What themes dominate the bulk of your dreams?

[Sheikh al-Majaneen]

Inspired by this thread.

Most of the dreams I remember involve running away from something, or escaping from something. Sometimes those dreams are awesome, like the one where I was avoiding or fighting velociraptors while/by traveling around a dream city in its public transportation system of gravity-defying high-wire waterslides suspended over the city. Though they are very rarely tinged with such awesomeness, just consisting of constant movement and gtfoing from unidentified whatever.

Unless I get too much sleep, in which case the dreams are about suffocating while paralysed, facedown in my pillow and unable to move despite the strongest willing to do so I can muster. But its not real sleep paralysis, as those dreams happen when I am not face down in my pillow, and the alarm clock numbers are not actually numbers, and I will have that same dream like a dozen times over the course of a second.

But yes, post your common dream themes and psychoanalyse those of others.

[Menacing Spike]

Guilt!

[thicknavyrain]

I am quite often part of some kind of secret organisation, or a private detective or a policeman or some kind of adventurer person type thing. My SO is usually there at some point too, as are my other close friends. Generally there's ALWAYS an element of the day before in there.

[rigwarl]

Sex

[Angua]

I get lots of very vivid, strange dreams. A common theme is me doing something that is either embarrassing, or lets other people down, but I can't figure out why I did it, which is distressing because I've done something really bad and have no way of explaining myself. I've also had dreams where something happens (like holes being eaten into my feet), and for some reason I get flashbacks to it throughout the day. I used to have a bunch of being chased dreams, or not being able to do something because my vision kept going and I couldn't stay awake, but it's been a while since those.

However, I do occasionally get awesome dreams which involve flying or teleporting or other superpowers, or just being able to jump well enough to feel like I"m flying.

[broken_escalator]

The only parts I ever seem to remember are usually daily-routines that are playing in my dream such as waking up and going to work. It leads to a lot of deja vu feelings.

[Izawwlgood]

Go-carts and sky diving and worms and laser beams and kung fu and spies and sex and running and killing bears and failing exams and having my teeth break and the ocean and space and HADUKEN and music and stars and zombies and my grandfathers expectations and magnets and the sun and jelly fish and hacking AI and what ever happened that girl on the train stop and the darkness and...

Sorry, you guys have consistent dreams?

[Sandry]

A lot of mine are mission dreams. They're not very consistent in terms of what the mission involves, but it's a lot of "we need to get in a jeep and fend off these people. Here - use these tire doughnuts!" and "okay, the grocery store across the street is going to blow up. You need to evacuate all the baby sitters into an apartment nearby - GO!"

I guess my dreams are often very objective-oriented, but without actually being rational or stressful.

[podbaydoor]

Whether they're nightmares or just weird, most of my dreams involve 1) flying, and 2) loads and loads of frustration. I can always fly, but it takes incredible effort and I fail at flying over and over again. I can never just soar.

[Sandry]

Heh, flying in my dreams is undignified, stupid and not all that effective, and it still makes me super happy.

[Izawwlgood]

I find I often lose the power as soon as I recognize it as a power. "Whoa, I punched through solid rock! I bet I can escape through that wal-WHAM"

[broken_escalator]

Do you peeps practice lucid dreaming to remember this stuff? I only vaguely remember anything and mostly just get deja vu feelings.

[Sandry]

I don't lucid dream. Never been able to.

Typically a half dozen or so times per month I'll wake up at a point where the dream will still be in memory. If I found it quirky or interesting, I'll often write down a bit, or tell someone about it so that it stays in my head, but that's about the only trick to it I have.

[podbaydoor]

Pretty much the same as Sandry, but I'm not in the habit of writing things down. I only retain flashes of images sometimes, enough to get a general sense what what kinds of dreams I have. As far as I can remember, every dream I can remember involves flying at some point, and only one in the last ten years had one where I was flying successfully (and in that one I was an innocent person who was fleeing the international police. See what I mean about frustration?).

