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What are the most common 'themes' in your dreams?

1K views 26 replies 25 participants last post by  tea111red 
#1 ·
For those of you who dream regularly and/or remember your dreams often, what are some themes that tend to show up in your dreams a lot? I've found this to be an interesting subject and an insight to your subconsious.

I am a senior in school with no social life. I often dream about being confident and getting along very well with people, and being incredibly likable. Everybody loves me and I hang out with all sorts of people.

Although less common, I have quite a few dreams where I completely snap and scream/swear in peoples faces, trash classrooms and run away from school.

Unrelated to the last two, I have a lot of dreams where I can 'float'. It's kind of like being underwater, kicking and pushing my legs gets me higher in the air. Sometimes I take a running jump. I free fall a lot too. But it's safe, I go in slow motion and can direct myself where I want to go.
 
#2 ·
I don't really think there are any common themes unless I can name about 50 but this morning I woke up really bitter about someone I knew from years ago until I came to my senses because, in the dream, they were being the biggest b****.
 
#3 ·
Unrelated to the last two, I have a lot of dreams where I can 'float'. It's kind of like being underwater, kicking and pushing my legs gets me higher in the air. Sometimes I take a running jump. I free fall a lot too. But it's safe, I go in slow motion and can direct myself where I want to go.
That's weird. I've met others with similar flying dreams. Most people are Superman'ing or something, but it's like a video game's "double-jump" effect times infinity. It's a boost in the air, and they you slowly fall/glide. It's so strange. I remember one dream where I went really, really high and got scared and so I floated back down. Took forever. Haha!

When I was little, a three-headed alien dream. It would peek in windows and be at the front door and things. It's left head was all snappy and snarly and it's neck would wiggle like mad. The one on the right wasn't actually a head, just a face in the shoulder. It'd just drool and moan. The middle one didn't say anything, but it was focused. Seemed like the intelligent one. Kind of demonic (reddish), but all malformed. The dream was that it was an alien invasion and this one was trying to get in. *shrug* Maybe I saw a movie? I didn't see Carpenter's The Thing officially until high school, but maybe I saw a piece of it when I was little. The monsters kind of reminded me of it when I watched it, so... Maybe?

Naked in high school. Just backpack and shoes. I was always worried, but starting seeing that no one was noticing and so I stopped caring as much. It was like nudity was vulnerability and feeling fine with who I am, I suppose would be a way to look at it.
 
#8 ·
my dreams are usually incoherrent, rapidly changing places/people/situations which dont seem to have any continuity

They often involve doing things that seem perfectly reasonable while dreaming, but make no sense when awake

stuff like deciding to water the garden so the sun will rise, but needing to stop so I can catch a bus somewhere, then the bus becomes a plane and I'm about to go skydiving, but I need to fill my pockets with sand before I jump, but I have to do it secretly because I don't want everyone else to know that I forgot my pocket-sand... etc. etc.
 
#9 ·
1. I'm in college or high school and I don't know where my class is/forget that I registered and I haven't been going all semester or haven't been doing the homework.

2. I'm at the ice rink and I'm trying to play hockey and overall am kind of awkward and not playing well or watching or changing into hockey gear or late getting on the ice or doing drills, etc.

Those are by far the most repetitive themes, but I've also dreamed often that I'm trying to navigate a hotel or its elevators or that I'm going to the basement and strange things happen down there. I also have many dreams about driving or dealing with cars or fixing them with my dad or working in his garage. Often I don't really know what to do and am of little help. I dream about all sorts of things though of course.
 
#15 ·
1. I'm in college or high school and I don't know where my class is/forget that I registered and I haven't been going all semester or haven't been doing the homework.
Omg I have these dreams every night. Failing school and getting lost and forgetting classes. I never went to college and I haven't gone to school in over 5 years.

I have dreams about my childhood home and neighborhood frequently. Also I have dreams that I'm driving and the brakes don't work. Recently I dream that I go back to work at my old job and have to apologize for leaving.
 
