Originally posted by jubula
Does anyone know why dreams re-occur?
Well, don't take it personal, but it usually means that you have some issue to deal with that you have been ignoring for a long time. Dreams are thought to be manifestations of your unconscious; the unconscious being the hidden part of your lifes activities.
By hidden, I say there are parts of your life in which you are only semi-aware of (a sixth sense, or odd feeling, or dont understand at all) and the mind naturally represses these thoughts until you have relaxed the mind. Were so busy with the day-to-day life (which, of course is normal), that we rarely deal with the issues that weve sent packing to the attic of our mind.
Well, for most of us, the mind is fully relaxed during sleep. Now the mind has a funny way of communicating to us; usually its in the form of symbols, because we are bombarded by pictures, images, photos, visualizations
they make up a great deal of our perceptible world. The trick is realizing what the dream is composed of, interpreting the symbols, and understanding them in a way that affects your life.
One dream symbol may have nothing in common to another person, its significance is rarely the same from individual to individual. But there are common feelings and intuitions for the same dream action or symbol; but there are still varying ways at looking at the dream, based on the dreamer. There are many schools of thought associated with dream interpretation; the classical school of thought has branched into Freudian (most dreams are heavily sexual in nature, or deal with fear of mother and father) and the Jungian (dream symbols are rather universal in mankind) interpretation. (Im sure there are others, but I dont know much about them.)
I can tell you that I used to have lots and lots of dreams that made me say WTF? as soon as I woke up in the morning. Those dreams have been quite valuable to me; better than any movie or TV program, because it was generated, produced, and directed by me! But you have to understand and interpret its content.
One easy-to-interpret reoccurring dream I had was that of driving my car in the rain, and spinning and crashing. Now it may have seemed easy enough; I had actually crashed my car in the rain due to driving too fast, aquaplaning, and having little recourse but to spin into a wall. The dreams had varying levels of car control; sometimes it was under control, other times it was a mess! But the dreams frightened me; especially due to the amount of rain we get in Florida, having to drive that morning if it was raining was quite scary at times.
I asked myself, what am I so afraid of? The car can be repaired, there will be a new car one day if its wrecked. Your life doesnt have the same ability. The car represented responsibility; it was not merely a passenger vehicle, and I was taking poor care of it (duty). I was destroying my life, losing control of it. The rain was lifes troubles, it was coming down in multitudes, and I didnt know how to deal with it. Now I understood; I took more control of my life, and dealt with it in a more responsible manner. I was becoming an adult, not a kid anymore.
Well, one day I was (in reality, not a dream) driving on a highway in the middle of nowhere, and the sky burst in a horrendous rainstorm. There was even hail falling. It was horrible if you didnt have some sort of shelter. But I felt right then I was ready for transformation; and plowed though the mess while everyone else was driving slowly. I wasnt going particularly fast, maybe 50mph (posted 70!), while the other cars were going about 20-30mph. I loved it, absolute joy in the field of what could be a terrible thing! I felt like I had conquered a virtually groundless fear by action, not inaction. And you know what? I never have had the spinning dream since.
Take that for what its worth, for Im not a psychologist.