Having a Dream Over and Over Again

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The Science of Recurring Dreams Is More Fascinating Than We Ever Imagined

Having the same dream again and again is a well-known phenomenon — nearly two-thirds of the population written report having recurring dreams. Being chased, finding yourself naked in a public place or in the middle of a natural disaster, losing your teeth or forgetting to go to class for an entire semester are typical recurring scenarios in these dreams.

But where does the phenomenon come from? The science of dreams shows that recurring dreams may reflect unresolved conflicts in the dreamer's life.

Recurring dreams oft occur during times of stress, or over long periods of time, sometimes several years or even a lifetime. Not just exercise these dreams take the same themes, they tin can as well repeat the aforementioned narrative night later night.

Although the exact content of recurring dreams is unique to every individual, at that place are common themes among individuals and even among cultures and in different periods. For example, being chased, falling, being unprepared for an exam, arriving late or trying to exercise something repeatedly are amid the most prevalent scenarios.

The majority of recurring dreams accept negative content involving emotions such as fearfulness, sadness, anger and guilt. More than half of recurring dreams involve a situation where the dreamer is in danger. But some recurring themes can likewise be positive, even euphoric, such as dreams where we discover new rooms in our firm, erotic dreams or where we wing.

In some cases, recurring dreams that begin in childhood can persist into adulthood. These dreams may disappear for a few years, reappear in the presence of a new source of stress and then disappear once again when the situation is over.

Unresolved conflicts

Why does our brain play the same dreams over and again? Studies suggest that dreams, in general, assist u.s. regulate our emotions and adapt to stressful events. Incorporating emotional textile into dreams may permit the dreamer to process a painful or hard event.

In the case of recurrent dreams, repetitive content could correspond an unsuccessful endeavor to integrate these hard experiences. Many theories agree that recurring dreams are related to unresolved difficulties or conflicts in the dreamer'southward life.

The presence of recurrent dreams has also been associated with lower levels of psychological wellbeing and the presence of symptoms of anxiety and depression. These dreams tend to recur during stressful situations and terminate when the person has resolved their personal conflict, which indicates improved wellbeing.

Recurrent dreams frequently metaphorically reflect the emotional concerns of the dreamers. For example, dreaming near a seismic sea wave is common following trauma or corruption. This is a typical example of a metaphor that tin represent emotions of helplessness, panic or fear experienced in waking life.

Similarly, being inappropriately dressed in 1's dream, being naked or not being able to detect a toilet tin can all stand for scenarios of embarrassment or modesty.

These themes can exist thought of as scripts or ready-to-dream scenarios that provide united states of america with a space where we can assimilate our alien emotions. The same script can be reused in different situations where we experience like emotions.

This is why some people, when faced with a stressful situation or a new challenge, may dream they're showing up unprepared for a math examination, even years after they have gear up foot in a school. Although the circumstances are different, a similar feeling of stress or want to excel can trigger the same dream scenario again.

A continuum of repetition

William Domhoff, an American researcher and psychologist, proposes the concept of a continuum of repetition in dreams. At the extreme end, traumatic nightmares direct reproduce a lived trauma — one of the main symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

And then in that location are recurring dreams where the aforementioned dream content is replayed in part or in its entirety. Unlike traumatic dreams, recurring dreams rarely replay an effect or conflict directly but reflect it metaphorically through a central emotion.

Further along the continuum are the recurring themes in dreams. These dreams tend to replay a similar state of affairs, such as being late, existence chased or existence lost, but the exact content of the dream differs from one time to the next, such as beingness late for a train rather than for an exam.

Finally, at the other end of the continuum, we find sure dream elements recurring in the dreams of one individual, such as characters, deportment or objects. All these dreams would reflect, at different levels, an endeavor to resolve sure emotional concerns.

Moving from an intense level to a lower level on the continuum of repetition is often a sign that a person'southward psychological land is improving. For case, in the content of traumatic nightmares progressive and positive changes are oft observed in people who accept experienced trauma every bit they gradually overcome their difficulties.

Physiological phenomena

Why do the themes tend to be the aforementioned from person to person? One possible explanation is that some of these scripts accept been preserved in humans due to the evolutionary advantage they bring. By simulating a threatening situation, the dream of being chased, for example, provides a space for a person to practise perceiving and escaping predators in their slumber.

Some common themes may also be explained, in part, by physiological phenomena that take identify during sleep. A 2022 study by a research squad in Israel found that dreaming of losing 1's teeth was not particularly linked to symptoms of feet simply rather associated to teeth clenching during sleep or dental discomfort upon waking.

When nosotros sleep, our encephalon is non completely cut off from the outside globe. Information technology continues to perceive external stimuli, such as sounds or smells, or internal body sensations. That ways that other themes, such as not being able to find a toilet or existence naked in a public space, could actually exist spurred past the need to urinate during the night or by wearing loose pyjamas in bed.

Some concrete phenomena specific to REM sleep, the stage of sleep when we dream the most, could likewise exist at play. In REM sleep, our muscles are paralyzed, which could provoke dreams of having heavy legs or being paralyzed in bed.

Similarly, some authors have proposed that dreams of falling or flying are caused by our vestibular organization, which contributes to residuum and can reactivate spontaneously during REM sleep. Of course, these sensations are not sufficient to explain the recurrence of these dreams in some people and their sudden occurrence in times of stress, but they probably play a significant role in the construction of our most typical dreams.

Breaking the cycle

People who experience a recurring nightmare have in some means become stuck in a particular manner of responding to the dream scenario and anticipating information technology. Therapies have been developed to try to resolve this recurrence and break the cruel wheel of nightmares.

One technique is to visualize the nightmare while awake and and then rewrite it, that is, to modify the narrative past changing 1 aspect, for example, the cease of the dream to something more positive. Lucid dreaming may likewise exist a solution.

In lucid dreams we become aware that nosotros are dreaming and can sometimes influence the content of the dream. Becoming lucid in a recurring dream might allow usa to retrieve or react differently to the dream and thereby alter the repetitive nature of information technology.

However, non all recurring dreams are bad in themselves. They can even be helpful insofar equally they are informing us well-nigh our personal conflicts. Paying attention to the repetitive elements of dreams could be a style to better understand and resolve our greatest desires and torments.

Claudia Picard-Deland, Candidate au doctorat en neurosciences, Université de Montréal and Tore Nielsen, Professor of Psychiatry, Université de Montréal.

This commodity is republished from The Chat nether a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/the-science-of-recurring-dreams-is-more-fascinating-than-we-ever-imagined