#11 ·
Unrelated to the last two, I have a lot of dreams where I can 'float'. It's kind of like being underwater, kicking and pushing my legs gets me higher in the air. Sometimes I take a running jump. I free fall a lot too. But it's safe, I go in slow motion and can direct myself where I want to go.
That is an interesting take on flight. If it occurs to me in a dream that I need or should be able to fly, it's always the same: so long as I concentrate I can feel the air supporting me and it will take me anywhere. I'm always just a little rusty and have to remember how to do it, but always successful, even if there are limitations. It's more common that I can just jump really high and glide though, and it's relatively uncommon for a dream of mine to involve these abilities anyway. It's neat it's more common for you. Flight is invariably enjoyable.
 
#13 ·
* In most of my dreams, I float above the floor instead of walking.
* I don't see my house in my dreams, and wherever I live in the dream isn't where I really live.
* Sometimes when there is a door, people can see me through it and I can see them.
 
#14 ·
Still being engaged regularly with past relationships that I have long lost touch with.

Throwing temper tantrums at people in my life that constantly stresses me out.

A recent recurring theme I have been having are.. still being in school and flunking classes. Not sure what that curtails.
 
#17 ·
I usually don't remember them too well. I seem to have the problem where I'll get "stuck" trying to do some mindlessly simple thing that shouldn't be hard but is for some reason I can't figure out in the dream. It just endlessly repeats until I wake up with a headache.

An example would be that I'm trying to tear a paper towel off the roll and it just.....won't happen and I know something isn't right because that's wrong. :lol

And I'm thinking "WTF is going on here? This isn't supposed to be hard to do!". And I try again and it still won't happen. :lol

Needless to say, I usually wake up from these dreams pretty irritated and confused.
 
#18 ·
My old room, my dad's house, or some other weird place my mind will just dream about. Others are just nice ones (which is good) but I forget where they take place
 
#19 ·
- Drowning in a huge flood, generally after seeing family and loved ones drowning.
- Ex kidnapping me and putting me in a Saw-like maze or a Fritzl-like dungeon that I have to escape.
- Corridor/big house full of doors. I am late and have to find the correct door, but I don't know where I'm going and get increasingly stressed out.
- Catastrophic event happens. People act as if nothing happens (example. Dad gets a heart attack. Mom, brother, boyfriend just sit there. I try to take contact, they don't react. Or building collapses in the city and a small child is trapped under the ruins, I try to get help but people just walk past like nothing happened.)
-Some times I have copper coins underneath my skin. I literally have to cut it and dig for them.
-Sometimes I see my "guardian angel". After I had a dream of him being mangled up by some demon thing, he has stopped protecting me and no longer has a complete face. His wings has started growing back though. He looks like Eric Bana for some reason, which surprised me quite a lot when I re-watched Hulk a few years back, lol.
 
#20 ·
I haven't remembered many recently but reocurring themes I have remembered have been pretty mundane - going somewhere interesting and finding out my camera has run out of batteries or trying to go swimming but various things keep stopping me.

tbf I am a big fan of swimming especially in outdoor pools if it's warm, but SA stops me, so this is incredibly literal.
 
#21 ·
*The Building: Finding myself in a large, long building with many rooms/halls, often located near a large body of water, and I'm wandering through it trying to find my way to the back, where something/someone mysterious and important awaits. (I never quite get there.)

*The Forgotten Room: Finding a room/section of the house that's been totally forgotten and abandoned--in older dreams this was often located in the basement, but nowadays it's usually upstairs. I feel really excited about this discovery, and even though the room is old and decrepit, I have hopes of cleaning it up and turning it into my own private space. ETA--in older variants, I would discover crypts/tunnels in the basement, which often led through some outdoors location (physically impossible since they're underground).

