A Therapist Explains The Top 10 Most Common Dreams
- Brainz Magazine
- 4 hours ago
- 8 min read
Dr. Deborah Brown is a psychotherapist and behavioral health entrepreneur. She developed Brownstone Mental Health Services and can be heard on the My Session with Dr. Deborah Brown podcast.
One of the most talked-about topics in my years as a therapist has been the strange and unusual dreams of my patients. There are many dreams that we commonly have, making them not so strange and unusual after all! Patients frequently ask what their dreams mean and many want to understand why we dream. Science tells us that most people have 3-6 dreams a night, and most of us do not remember them. If we all dream, then it could be very helpful to talk about what the most prevalent dreams can actually mean. Let’s do an interpretation of the top ten most common dreams!
Bathroom dreams
I’m sure most of us have experienced this one. You have to go to the bathroom, and of course, you can’t find one, or if you do, they are filthy, and as you look stall after stall, there is no opportunity for relief. Now, I think there’s a physiological basis for that dream, and what it could be is that our body has to go to the bathroom, but our brain knows that it can’t. Because you are asleep and not satisfying the bodily urge, your brain moves you through all of these trials and tribulations. This is your brain’s response to a physiological response that you can’t answer because you’re sleeping, and your brain is trying to solve that problem for you. Luckily, when the urge gets strong enough, we wake up and stop the search.
Being unprepared at work or school
This dream can happen in all kinds of ways. Perhaps in your dream, you completely forgot your homework or have to take a test that you didn’t study for, or perform a presentation that you are unprepared for. These are very common dreams and it’s interesting that people who haven’t been in school for decades can still have this type of dream. I believe that our fear in these dreams can be related to not being good enough or being very afraid of humiliation. For many, there is a deep fear that they will get into a situation where they must perform and they will be unable to do so, pointing to fears of public humiliation, shame or not performing well. These are all very normal fears that most of us hold, and maybe even experience in school and work environments.
Losing teeth
If you had a guess about what dreams would be on this list, it was probably this one. Losing teeth is a very common dream that I’ve even had myself, and it can be a terrible dream to experience. You may feel the teeth leaving your mouth, or you may see them in your hand, and maybe you can feel your mouth empty where your teeth once were. This one is likely related to our basic human need for body integrity. We all inherently have an instinct from the beginning of time to have body integrity, or the desire to keep our body whole.
Something like a tooth falling out when you’re an adult can be horrifying and can challenge our sense of safety and our perception of our own health. Look at the big screen, and you will see many of today’s most popular horror films, known as “body horror” movies, coming out. These tap into that visceral, natural human fear of losing or damaging parts of our bodies. Fear of losing teeth is just such an inherent part of our humanity, perhaps related to deep fears about our health, aging and appearance, that I don’t believe this one necessarily means anything specific about your life.
Falling
We’ve all felt this one. You jump awake because you have fallen, jumped or tripped in your dream. This one could be based on an automatic physiological response. Everything that I've studied about dreams tells me that there are stages of consciousness that we move through when we sleep. As you fall asleep, you fall through the layers of your consciousness, through different and decreasing levels of awareness. The falling dream often occurs when we’re moving between awake and asleep. When we are almost asleep, it is possible that we feel ourselves falling through our levels of consciousness and as a result, perhaps we “jump” ourselves awake.
Being chased
This one can be especially frightening. I’ve talked to a lot of patients who have felt traumatized by their nightmares, typically by dreams with themes of peril, or about being chased. I feel that these dreams are connected to a person’s sense of security and overall fears about life. If you are being chased or in peril in your dream, you are not feeling secure and you’re afraid. These appear to most often come from events of the past, unless you’re currently involved in a precarious, stressful, or unsafe situation. Being chased is about peril and a very high level of fear. If you’re currently being exposed to something very stressful or there’s some peril in your past that maybe you haven’t worked through, that could be the cause of these dreams.
Being naked in public
Almost everybody has had this dream! In your dream, you are at school or work or on the bus, and you're naked, and often the only one who is. You cannot cover up and are maybe hiding or hoping not to be noticed. This is one of those universal human dreams again, as almost every human has a fear of being embarrassed. Sometimes it can harken back to real shame about your body, or fear of being seen naked. However, whether your body is “perfect” or not isn’t typically the issue. It’s the idea of being naked and shamed as a result. Shame is a powerful emotion, and most will avoid feeling it at all costs. This dream definitely hits the shame button.
A partner cheating
A partner cheating on you is a painful dream that I hear about from my patients, but there is another part that few talk about, which is where you cheat on your partner in a dream. I’ve seen that these dreams are common even in healthy relationships. I believe that dreaming that your partner is cheating on you or you are cheating on them is really about fear. If you’re in a partnership where you love someone very much or in a partnership that is problematic, in both cases, you have a fear that you could lose the relationship. Those fears will take us to places in our brain that don’t make any sense.
So, if you have a dream about your partner cheating on you, it’s more likely that you are afraid that they are not in the relationship the way they should be. If you have a dream about you cheating on your partner, it could be a fluke, or maybe your own little unconscious desires popping up in ways that are possibly self-sabotaging. If you wake up and feel excited about the dream of relations with another, I want you to think about that. If you wake up and feel terrible or guilty, know that you are a human with desires and attractions that don’t disappear completely when you are partnered. Don’t worry about these dreams too much, unless you have them frequently.
Sex
It is reported that 70% of people have dreams about sex. I think the number is a bit higher, but people don’t talk about it because there’s a shame sometimes associated with thinking about sex. Dreaming about sex is normal, unless the dreams are violent, aggressive or fearful and negative. Dreams about having sex with multiple people, in different ways, or in different scenarios, are not unusual or deviant. I do not suggest that you should be criminalizing yourself for them, but I would examine the thematic content. Let’s say you are in a heterosexual relationship; you are having dreams where you are engaging with the same sex. Maybe it’s nonsensical or perhaps there’s something your brain is exploring. What does it all mean? You might want to consider talking through your dreams with a trusted friend or therapist.
Natural disasters or end of the world
These dreams have become more prevalent in recent times. Common dreams about natural disasters could have tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes and storms. End of the world dreams could have a zombie apocalypse, the sky raining fire, pestilence, war and bombs, or the knowledge that the world is coming to a horrific end. There’s a natural human curiosity about these things, seen clearly in the number of movies featuring these scenarios. There are many popular stories on film and in books about tragic, overwhelming, horrible world-ending things. The truth is that those things are rare, and you could go through your entire life without ever experiencing any of them. That, however, does not preclude us from fearing these things.
These dreams could be a way of sorting out what we see on the news and read, and view. These can be amongst the most terrifying nightmares, because in these we often fear for our lives. It could be considered that our minds are trying to sort out if our world is safe or not: if the world is a good or bad place. These play to our darkest fears because, despite these being themes of fiction, we often now see versions of these images on the news, actually happening. These types of catastrophic events can definitely challenge our human need to feel safe.
Trauma memories
This type of dream can be very helpful for me when I work with my patients. When patients share such a dream in session, sometimes it’s a direct trauma memory, or a dream where they are unsure of the reality of what happened. This can be confusing and frightening. