Do you have any recurring themes in your dreams?

[Spider RedNight]

Whenever I remember my dreams, I often remember how non-sequitur they are and it seems like it's on purpose. And the stuff that threads together is so batshit I just don't bother trying to make sense of it. Last night was something about a mustard trail that led to a winding river or catfish whiskers but then the dreams told me that if I walked in an octagon I could summon the brain fluid of three space shuttles.

Just random-ass stuff that wants to be random-ass probably because I don't like random-ass unless it's, like, Space Dandy or Happy Tree Friends.

Also I have a tendency to bound. Like... not fly, but jump incredibly high and far as a preferred method of transportation. I guess. It's weird. It's this rush of adrenaline with the knowledge that you have to land.

I used to have the same recurring dream where I'd fall in a crowd and be carried out by a figure in a mask but that was when I was a teenager and lonely, I think.

 

[Luminous_Umbra]

The only thing that all of my dreams have had in common is that the amount of area my dreams take place in is enormous. I end up wandering a lot in my dreams. Other than that, they usually take place in one of two places:

- A strange version of my hometown (The most common one. The overall layout is the same, but the features are different. Sometimes it's dark and nightmarish, other times it's very natural and overgrown. Once it was even winter.)

- A mall, often with a theme park inside.

 

[Blacklight28]

I don't remember many of my dreams these days, but one thing I've noticed a lot is getting pulled out to sea in rough weather and dying. Either I run into the water to escape from something on the beach or accidentally falling in during a storm. I'll struggle and fight against the current, trying to ride waves in and dig my feet into the sand, but there's always a terrifying realisation that the pull of the waves is too strong and with every wave I'm pulled further and further from the shore.
I'll pass the point where my feet no longer touch the ground and the waves keep getting higher. Soon enough I'll get pulled up to the top of an enormous wave an I can feel it about to break as I'm looking down about three stories at the ocean surface. It'll break and I'll fall, waking up as I hit the water below.

 

[CaitSeith]

I don't know if it counts as a recurring theme. But usually if I play several hours of a survival horror game, I end up dreaming I'm hiding from the monster that night. Until now it has happened with Amnesia and Alien: Isolation. Oh, well. I suppose they wouldn't be horror games if they didn't stuck with me afterwards.

 

[Evil Moo]

The theme that is most common between my dreams is just a general sense of negativity. I can't remember the last time I had a fully good dream. There is always something stressful, dangerous or otherwise suspect looming over even the best of my dreams.

Another recurring theme is being out of control in a couple of ways. One being that I can fly, but I have no control of the ability, so I end up floating a metre or so off the ground, unable to move where I want, often just floating further upwards.
The other is where the events of the dream play out in a set sequence and I have no ability to change them. I can turn back time to try and do something different, but the same thing will happen over and over. Eventually I get stuck in a thought loop where I'm replaying the same 2 seconds of dream repeatedly while feeling increasingly stressed about it until I wake up.

I also find that my old secondary school is a common setting, which makes sense as I found that to be a fairly unpleasant time in my life.

 

[FootloosePhoenix]

Well I used to have a variation on the common "teeth falling out" theme. Except instead of just falling out, I kept breaking them by clenching my jaw too tight and even if I try to relax it, my teeth would keep breaking into pieces. By the end of such a dream, I wouldn't have a single proper tooth left in my mouth, just fragments. Those kinds of dreams always bothered me. I had a number of dental problems when I was younger, so that might've been part of the cause of it, but it was more likely a metaphor for anxiety by the sounds of it. Another nightmare I used to have, mostly as a young child, was being surrounded by gigantic jelly blocks. I found this very frightening for some reason. Lastly, being naked in public. Those seemed to be the most frequent but also turned out to be not as stressful as the other ones. Eventually I stopped giving a shit altogether about the fact that I was naked in my dreams and they proceeded as normal dreams and even stopped occurring after awhile. In fact I haven't had any of those sorts of dreams in a really long time. I don't remember a lot of my dreams nowadays, but they tend to just be random weirdness rather than clearly being some kind of internalized fear. I guess that's a good sign.