me with teeth bared and hackles raised. now this is something she would simply never do and it was unnerving, to say the least. in my dream, i wondered if she was trying to warn me of some impending disaster, perhaps a rabid coyote waiting to pounce? the house on fire? then, suddenly, i saw my dane boy trying to climb into bed with me which isn't allowed. the strange part was that he was wearing a pink dress. that's the part that jolted me awake because frank wouldn't be caught dead wearing a dress, especially a PINK dress!

when i told this dream to a friend of mine, she said that vivid dreams can often be a side effect of steroid injections. it just so happened this dream occurred within hours of having epidural injections in my back. i was given a list of possible side effects and lo and behold, weird dreams and sometimes even hallucinations can occur. who knew?? 😲

I don’t remember most of my dreams and I don’t remember ever having any particularly bad dreams.

The last dream that I remember was a few weeks ago after watching Oppenheimer.

I was walking with Cillian Murphy and he was wearing an overcoat with super long sleeves that covered his hands. His hand suddenly appeared and it took mine as we walked.

It felt warm and good and peaceful.

When I have the toilet dreams, I usually wake up realizing I really need to get to the bathroom, so I figure it's just reality stepping into my dreams. There's also something about the sleep/wake cycle that makes it easier to remember your dreams in certain phases or if you wake suddenly you're more likely to remember them.

I do seem to dream more and sleep more fitfully if the room is too hot.

I have dreamed of not flying but rather being out of my body and soaring over the town and trying to go visit someone who is not near.

I haven't dreamed of falling in a long time, but when I did I'd always wake before I landed....when I was a child, they used to say if you didn't wake and hit, you died.

“When I have the toilet dreams, I usually wake up realizing I really need to get to the bathroom, so I figure it's just reality stepping into my dreams.”

That can be the case with me, Annie. The book I read did say the dream could be exactly that. The other explanation was it could mean there’s something going on in your waking life you’re having trouble dealing with or getting rid of (lol, relieving yourself!).

One of my strangest dreams was…

Long line of people waiting to go/crawl through a small (maybe 3’ x 3’) silver door.

Inside door was a very long slide.

Sound of toilet flushing with each person going down slide.

Bottom of slide has a sign with ”City of Forgotten Love” with an arrow pointing down a yellow brick road.

Everyone is walking down the road.

End of dream.🤷‍♀️

Annie, I have always wondered about that story of dying if you hit the ground. Since you would be dead how do you tell anyone you were dreaming about falling?

I always try to enjoy dreaming about falling since when else can you experience that with impunity? I once dreamed about jumping off an immensely tall skinny thin ridge of red rock into a body of water and the feeling of the cold water when I finally hit it woke me up.

The major change in my dreams over the years is that I used to never have a sense of smell or taste and now I do. It started with me picking up and eating a piece of crusty bread.

Lars, when my children were young I had a recurring dream of forgetting one of them in a store somewhere.

My bad dream...the return of an 8 year old thread. ;-)

I've also had reality step into my dreams when it comes to breathing. I'll have a dream where I'm like, in the back seat of a car trying to breathe and I can't get any air. I try rolling down the window and sticking my face in the window to get more fresh air, and then I usually wake up, finding out I'm all congested and I open my mouth to breathe. Apparently I don't open my mouth automatically while I'm sleeping.

Annie, trouble with breathing isn’t one I’ve heard before. Reality makes sense there, too.

I also have one where I very clearly hear a phone loudly ringing. No one wants to hear any phone ring in the middle of the night. Though just a dream, it’s so real and always abruptly wakes me up.

Apparently having vitamin B12 or melatonin can cause you to have more vivid dreams. Of course sometimes the dreams are nightmares..

My flying dreams were always out of my bedroom window and somehow off of a telephone wire up on a pole. I kept on having to prove over and over and over again I could fly in my dreams. Once I started flying I could fly very well and fly circles around everybody. Then I would have to prove it to them again in the next dream. It was very strange. I had similar dreams over and over again. I wrote them down just in case I just thought I'd had them before.

Thank you for starting this up again Lars! I for one always enjoy rereading older posts and enjoy the new additions.

If I had starchy food at night, I’d visit dreamland. I often dreamed about schools, old classmates, exams, couldn’t find books and classrooms…… I couldn’t find car or a bike, had to walk home, walked in unknown places, not sure which way was right……. and there is one other strange dream that I had many times is moving out of college dorm, everyone else was gone, but I still had a lot of stuff to pack. There were good dreams too-shopping, picking out beautiful dresses with super cheap prices, my hands were full, couldn’t have them all …..walked in a big beautiful home with glass walls, it had a nice view…..

“Once I started flying I could fly very well and fly circles around everybody.”

Same with me and also fly high above everything.

I've had good dreams too, and I've written down a lot of them, but they don't happen much anymore. Some that I've written down took up five pages in my diary.

In the most recent dream I remember, my brother was wanting to take some of the pills that I take, but I would not let him and told him that they were prescriptions for me.

If you want the experience of falling in real life, you can go off a high diving board. I've done that, and it took much longer to hit the water than I expected at first. I have no interest in jumping out of a plane, but I have gone parasailing at the beach and ziplining, which is somewhat like flying.