As a child, I had an often-recurring dream over the years. It was really unpleasant and I still remember the feeling of trying to control how it ended. What he feared never happened, but he seemed to forget about it every time he returned to sleep.

Probably many readers feel identified with this experience.

We spend about a third of our lives sleeping, and in this case, the dreams we live are of great interest. They involve experiences on the sensory, emotional, and mental levels. Although they can occur at any stage, they are more common during REM sleep.

Although not everyone remembers stories experiences during night rest, some recurring dreams, recurring dreams with the same content. In fact, about 75% of adults report experiencing them at some point in their lives.

Some of the most typical is the feeling that we are being persecuted, that our teeth are falling out, that we are falling into the void, or that we appear in public without clothes or in strange clothes. Therefore, most of them have a negative aspect and often appear during periods of stress and psychological discomfort.

Why are they produced? Can we do anything to remove them? To answer these questions, we must first find out why we dream in general.

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Consolidation of memories and education

Although there is no scientific consensus about its origin and usefulness, we do know that dreams in general are linked to experiences stored in memory. They are probably involved in the integration of our experience.

According to some models, they may be the result of a process of memory consolidation that will be produced by reactivation of memory-related brain areas. Thus, there will be a kind of writing stored in our mind and its activation will produce the image of the dream.

On the other hand, dreaming is presumed to play a role from an evolutionary perspective: it will serve to train behaviors to escape or avoid threatening situations.

Recurring dream types

First of all, it is important to distinguish between recurring dreams that are part of a pathology and dreams of unknown cause and not associated with a health problem.

Therefore, the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) includes two disorders that have such recurring dream experiences as one of their main symptoms: nightmare disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Both constitute psychopathologies, that is, cause clinical deterioration and clearly interfere with the life of the affected person.

When it comes to post-traumatic stress disorder, it is very common for people to experience the exact repetition of the traumatic event. Instead, idiopathic recurrent dreams (with no known cause), the loss of a loved one, or the end of a relationship are related to more general themes.

Universal and at the same time very personal

When understanding these dreams, several factors should be taken into account.

On the one hand, there are common dreams in different times or cultures. Some of the most common ones, as we mentioned earlier, are falling, being attacked or persecuted, trying to do something over and over again, or feeling like our teeth are falling out. The latter has been associated with a type of dental irritation process, indicating the possibility of certain sensory stimuli being involved in dreams.

Other dreams, such as falling, are often accompanied by muscle twitching and sometimes occur just as you fall asleep. This experience, called hypnagogic jerk or myoclonic spasm, may respond to the brain’s attempt to continue controlling the body during the transition between wakefulness and sleep.

On the other hand, the frequent repetition of a dream in the same person, despite the presence of common problems, associated its meaning with psychological factors. Thus, the content can change over time and has a different meaning for each individual.

Recurring dreams often occur during times of stress, but some people experience them for years or even a lifetime. In some cases, they go away when the mood improves, but come back if it gets worse again. For example, lack of sleep has been associated with recurring nightmares.

Thus, while there are some hypotheses about certain recurring contents or their relationship to one’s concerns, we are not currently in a position to explain why there are more recurring issues than others.

A reflection of our worries

The continuity hypothesis states that dreams reflect situations and anxieties present during wakefulness. Therefore, people are more likely to be negative if they experience psychological distress. Recurring nightmares are more common in people who are anxious or tend to experience intense negative emotions.

It should also be noted that recurrent dreams are more common in people who feel that their psychological needs are in vain.

Additionally, those who experience them and stop having them continue to dream more positive things than people who have never had such dream experiences before. This would support the theory that there is a relationship between dreams and psychological adjustment. Recurring dreams may reflect some type of unresolved anxiety or conflict that the person has to process and deal with, which plays an important role in emotional regulation. Dreaming would serve us as a form of education.

Can we do anything to remove them?

Recurring dreams usually do not cause major problems and therefore do not need treatment.

However, some people choose to try to reduce them through psychological intervention. These interventions have even managed to cure post-traumatic dream cases.

On the other hand, when we are aware of what we are dreaming, training so-called lucid dreams will allow us to change the experience during the episode.

In short, if we are having recurring dreams, in principle we should not worry. We can only consult a specialist if we feel that it is causing a great deal of discomfort in our life or may be responding to an underlying problem.

Laura Río Martínez, Doctor of Psychology, researcher and university professor, International University of Valencia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.