*Darkness Falling: Being outside and suddenly it gets pitch black--the sun is still visible, but it's just this dull disk in the sky and it doesn't illuminate anything. The wind picks up and I start trying to find my way back to the house but it's so dark and so difficult to get anywhere.

*The Forgotten Hamster: Suddenly realizing I have a pet (usually a hamster) that I've completely forgotten about--sometimes I even have a new pet that has taken its place. I locate the old pet and it's relatively healthy, but its living quarters are filthy and it's out of food and water and I feel so guilty and awful for forgetting it.

*Not Ready For School: Showing up at school/college and suddenly remembering I haven't studied for a test or something important--I then wonder, WTF am I doing back in school?? I don't want to be in school! :? In a variant of this, I show up at school/college and have no idea where my class is or even what it is, and I spend my time wandering around trying to find it. Another variant is I can't find my locker or remember the combination. ETA--yet another variant (or possibly a variant of "The Forgotten Room"?) involves me wandering around the "back area" of the school where I've never been before, coming across weird classrooms, really narrow halls/dead ends, mysterious boiler rooms, etc. I know this area has always been here, and it's not abandoned or anything, but for some reason I've just never visited it. (Similar to "the back" in my "The Building" dreams.) I associate this area with the part of my high school which housed the shop classes, music class, etc., where I never went IRL.

*The Public Bathroom: Needing to use a public bathroom, but something is always wrong with it--the stall walls are too short, it's in plain view of everybody, the toilet is filthy/overflowing, the stall is too small, every stall is in use, etc.

*The Malfunctioning Phone: Trying to make a phone call, often to 911. The numbers keep changing or I keep dialing them wrong, and I get very frustrated and upset. (This is due to the fact that you can almost never read the same thing twice in a dream.)

*The Malfunctioning Camera: Possible variant of the above, trying to take a picture of an amazingly gorgeous scene, but I have problems with my digital camera--I can't find the right view, the camera menu is really weird, the gorgeous scene changes/becomes less beautiful in the time it takes me to get the camera ready, etc. Very frustrating. In another variant, I'm on a trip someplace where IRL I would always have a camera on hand, but in the dream I suddenly remember I have no camera, and I'm very upset.

*Sinkholes: Sinkholes suddenly appearing in the house, in weird/impossible locations, and I'm afraid everything is going to cave in/collapse.

*Sky Phenomena:
Seeing weird phenomena in the sky--multiple moons, black planets, moving stars, glowing clouds, bizarre cloud formations/images (one time the sky had a flower pattern), ice covering the sky, UFOs, etc.

*My Forgotten Former Life: Finding something that I wrote or something I own (maybe even pictures of myself) but I don't remember writing/owning it (or taking part in the pictures). I suddenly realize there are whole parts of my life that I have no memory of, and it frightens me.

*Tornadoes: Tornadoes. Often multiple ones at once. I'll spend the dream running around frantically trying to prepare to hide from them, but strangely, by the time the dream ends it's like the tornado threat has passed without anything actually happening.

*Running Dreams: Trying to run. It's like running in slow motion. I end up going onto all fours and almost dragging myself along.

*Forgetting How To Drive: Suddenly finding myself driving a car. I don't know how to drive, so this never goes very well.

*Flying Dreams: Flying (not as common for me as it is for other people). In my dreams it's more like floating, and it's very awkward--I always end up dangling in midair, trying to navigate with much difficulty, like a marionette on strings. Maybe this is because I have acrophobia (fear of heights).

*Forgotten Mackinac Island: Exploring Mackinac Island and I come across some rock formations or such that I've never seen/heard of before. I always find this exciting.

*The Malfunctioning VCR: Trying to record a show on TV (I haven't had this dream since quitting my recording habit, but it used to be frequent). I can never find the right channel, or put the VCR on the right mode, or find the right place in the tape to start recording, etc., and I end up missing part of the program.

*Naked In Public: Being in public and I suddenly realize I'm not dressed appropriately, there are holes in my clothes, I have menstrual blood on me, etc.