[mmark9094]

The dreams I remember:

Assassins, chasing bad guy, accidentally kill good guy, regret and guilt. (rented AC1 that weekend).
Late for school, anxiety.
Friend being pregnant, I am falsely arrested by police.
Kamikaze Russian planes at school, running.
Venice (bought AC2), chasing after murderer, solve puzzles, ghost of friend comes back to help.
Boston, hotel, walking in a dimly lit corridor with clubs set up in the style of a mall.
Sword fighting in Rome (ACB), convincing bad guys to stop fighting.

Although I can never pin something that I have found in every dream. I've had a dream where all I did was eat. Another about driving. Another about school. Another about running. Another about friends in trouble, I'm in trouble, nobody's in trouble. Some dreams where I know people, and people I don't know, some where I am third-person, some where I am first-person. I don't think there's anything that I can say is a common theme.

There have been a couple dreams where they turn out like "missions" as Sandry put it. Some of those dreams are fun, relaxing, or exhilarating, or depressing and exhausting.

Although writing dreams down definitely helps with retention, and lucid dreaming comes easier to me.

[Mighty Jalapeno]

33% - Moving to a new town.
33% - Rescuing my friends.
33% - Fleeing unspeakable evil.
1% - Love-at-first-sight with the girl of my dreams.

Any or all of those can take place at malls, or oceanside towns with VERY Z-axis-oriented topography.

[You, sir, name?]

People being oblivious to obvious danger and putting themselves or others in danger because of it is fairly common.

[olubunmi]

I tend to die in most of the dreams I remember.
That doesn't mean I wake up the moment I 'die', it often goes on quite a while after that, sometimes it even starts when I'm already dead. In the past years I've dreamt about everything from talking to dead relatives in the afterlife and attending my own funeral to just plain weird stuff like haunting classmates as a ghost >_>

edit: I've no idea what my subconcious is trying to tell me with this. Perhaps it's a good thing I don't pay attention to my dreams much.

[Kyberely]

Lately I've been having dreams that I've just had a baby, all but once the size of a thumb. I find it quite worrying.

[Menacing Spike]

I tend to die in most of the dreams I remember.
That doesn't mean I wake up the moment I 'die', it often goes on quite a while after that, sometimes it even starts when I'm already dead. In the past years I've dreamt about everything from talking to dead relatives in the afterlife and attending my own funeral to just plain weird stuff like haunting classmates as a ghost >_>

edit: I've no idea what my subconcious is trying to tell me with this. Perhaps it's a good thing I don't pay attention to my dreams much.

"Your meaning will extend beyond your death" or something?

[PictureSarah]

My dreams don't really have a consistent theme, like at all. They're all over the place. What they do have, is consistent color schemes. My good dreams all involve lots of jewel tones - especially turquoise and gold and burgundy. My bad dreams have bright, discordant colors, *especially* a mustardy yellow color, with splashes of magenta and orange and black and pea green. All of my dreams always have very specific color schmes, and I never dream in black and white.

[EmptySet]

I rarely remember my dreams and when I do they tend to be all over the shop. Also, I lucid dream naturally, and almost all the dreams I can remember are lucid.

The only recurring one is that something is about to bite my foot. It always happens when I get leg cramps while sleeping, and I always wake up in sleep paralysis with a desperate need to move my leg. And then the paralysis wears off and my leg spasms reflexively.

[Jahoclave]

Zombies. Lots and lots of soon to be dead zombies. Oddly enough, my girlfriend dreams about zombies a lot as well.

[Midnight]

Uh, usually me talking with people a lot. In a huge variety of situations... but one of the few constants in my dreams is dialogue.
Usually it's silent conversation but it's subtitled so I can read it. Dunno what that means.

