Does anyone else have weird recurring dreams?!

[Sandpiperwavedance]

Last night I had one of my two regular recurring dreams, about realising I have an upcoming exam for a module I’d totally forgotten about, which I haven’t revised for at all 😱 (I left uni nearly 20 years ago!)

The other one I have is about getting home and finding the front door ajar, being terrified there’s an intruder in my house or all my stuff has been taken! (Not sure where this comes from, as it’s never happened in real life - touch wood!)

These dreams don’t happen very often, but they’ve been cropping up every now and then for as long as I can remember, and they still really unsettle me!

It’s got me wondering, do other people experience a similar thing? What are the weird recurring dreams you can’t escape from?!

I have had recurring dreams about having forgotten where I left my motorbike because I hadn't ridden it for such a long time. I cannot ride a motorbike and have never had one of my own.

I wake up and am convinced I have a motorbike, I have lost it, and I know how to ride it.

The bring back at uni and having don’t zero soul and having nowhere to live (everyone else has found a flat bar me), leaving my kids at find to be back at uni (don’t mind this bit !) and having zero dissertation written is c common for me !

Yes i get the exact same uni one - it's the feeling of being horribly unprepared for something. It usually goes away when I've sorted something i have to do to my satisfaction

One of mine is similar, I have an exam I haven't prepared for, I worry about what I'll do when I fail it and when I wake up, I'm relieved when I remember I have a job.

Another is being in a lift and it breaking and hurtling down to earth. Hate that one.

Nothing ever goes right in my dreams. Always an undercurrent of impending doom.

I have a couple, relating to past jobs. Over 30 years ago I worked in a small hotel as a breakfast waitress. There was usually only me working, or two of us if fully booked. My recurring dream is that people keep coming in to the dining room and the tables aren’t set, I’m taking orders from them and writing in slow motion and I just can’t do it quick enough, and more and more people keep arriving and I’m walking in slow motion to the kitchen to get the food and can’t get round to everyone.
Years later I worked in a call centre, and the recurring dream is of me being there and trying to dial a phone number and getting it wrong all the time.
Oh just thought of another one, not relating to work - in the dream, I have to be at the airport in say, an hour, and I’m not even packed. Anyway, somehow I manage to pack and get there and get on the flight. Then partway through the journey the plane starts descending and lands on a road (safely). The plane then tries to take off again and needs a hill to go down to give it speed! But it can’t get off the ground. Don’t know what it all means!

These are so funny - thanks for sharing, it’s good to know I’m not the only one! Seems like there are some common themes! Although the motorbike is a bit random 😂

I had a recurring dream about missing a plane too. The plane was still in the hanger and I couldn’t get on it.
It felt real , often when I wake up I can’t remember much , but that was really real.

I do yes and they are anxiety dreams I imagine and I think yours probably are too.

I have mainly 2, I see a plane either falling out the sky and crashing or sometimes crashing right infront of me like I’m on the beach and a plane crashes in the water and breaks up. I’m never on the plane, always witness it crashing.

Second one is I’m in a lift and it’s falling. Sometimes it’s going up but like out of control & too fast. Mostly it’s falling, sometimes the floor is flipping like you could fall through it. I can feel my stomach doing somersaults and when I wake up I’m always scared to go bk to sleep incase I go bk into that dream.

I also sometimes have one where I’m being chased or running away from someone, like they are after me and I know going to kill me so I’m hiding in a house etc. These ones are always very different each time but probably the most scary.

@GertibearI get the plane falling from the sky dream too!! I’d forgotten about that one, but it’s another I’ve had many times over the years - always me on the ground watching! I think you’re right about them relating to anxiety and lack of control in our waking lives!

I have the exact same packing, airport, plane landing on road in city dream! @RoseLavenderBlue
Often I have to get very tight train connections to get to the airport and lose a bag along the way and end up running around station tunnels or airports looking for a bag before finally getting on a plane. I can feel the anxiety I feel in the dream now.

Another where I end up driving a car drunk (which I’d never do) and driving it from the back seat so I can’t see properly. Im driving at speed and having loads of narrow misses. Awful.

Yes i had the exam dream for years im 52 and havent sat an exam since i finished my nurse training 30 years ago
I also have a walking around naked or wearing very little in public dream
And a dream that my mouth is full of chewing gum or cotton wool and i have to keep pulling it out.

Mine are always about plane clashes. I'm never on board, but am a witness to it happening.
It's always disconcerting. I grew up bear Filton, where Concorde was built and tested. I now live below the approach to Bristol Airport.

I've had a few recurring dreams, but one I had at least three times when I was in my late teens/early twenties. It was in a pub near us, not one I've ever been in. My dad was ill in bed in the attic bedroom. It was quite dark and I was worried he was going to die. Every time in the dream I was going up flights of stairs to this attic bedroom with him in the bed. My dad is still here and will be 80 this year, but maybe he was ill back then and it was a subconscious fear.

The other recurring dreams are usually about trying to run and not being able to. Like my limbs just don't function properly at all

I'm usually late in my dreams. It used to be late for school, but now it's late for taking the DC to school! Normally we're on the way but keep having to go back for something, or there's things in the way, and we can never seem to get there. It's slightly different obstacles (sometimes literally!) every time but even when I'm dreaming I know we'll never make it. Once or twice I've realised they're still in their PJs, then we have to go home and get them dressed but we can't find their uniforms... It just goes on and on!

My other anxiety dream is losing control of the car, but that doesn't happen quite as often. I've crashed into all sorts in my dreams, and the worst part is that I KNOW it's happening but my dream-self just refuses to do anything to stop it.

Either way I wake up anxious and stressed every time!

Mine is about trying to escape a tsunami. Sometimes I'm on a promenade just above the beach and need to run, other times I'm on the beach and its surrounded by massive cliffs with loads of steps to climb to get to the top. I wake up feeling horribly unsettled after.

Yes.

Being back in a couple of old jobs. I’ve resigned back up and wondering how to leave!

Dreams where I’m bouncing/flying and going too high

Horrible ones where I’m desperate for the loo and I’ll be in an old school/day out somewhere and all the toilets have no doors or seats or really gross and I can’t find one to use

And some others which I can’t think of now. It will be a place or time that only occurs in a dream

Yes often I’m in a big semi derelict house and the doors won’t close / lock. I’m on my own and scared someone will get in or my cats (who are always with me in my dreams!) will escape.

Posted this on a similar thread recently but I get dreams where I’m driving and the brakes stop working or sometimes it’s the steering wheel and I’m panicking and trying not to crash. Or I’m sitting in the back seat and realise no one’s driving and I either try to climb into the drivers seat but can’t for some reason, or I’m trying to drive it from the back seat because for some reason there’s a steering wheel in the back?? Don’t think I’ve ever actually crashed in my dreams, the stressful situation just goes on and on, but the fear/stress feels very real.

Just last night I had a horrible dream, I can’t remember it now but I woke up in the night and refused to go back to sleep for a bit because I didn’t want the dream to continue.

A lot of my dreams involve seemingly simple things becoming inexplicably difficult. Going to work and somehow getting lost even though I know the route well, not being able to find something and going round in circles or looking in the same places over and over. It’s ridiculous, stems from anxiety I think.

I do have recurring dreams but just wanna say that last night's hopefully one off dream was Lorenzo off Love Island selling me a second hand chainsaw and seeming really happy about it.

Recurring dream - usually me being an inexplicably brilliant diver when I can normally drown in a puddle, the dreams are v vivid & colourful, usually involving telepathic communication with a shark and it's pilot fish 😆 I'm known in my family for my weird dreams lol x

Laughing at the loo one; I get that too, where I dream about being out searching for a public toilet and none are usable - always just before I wake up really needing a wee 😆

Oh they sound much more fun than my dreams! 😂

I don’t have a recurring dream, but I often dream about the same house. It’s haunted and has loads of rooms all at the back down dark, cold corridors. But the front has large arched windows. I don’t know a house like this irl…

I had the same dream a few times a week and later month for nearly all my childhood. It was a sort of swirling colour pattern filling the whole space, that I was running through space in with a predator (usually a tiger) that I could never catch in my vision stalking then chasing me. I woke up as it was pouncing on me but before it landed every time.

Now, I have a sort of semi serialised post apocolptical bad dream/nightmare thing. I go back into the same dream in different places, like going into a shitter life than my own that I recognise. I have a few other repeats too, but like that one, it's repeated locations and backdrops and sometimes people, but a different story. A bit like a really nasty drama. I have had true lucid dreams and these aren't quite like those, but are odd. It's unsettling when I wake up and can link them together with ones from before.

It’s awful! I hate that dream so much!