*Not Ready To Go: Trying to get ready to go somewhere. I spend a lot of time trying to find decent clothes but most of them have holes or are too small; I might also spend time trying to decide what CDs or books, etc. to bring along, but have a lot of trouble picking any. In an older/schooltime variant of this dream, I would spend a lot of time packing and unpacking my bookbag, or putting stuff in/taking stuff out of my locker. I usually end up making everyone else run really late so we don't get to go anywhere, they leave without me, or I miss the bus (if it's a school dream).

*Bad Teeth: Teeth going bad/falling out. This is a common dream for many people, though it has personal relevance for me since my teeth really are bad.

*Bath Problems: Trying to take a bath. I like the water really hot, but in my dreams I can't feel extremes of temperature, so I can get the water to be only lukewarm. This frustrates me and I keep running the water and keep running the water without luck. (Oddly, often I'm at least partially clothed while I'm in the tub.) This dream would be a good opportunity to do a reality check and go lucid, but I never do.

*Feeding The Birds: I'm trying to fill the bird feeders like I do IRL, but instead of sunflower seeds, all that's left in the bag is mostly dregs (sunflower seed dust and stuff). I feel guilty.

*Fires: Little fires are springing up everywhere and it's hard to put them all out; as soon as one is extinguished, another springs up. (I had this dream frequently as a child, but not so much anymore.) Nowadays this dream often involves wildfires or the roof catching on fire.

ETA, @Callsign reminded me:

*The Watchers: Strange people, often children, are outside my house, peering in the windows. I race around the house trying to close blinds/curtains but it seems like one is always partly open and they can always see me. :afr I might try to hide in a room where there are no windows just to escape their view, but it's like there's always a window partly within sight. The people might even try to get in the door, which of course I've accidentally left unlocked. I don't get a feeling that they intend to hurt me, but I'm terrified anyway. This dream might illustrate my social anxiety.

*Body Farm Land: There are corpses (human or animal) just lying around in public, rotting. Like they just belong there. I'm horrified by this and try to shield my eyes/not look directly at them, but it seems like they're anywhere I turn, for example, on the front porch.

ETA, @Callsign reminded me yet again:

*The Real Internet: The Internet or some aspect of it becomes a real-life location/thing. For example, this forum once appeared as a journal I and everyone else wrote entries in; or certain webpages become buildings/rooms I wander into; or a webpage might become three dimensional and I manipulate it somehow; etc.

...

Not proofread yet. I might add more later as they come to me. I find dreams so fascinating. :eek:ops
 
#22 ·
*The Malfunctioning Camera: Possible variant of the above, trying to take a picture of an amazingly gorgeous scene, but I have problems with my digital camera--I can't find the right view, the camera menu is really weird, the gorgeous scene changes/becomes less beautiful in the time it takes me to get the camera ready, etc. Very frustrating. In another variant, I'm on a trip someplace where IRL I would always have a camera on hand, but in the dream I suddenly remember I have no camera, and I'm very upset.
So I'm not the only one who has camera issues in dreams lol. For me it's almost always just that it's running out of batteries, or I'm on holiday but for some reason forgot to bring my charger with me. I've had the bolded happen in a few dreams too though.
 
#23 ·
-visiting a store of watches and bought a lot of them
-when using a phone, it turns out to be a calculator in a phone shape (wanted one so much when I was a child).
-Involved in some argument and get shot in the end
-falling into a pit after exhaustion
-spawning in an unknown place, where there is a young woman (always the same, but can't see her face clearly) stalking on me, and I can't talk to her because she can't hear me.
 
#25 ·
I don't understand why people are so fascinated with dreams. Although I could be bitter about the fact that I have a lot of nightmares and I can't even answer the question since I'm one of those guys who don't remember their dreams. I am able to tell if I've had a nightmare or a dream by my feelings when I wake up, if anyone's wondering.
 
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