About two-thirds of the world has recurring dreams. How many times have you had dreams about falling from a height, forgetting to take your exams, or losing your teeth?
All of these scenarios are recurring patterns that most people see in different languages and cultures, and even repeat the same narrative sometimes night after night.
Recurring dreams may be pleasant or nightmarish, but most of these dreams involve a scene in which the dreamer is in danger, and then suffers from negative feelings such as fear, sadness, anger or guilt. What is the reason behind this phenomenon?
We usually see recurring dreams in times of stress, but they may also haunt us for a long period of time, sometimes for a lifetime;
The science of dreams indicates that recurring dreams reflect the existence of unresolved lingering conflicts in the dreamer's life.
Dreams help us regulate our emotions and cope with difficult situations (Pixabe)
Scared woman hiding under blanket.
Afraid of the dark.
Unable to sleep after nightmare or bad dream.
Awake in the middle of the night in bedroom at home.
Monster under the bed or in closet.
(Getty Images)
unresolved disputes
According to the report - published by The Conversation - studies indicate that dreams help us regulate our emotions and adapt to difficult situations, and then process painful events in our lives.
Many theories agree about the association of recurring dreams with the existence of unresolved difficulties or conflicts in the dreamer's life.
As these dreams may be an attempt in which the mind integrates its difficult experiences.
Recurring dreams are like prepared scenarios that the mind uses to internalize our conflicting feelings about a new lingering conflict or challenge;
When you feel nervous about a situation, your brain tries to make sense of it by recalling a similar stress you experienced while taking your high school math exam, for example.
In addition, recurrent dreams are associated with poor mental health and the presence of symptoms such as anxiety and depression;
These dreams are repeated while the dreamer is going through difficult situations, and their repetition ends when those lingering conflicts are resolved.
People with PTSD have painful nightmares (Pixabe)
continuous repetition
It is known that people suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder" have "traumatic nightmares", which reproduce the trauma they have experienced again.
In contrast, recurrent dreams rarely directly relive the traumatic event, but they do reflect it in a metaphorical manner based on the feeling of the same emotion rather than on the replay of the same event.
There is a continuity of the repetition of these dreams in which the mind tries to accommodate some emotional concerns by repeating the dream, albeit at different levels, until it is resolved.
The level of the dream increases as the source of fear is determined, as if you see that you are late for the train instead of being late for the exam on time.
Physiological phenomena
Why do most people of all kinds see the same recurring patterns of these dreams?
One explanation attributes this to our evolutionary origin;
The chase and escape scenario is one of the oldest scenes that the mind has been exposed to while escaping from predators;
Thus, this scene has been preserved to be conjured up if the person experiences a similar emotion later on.
Another study attributed the reason for this to the physiological state of the body;
She indicated that the frequent dream of teeth falling out is related to the poor condition of the teeth.
Some therapeutic strategies require writing the nightmares immediately after waking up and changing their endings (Pixabe)
These dreams may be the result of our brains continuing to perceive certain external stimuli during sleep, such as sound and smell.
Thus, the repetition of the dream in this case is motivated by an attempt to respond to the stimuli surrounding us during sleep.
Some of these dreams are related to the stage of sleep known as "rapid eye movement", in which the muscles of the body are stiff as if restricted.
Some researchers have suggested that the recurrent dream of falling from a height is a state to balance with the state of paralysis we experience during the "rapid eye movement" phase.
However, this interpretation is not sufficient to explain why this dream is repeated in some individuals and not others, nor does it explain why we see it during times of stress.
There are some treatments that try to counter this vicious recurrence of nightmares. Some therapeutic strategies require people to write down the nightmares they are experiencing as soon as they wake up and change the ending of the narrative to a positive outcome, which may help them lead the dream to a different conclusion.