[Promicin]

Usually whatever I'm writing about manifests itself in my dreams. I'm actually really surprised my characters don't show up more often.
Then there's all the scary dreams (technically nightmares, although I have to say, I love waking up feeling scared for some reason) where people want to kill me.
I used to have recurring dreams about being in an out of control car and having to steer from the passenger seat, but that seems to have passed.
The only current reccuring theme is losing/breaking a tooth. Always the same tooth. I've even had my dentist check it, but it's firmly in there.

[Watcher Of The Skies]

Zombies. Lots and lots of soon to be dead zombies. Oddly enough, my girlfriend dreams about zombies a lot as well.

That's crazy, zombies are my only recurring theme in dreams too! I'm always killing them, in a variety of strange settings. I'd say at least a third of the dreams I remember involve killing zombies.

[kingofdreams]

I went through a phase where I kept track of what I dreamed, after a while they get more repetitive.
Commonly Occurring
1. Something is very wrong with the world but I can't remember what it is and I'm with a whole bunch of other people in a similar situation, occasionally we act as a group and do some pretty fucked up stuff for reasons unclear to us, these dreams have a fair amount of continuity.
2. Occasionally I'm in a big white space pulling names out of a hat, and each ones a dead person who tells me about how they knew me even though I never met them.
3. I have a preview of how I expect the coming day to go, sometimes theres the oh no I didn't finish the project part but usually its fairly normal.
4. I follow a flaming lizard around a ruined desert city and climb down a well.
5. Some nights I just keep realizing I'm dreaming and wake up.
6. I get eaten by a dog (always a little yapping one).
7. Flying but I'm always in the backyard of the house I lived in when I was a kid.
8. I dream I'm watching TV and I want to stop but every time I leave the room I'm back in front of the TV

and of course

9. sex

[M.C.]

Some nights I get me at work, then going on a work related adventure.

Other nights, I get stabbed, shot, beaten up or drowning. Those aren't pleasant.

[theGoldenCalf;]

Amsterdam, for some reason, is a long running motive in my dreams. Whenever I'm dreaming I'm there, the dreams are incredibly vivid, visually detailed and complex, sometimes even lucid or bordering on lucid. I've only been there once for like a week, but I think you get the picture of what that week was like.

Many other dreams have a problem solving theme, mainly from work (software programming). I get all excited that I've solved the damn thing that was driving me crazy for like a week, only to wake up and realize the solution has something to do with gamma-radiating the hyperchicken while having the alien slug machine dropped into the ballpit.

[mandachan]

A lot of mine involve going to a mall. It's often the same one, but my local mall is nowhere near big enough, and I have yet to go to a mall that's anything close to the one in my dream.

If it's the morning before something important, i.e. the first day of school, an exam or vacation, I'll usually dream that I woke up late or completely bombed it.

[electronic mily]

Most of my dreams are pretty scattered and aimless, but the few themes that pop up with any kind of frequency are (1) I'm on a mission to do X (find so-and-so, prevent X from happening, take back the markers that the mafia has stolen from the children's library), (2) I have a school project that doesn't make any sense (often during periods when I'm not in school and know this, but for some reason the project still stands), or (3) I have made X and it is really awesome and totally not impossible or nonsensical (this has included a kind of eerie nonlinear storytelling computer game and, in one case, an actual person who I assembled like a robot).

There's also the occasional "somethin's chasin' me around," but that's pretty infrequent, and I've gone through periods of "stuck in (X structure) for some reason" and "aliens/ghosts/etc are here!"

[reflex]

Nothing special ever happens in my dreams. They always take place in familiar locations. Be it school, home, or some place in town. Usually involving people in my life as well, but they are the part of the dream that's usually unusual. They often do strange things, completely out of character for how they normally act.

Also, I'm not one of the nutters, but I constantly remember I dreamed something once it happens in real life. Some things are explained by simple repetition, and the possibility of it happening numerous times, but there have been things that can't have possibly happened before. Things that I still remember dreaming before they happen.

[Thesh]

They generally revolve around games I have been playing too much of, or TV shows I have been watching to much of lately. When I did nothing but get caught up on Psych, the show had invaded my dreams. I have also had Mass Effect 2 invade my dreams. Otherwise, nothing in particular.

