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?!

The other one is of waves on beaches. Never the same beach. The terror of one looming and knowing you can’t quite escape it. I always do but it’s fraught. Sometimes we are crammed up against the top of the beach and waves are so close. Other times we are running up a hill and a tsunami is coming.

I think a big wave caught our stuff on a beach when I was little!

I have the same as a poster above - I keep finding new rooms in my house.
I also have a recurring one that I’m in a hotel or villa and it’s check out time but I haven’t packed my things and as I’m packing, more and more things appear that need to be packed. And the next occupiers of the hotel room come in and they’re shouting at me to hurry up.
Also reoccurring one where I’m back with an abusive ex and I can’t get away and feel trapped. I feel so grateful every time I wake up and realised I married a wonderful man and have a wonderful life and children.

I’m have that dream - wonder what it actually means ?

Oh, I used to have this one about the kids. In my dream Id be out and about on some mission then I'd suddenly see it was 5pm - and id forgotten to collect the kids from school. Or indeed, that I had kids at all 😭

I have a dream about having to walk along narrow bridges/paths or up rickety steps and I always feel like I'm going to fall off. I hate it. I also dream about wasps on my arms and wake up in a panic

Yes I get the exam or modules one often. It’s usually about a course that I’ve apparently enrolled in and never finished. I always panic about course work I’m supposed have completed and so much drama centred around when I signed up for the course and how I could forget.

I also lucid dream a lot. This should really be one for the paranormal board but I’ll share a little. I have had so many reoccurring dreams of me in various ‘ages’. Young at shopping centres and friends wave at me. Old enough to work and have been in this building several times (have had a dream about issues with my work pass, talking to colleagues and eating in the canteen a few times). I’ve also travelled on buses. The only way I can describe it is it looks like London but with some futuristic elements. I would even describe it as maybe 15 years into the future or around that. Since I started to talk about it or try to lucid dream on purpose to figure it out (some people say I shouldn’t) I’ve not had these dreams again.

If anyone is interested in more spooky stuff or more about the lucid dreams then Ashleeinc on YouTube shared a story on her video yesterday about someone lucid dreaming.

I think it is feeling you have untapped potential…

I am another occasional manky loo and extra rooms dreamer.
I always reckon the loo dream is your subconscious wanting to go to the loo, but not wanting to wet the bed.

When I was a child I had a recurring dream that all my friends were ‘captured’ and I was on my own, so I would get caught deliberately so I wasn’t on my own. I reckon that stemmed from me finding lessons a lot easier than my school mates, but not wanting to let on.

There’s a great couple of Reddit thread I found on the dirty toilet dream. Also a whole subreddit called r/thatbathroommazedream. So many people have it! The descriptions are eerily exactly what I experience.
Always dimly lit
Blue!
Loads of cubicles but all full
Doors/walls too low so everyone can see in
The loos are huge (and disgusting) but busy. Some people dream of showers in there too or a changing space. I think mine has a changing space at the back where there’s a load of women doing make up or their hair in manky mirrors and it’s a mess.
Men and women in there (but the changing space is only women)

Someone’s even posted a load of AI generated photos- terrifyingly close to exactly what’s in my dream.

So creepy that so many people have the same dream!

Isn't it mad that the dreams are so similar? Extra rooms in your house?? Dirty toilets??? I mean....where do those concepts even come from, and how do so many separate brains come up with such similar subconscious thought threads? So random.

I quite like the extra rooms one when I have it - I'm feeling quite thrilled by it all, and sad when I wake up. Dirty toilets - not so much.

I have also had the rickety staircase dream, like @TurquoiseYeti, although not for a long time now. Climbing a polished staircase in socks, or hanging for dear life onto a ladder which is coming away from the wall.

I used to have one where I'd get off the tube and start going up the escalator but could never reach the top, even if I ran until I couldn't stand anymore...they stopped as soon as I left my job at the time so must have been a stress thing!

