Experiencing
Or maybe you've had the same dream over the entire course of your life. These repetitive dreams are called recurring dreams. Believe it or not it is extremely common. Recurrent dreams occur between 60 percent and 75 percent of adults and more often in women than men.
Dream rehearsal therapy, also known as imagery rehearsal therapy, can be effective for both recurring dreams and nightmares. This approach involves writing down in detail the narrative elements of the dream, then rewriting it so it ends positively.
If you're dreaming about the same place:
It's not about the literal location, she explains, but rather a part of yourself or a part of your personality. To dream of a house you've never been to, for example, can actually give you clues into how you're feeling.
Dreams can be so realistic that it can be hard to tell if we're awake or asleep. And sometimes, we wake up in the middle of a dream and wonder if it's possible to go back to sleep and pick up where we left off. It is possible to resume a dream, but it requires a certain focus and concentration.
One interpretation of a time loop dream is that it represents a feeling of being stuck or trapped in a situation. The dreamer may feel like they are repeating the same patterns or behaviors in their waking life and are unable to break free from them.
Excessive dreaming is usually attributed to sleep fragmentation and the consequent ability to remember dreams due to the successive awakenings. The dreams usually have no particular character, but sometimes they might include situations associated with drowning or suffocation.
Some believe dreams have symbolic meaning, whereas others believe that they relate to waking life. What scientists do know is that just about everyone dreams every time they sleep, and those dreams can be fascinating, exciting, terrifying, or just plain weird.
While people talk about “night terrors,” this is not, in fact, a diagnosable condition, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual fifth edition (DSM-V). It contains elements of conditions known as nightmare disorder, REM sleep behavior disorder, and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) Sleep Arousal Disorder.
The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes. People are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase.
If you dream about a 'random' person – someone whom you haven't thought of for months – then it's possible that they're missing you. And yes, they're communicating it to you through your dreams. You shouldn't be dreaming of them in the first place. After all, those who we think of the most usually invade our dreams.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects many people, especially military veterans. Symptoms can be severe and interfere with normal life. One of those disruptive symptoms is night terrors. They cause a person to thrash and scream in terror in the middle of the night.
Sleep deprivation psychosis refers to experiencing an altered perception of reality caused by a prolonged lack of sleep. Psychosis, in general, refers to an episode in which your brain perceives reality differently than other people in the same situation.
When awakened while dreaming, people rend to report that their dreams contained vivid colors seventy percent of the time and vague color 13 percent of the time, but outside of scientific studies, only 25 to 29 percent of people say that they dream in color. So many of us do dream in color but don't properly remember.
"Dreams are often about identity, because we're figuring out who we are and what we need, and the beliefs and perspectives we hold," says Wallace. "If you feel unfulfilled, undervalued or not the person you want to be in waking life, your dreams will often reflect that.
Unlike in a regular dream, the sleeper who dreams of a false awakening is aware that both dreams and reality exist. They may also have a nagging feeling that something is out of place, without being fully aware that they are dreaming.
"For many people, the adrenaline and excitement experienced upon realizing that they are dreaming is enough to wake them," Backe said. "However, if this is not the case and you are 'stuck' in a bad dream, doing something particularly jarring — for example, jumping off of a cliff in your dream should do the trick."
Sometimes the dreams we have seem so real. Most of the emotions, sensations, and images we feel and visualize are those that we can say we have seen or experienced in real life. This is because the same parts of the brain that are active when we are awake are also active when we are in certain stages of our sleep.
Signs and symptoms may vary, but usually involve delusions, hallucinations or disorganized speech, and reflect an impaired ability to function. The effect can be disabling. In most people with schizophrenia, symptoms generally start in the mid- to late 20s, though it can start later, up to the mid-30s.
Signs of early or first-episode psychosis
Hearing, seeing, tasting or believing things that others don't. Persistent, unusual thoughts or beliefs that can't be set aside regardless of what others believe. Strong and inappropriate emotions or no emotions at all.
So, “if you're dreaming about [someone], it's not likely they're dreaming about you as well.” As dreams are all about the self—your feelings and behaviors—if you're dreaming about a specific person in your life, then it's likely there's some aspect of them that is currently at work in your life, Loewenberg explains.