What Your Recurring Dream or Nightmare Might Actually Be Asking For
The dream that keeps coming back is rarely the problem. It's the messenger.
Almost everyone I work with who has a recurring nightmare has already tried to outthink it. They've written it down, looked up what the house or the water or the teeth are supposed to mean, mentioned it to a therapist in passing, and moved on because there wasn't time to stay with it. And still it comes back. Same shape, same feeling, sometimes years apart, as though it's been waiting for you to actually turn around and look at it.
I want to offer a different way of holding that dream than "what does it symbolise." Because, in my experience, a nightmare that repeats isn't a puzzle to decode. It's a request that hasn't been answered yet.
Why the same dream or nightmare keeps returning
A dream or nightmare that visits once is often just the mind processing the ordinary residue of a day or a season. A dream that returns, especially across years, is doing something different. It has found a shape that reliably gets your attention, and it keeps using that shape because whatever it's pointing at hasn't been addressed. This is closer to a knock at the door that keeps happening because no one has answered it yet than it is to a code that needs cracking.
Sleep researchers also note that recurring nightmares are often linked to stress, anxiety, poor sleep or past trauma, so the dream may be reflecting something in your waking life as well as something deeper.
The content matters less than what it's asking of you
People often want to know what the specific images mean: the house, the falling, the person who is no longer alive. Those details matter, but they are rarely where the real work lies. The real work is in the question underneath: what does this dream need from me that I haven’t given it?
Sometimes that is acknowledgment of something never fully grieved. Sometimes it is a boundary never set in waking life. Sometimes it feels older than your own life, carried forward from further back than you would expect. The dream will often show you which, once you are in relationship with it rather than trying to solve it from a distance.
Ways to begin working with it yourself
If you have a dream that keeps returning, these are helpful places to start:
Write it down soon after waking. Keep a notebook by the bed and record it while it is fresh, including the feelings and the details that seem trivial or embarrassing. Those are often the useful ones.
Notice the feeling before the story. Ask yourself what the dominant emotion is: fear, shame, grief, helplessness, longing. The feeling is often a clearer guide than the imagery.
Ask the dream a question. Before sleep, or in a quiet moment, ask “What do you need from me?” You don’t need an answer straight away. Simply asking changes how you relate to the dream.
Look for the waking parallel. Consider where in your current life you feel the same way you do in the dream. The overlap is often revealing.
Revisit the ending. If the nightmare is frightening, imagine in daylight how you would like it to end differently, and rehearse that new ending in your mind. Imagery rehearsal is an established technique for recurring nightmares, and many people find it eases them.
Settle your evenings. Regular sleep times, less alcohol and caffeine late in the day, and a calm wind-down can reduce how often nightmares occur.
Don’t carry it alone. Telling a trusted friend or practitioner about the dream can loosen its hold.
Know when to seek more support. If your nightmares are frequent, if they began after a traumatic event, if they leave you dreading sleep, or if you are struggling to function, please speak to your GP or a mental health professional. Trauma-related nightmares, in particular, respond well to clinical treatment, and shamanic work can sit alongside it rather than replace it.
What working with a dream in a Shamanic session can look like
You tell me the dream in as much detail as you can, including the parts that feel unimportant or embarrassing. From there, I work with the dream directly, as I would with any other part of the non-ordinary landscape, to explore what it is asking for and what it may be trying to protect you from. The aim is for you to move forward with something specific to do or attend to, rather than only a symbolic interpretation to think about.
In my experience, recurring dreams often change or stop once they have been answered, rather than managed or analysed from the outside. That is usually the clearest sign the dream has done what it came to do.
If a dream keeps finding its way back to you, it may be worth finding out what it has been trying to say. You are welcome to reach out if you would like to explore it together.
Kathy Postelle Rixon is Chair of The Philosophical Society: Oxford, an independent researcher in consciousness studies, and a shamanic practitioner of more than forty years, working in Q’ero, Norse and Celtic traditions. You can contact her at kathy@magicinharmony.com or visit her website at www.magicinharmony.com.
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