I’m no stranger to the concept of reoccurring dreams.
In fact, I’ve had a lot of reoccurring dreams in my life.
I’ve also had a lot of dreams that felt so significant and so real, that they caused me to ask myself:
Does this mean anything? Or is it just a dream?
Last night, I had one such particular dream.
It was especially vivid, and it evoked some pretty serious emotion within me.
Within the dream, I was struggling against an authority figure from my childhood.
The theme of the dream felt very tangible to me.
It felt like I was struggling to gain my freedom, and this authority figure was striving to keep me under their oppressive thumb.
This general overall ‘dream theme’ is one that I’ve experienced in my dreams many times before in my life.
But why did I have it? And what did it mean?
I’m not a dream expert. But I have put a lot of work and energy into trying to understand myself from the inside out as a human.
And I’ve come to discover that significant dreams that evoke strong emotions within us often come from somewhere within our subconscious.
This is especially true if we can identify a ‘theme’ from the dream that seems to line up with some part of how we feel about our real, conscious reality.
Where Do Dreams Come From?
Now, there’s a lot of brain science that we could talk about on the subject of dreams.
There are psychologists and experts who have published entire books and studies on the subject of dreams.
I am by no means an expert on this topic.
So I’m not going to delve into the science of it.
However, I can comment on how dreams have affected me in my life, and on how I’ve discovered where and when to pull useful information from them to make decisions about my life in the real world.
So let’s return to this concept, this ‘theme’ if you will, of being oppressed by a childhood oppressor in your dreams.
Themes And Strong Emotions In Our Dreams Often Correlate With What We Feel Deep Within Our Subconscious Mind
Now this particular theme of dream, for me, often manifests itself when I feel like I’m losing control of my life.
This could be because I don’t feel like I have any good options, or because I feel like the circumstances of life are closing-in around me.
Maybe I feel trapped and/or unable to make decisions that’ll help me to control my own destiny.
In particular, for me, I believe that this dream manifested itself in my subconscious as of late because I’ve been feeling like my freelance writing work has hit a plateau.
And to a degree, this has caused me to feel ‘trapped’ by my current financial situation.
I’ve really been striving to grow the business.
And admittedly, I’ve reached a point in my success where growing beyond where I’m currently at is becoming difficult for me.
This is a level I’ve never reached before.
And I believe that I had this dream because this real-life fact—this fact that I feel like I’ve ‘plateaued’—has been causing me some distress.
It’s probably true to say that I’ve had some doubts about my chosen line of work.
Over the last week, pretty much every day, I’ve had thoughts that sounded something like this.
“Maybe I chose the wrong vocation. Maybe I chose the wrong skill to focus on in my life. Maybe I’ve started the wrong type of business. Maybe I need to go back to the drawing board and start over again.”
How To Deal With Powerful Dreams In The Real World
Now, before I go any further, I just want to say that I love my work.
And to be really honest, there’s no serious desire within me to stop doing it.
I believe 100% in the alpha mentality.
I’m going to take radical responsibility for my life, and make sure that I land on my feet.
I’m going to find a way to solve my problems and move past them.
I’m not going to accept anything less than victory.
In other words, Joshua K. Sigafus isn’t going to stop writing ever.
I’m also not going to stop growing my dating coach business.
However, the fact that I was having these troubling thoughts, and that they were actually affecting my feelings, is enough to see that they were probably at work in my subconscious when I went into REM sleep—and thus, those subconscious feelings produced within me the necessary ingredients for a dream like the one I experienced.
I’ve also had dreams about many other themes as well.
For example:
During my divorce, I had a lot of dreams where I got very angry within the dream, and I’d get into fights with people (like literal fistfights) within these dreams with people whom I felt angry with or bitter toward in real life.
I did a lot of research to try and understand why I was having this type of dream.
And honestly, the conclusion I came to made a lot of sense.
I was legitimately angry about the entire current state of my life.
I felt angry from dawn till dark—from wake to sleep.
One of the only emotions that I could feel during my divorce was anger.
And so, this manifested itself in my dreams.
Of course, there were other themes that popped up at times as well. I’ll keep some of them to myself, as they were a bit more personal… but you get the idea.
Why Are You Having Reoccurring Dreams?
In my life, and in my experience, I’ve come up with an answer to this question.
The answer has proven to be right for me.
And I’m going to give it to you because it might be helpful to you.
Now, once again, keep in mind that I’m no expert on dreams. I’m not a brain scientist or a psychologist.
But I believe that people have recurring dreams when they’re not successfully dealing with and/or facing strong negative feelings that are cropping up in their life.
Sometimes, when we push past strong feelings and we bury them inside of us, our subconscious mind deals with them by letting those feelings out when we’re in our dream state.
Therefore, I’ve also found that dealing with these deep-set feelings was always the first step toward resolving the dreams.
Solving Negative Reoccurring Dreams
In my experience, we can only solve negative recurring dreams by facing those hidden negative emotions, bringing them into the light, and figuring out how to start fixing the cause for them in the real world.
For example:
When I woke up this morning, I thought about my dream for a while.
I actually went back to bed and slept a bit more. And while I was going to sleep, I really thought about what my dream might have meant, and what I could do about the subconscious feelings that were being manifested within it.
And when I woke up, I actually had what I would call the beginnings of an answer.
I made two separate different plans for how to address clients and situations in my life that might currently be making me feel like I don’t have direct control over my destiny.
And to be honest, after making these plans, I felt far more hopeful than I have in a long time.
In Conclusion
If you’re dealing with dreams that contain strong emotions, or especially if you’re dealing with reoccurring dreams, I just want to give you this word of encouragement.
There’s a very good chance that your dreams are revealing feelings that you’ve pushed down and hidden from yourself.
So try to shine a light on those feelings to figure out what they might be trying to tell you.
There’s a good chance that your subconscious is trying to communicate with you through your dreams, to let you know that something needs to change.
If you’re repressing such strong emotions, it’s likely that there are situations in your life that aren’t completely healthy that you may need to deal with.
And your dreams can give you a clue as to what those situations are.
It’s not always easy to deal with hidden emotions and feelings because…well, the fact that they’re hidden makes them more difficult to find, identify, label, and categorize.
But nonetheless, if we want our lives to progress forward, and if we want to find success not just in our dating lives, but in our professional lives and in all of our other relationships…
And if we just want to be happier, more fulfilled, and more satisfied in life, then it’s in our best interest to figure out what those hidden negative feelings are, and how we can start to address them in the real world.
That’s all I’ve got for this one.
Go with grace my friends, and never give up your power.
Until next time…
Joshua K. Sigafus