Recurring Dreams

Recurring dreams are dreams which occur with only slight variations and a similar narrative over and over again in an individual’s lifetime. They may occur only for a short period of time, say, in childhood, and then suddenly occur again much later in life, even if only once or several times.

Sometimes, the recurring dreams may not have much in common with each other narrative wise, but merely maintain a common or only slightly altered location. These locations may be familiar places, such as childhood homes or schools, or they may be entirely foreign, strange architectural constructions that seem unreal.

Usually, recurring dreams that maintain only locational consistency denote some sort of spiritual or deep psychological yearning that is being communicated symbolically. These dreams speak towards something very deep in the human psyche before even most individual emotional traumas are processed from later in life, within what Jung would call the “collective unconscious” that is shared with all of mankind (see Astral Plane).

Usually, these dreams are produced by certain psychological fixations, traumas, or narratives that the dreamer is trying to process through or re-live through as a sort of self-therapy. Often the emotions associated with these dreams have not been properly processed, being ‘stuck’ in the moment of life where they were triggered, upon which the mind proceeded to create a dream to process these emotions, but which remained unsuccessful to truly work through their fixations.

When these dreams suddenly re-occur after a period of long absence, that usually means something happened during the day that triggered either the memory or the emotions that remain unprocessed and fixated upon by the dreamwork.

Oftentimes if a recurring dream has been successfully interpreted, the dreamer will no longer experience that dream. However, such interpretations often require either a great level of self-awareness on part of the dreamer, or an experienced and intuitive interpreter. Sometimes, simply working out these emotions in waking life is sufficient for the dream to go away.