I have the extra rooms one. It’s in an off variant of my old London flat and a random student house I lived in years ago that we have bought. There’s a completely seperate ‘back wing’ that we haven’t touched and it’s exactly as the previous owners left it. I can recall it now. Huge bed with chintzy frilly linen, fussy floral wall paper. The whole place is pink. We show a friend around and they can’t believe there’s a huge extra wing. It feels weird though, like the wing is haunted our something so we lock the door behind us and never go in. In my dream I rush past the door when ever I pass it.

I also get the rickety staircase leading into a rickety platform or bridge. Or often climbing up a slippery ladder in what feel like slippery socks and I can feel
my anxiety lifting with every step. I hate heights and this is really high up.

I had horrendous recurring nightmares about harm coming to DC, always in the same way, for approx nine years. It was truly harrowing, and a result of my c-ptsd.

I can still recall the dreams with absolute horror film like clarity, and even writing this is extremely hard. I've had some therapy (but not enough).

I also repeatedly dream about where I used to live, I'll never go back, and its often about it all changing and I'm lost without any actual place that is "home".

@CheeseWisely ooh I'd love to hear of the paranormal goings-on, if it's not too much of a thread derail! How interesting. Your username is also great haha

This is seriously fascinating ...

Someone needs to unpack it.

My recurring dream is I'm hosting a party but I have spent too long in the shower and so am in the nude/towel when everyone arrives and people keep greeting me/ chatting to me as I make my way upstairs to change and when I finally do, I come back down and the party is over.

Clearly organisational forewarning ...😂

Under-utilised talents or potential?

I've read it means that and it does make sense to me. On a practical level I do also need a bigger house. Sometimes the rooms are down a dingy hallway and full of junk and mould, peeling wallpaper etc but when I start to clean up and make plans, I wake up.

When I've had it, the rooms are always of Cathedral-like scale that couldn't possibly have been missed from outside, no matter how boarded over the doorway was on the inside!

I have similar recurring dreams to other posters:

1. Needing the toilet but they are all either dirty or don't have a door.
2. I have to get to a specific place for an appointment or exam but everything goes wrong with the transport. A bit like the film Planes, Trains and Automobiles, but it is very stressful. I always nearly get there and then yet another thing goes wrong.
3. I live in a house with doors that won't shut properly or broken windows and strangers keep getting in the house, usually just walking through it. I keep trying to lock the doors or board up the windows, but they keep getting in.

These dreams usually happen when I am stressed or worried about something. I also suffer from sleep paralysis when stressed, which is a whole other thing and even more distressing.

I sometimes dream that I am back in a previous workplace ( the workplace varies). I also sometimes dream that I am about to re-marry my ex husband. In the dream, I know that this is a seriously bad idea. I am so relieved to wake up from them!

My reoccurring dreams are I am trying to phone someone or the emergency services and I simply cannot get the phone to work , I have sold my current home and am back in my previous flat snd finally I am back at a job I absolutely hated and in my dream I am trying to get back to my current job.

So glad others have the extra rooms dreams too. Sometimes mine is a whole top floor that I've forgotten about and the rooms are all decaying from leaks in the roof. The bedspreads are manky & the wallpaper is peeling. I'm showing someone round and really ashamed.

Also the exams dream. I've never revised for it but worse, sometimes it's suddenly going to be in a foreign language too. Just awful.

Yes....why are the extra rooms always run-down, dated and falling apart? And always on a huge scale?

Mine always have loads of beds in. Bunk beds, rows of single beds, couple of doubles. What's that about?

I don’t have recurring dreams per se but for some reason, on day 3 of my menstrual cycle every month I have a horrible anxiety dream that wakes me up, usually with my heart racing. It’s usually the same vibe but the content is always different. I’ve put it down to hormones

I often dream about extra space in my first flat, which was a studio flat. I sometimes dream that it's on a higher floor in the block, but usually I discover that it has a garden or a whole extra section, but it's a nice space that I wish I had known about when I lived there.

The dirty, blocked, very public loo one is also quite common, usually because I need to get up for a wee.

Last night I dreamt that I had the most brilliant idea for a novel, when I wonder up it turned out that it wasn't!