[You, sir, name?]

They generally revolve around games I have been playing too much of, or TV shows I have been watching to much of lately. When I did nothing but get caught up on Psych, the show had invaded my dreams. I have also had Mass Effect 2 invade my dreams. Otherwise, nothing in particular.

Who wouldn't want to have their dreams be riddled with pop-cultural references to the '80s and '90s?

[PatrickRsGhost]

Do you peeps practice lucid dreaming to remember this stuff? I only vaguely remember anything and mostly just get deja vu feelings.

I wish I could lucid dream, but so far no go.

Most of us remember these types of dreams because they're consistent. They're like reruns of our favorite TV show in syndication, with the same episode being aired at least 3 times a week.

The two common themes of my consistent dreams are:

1. I'm standing just outside of a small pine forest, with the trees standing only about 7 or 8 feet tall, and trying to get or find something or someone that's inside those trees. On the outside I'm walking on dry, hard Georgia red clay, or some sort of dry, clay-like ground, the sun is shining, and it's usually hot.

2. I'm at work or back at high school, sitting in my chair or desk, naked, with everyone looking at me or approaching me. Sometimes the two worlds seem to collide, with me being back in high school, but my co-workers are the ones ogling me, or I'm at work, and the kids I went to school with are ogling me, or they're both ogling me at either location.

[jawdisorder]

I really wish I could remember more dreams. The only dreams I really remember are from several years ago or longer. It's only about once a month that I even wake up thinking that was a weird/cool/frightening dream. I generally sleep the entire night and wake up with a blank slate. The dreams I do remember from a while ago were all black and white except for one central object.

[Ulc]

Is it sad that the major theme of my dreams (the few I can remember at least) seems to revolve around my department at uni these days?

[CHR1110]

I really wish I could remember more dreams. The only dreams I really remember are from several years ago or longer. It's only about once a month that I even wake up thinking that was a weird/cool/frightening dream. I generally sleep the entire night and wake up with a blank slate. The dreams I do remember from a while ago were all black and white except for one central object.

Fairly similar for myself. I've attempted lucid dreaming as well, but I've only been successful at it once, and that was only for a short time.

[SilentWindofDoom]

The themes tend to revolve around things ive been watching/doing the past few months. Apart from the random stuff everyone experiences.

Common themes revolve around star trek/world war 2/first person shooter mashups. I have to say, taking on the Kazon with auto shotguns and MG42's around an appartment building is quite amusing, that is until the mandatory Seska doublecross, which i of course escape by making her.. sigarette lighter overload or something, cue big explosion.

Im surprised how much sense dreams can make sometimes, such as someone asking me not to fire from the window of the room they are in as it would attract return fire. I often wonder if thats the rational part of my brain actually engineering that or just something ive seen/heard/read.

[Malt]

Now that I think about it, my most common theme is of me chasing something. It varies from dream to dream, but it's usually 'Hey! That guy just did something bad! Get him!' And I start to do so, and I find that I'm suddenly running incredibly slowly, and whatever I'm chasing is outrunning me. It's like a bad TV show.

And there's usually some sort of flying in all my dreams. Sometimes there's wings of some sort, but usually not. Many times it takes place at my house, and I'm zooming up and down my block/neighborhood. Most annoyingly, the flying is usually conditional, and I can't do it unless there's wind or something, and I'll go all the way up, then peter out and fall down. Rinse and repeat.

But the weirdest thing that reoccurs all the time for me is one where I'm jumping fences. It starts out in my yard, and I hop on to the 8-foot fence at the back, and leap onto the next one, usually at the other end of somebody else's property, and then the next fence, and so on. Something's usually chasing me in those, and I never seem to outrun it. This'll go on for maybe thirty fences, (Though in real life, I'd be at the end of the neighborhood after maybe two or three) at which point I will realize the dream has become pointless, wake up, realize it's 2.30, then go back to sleep.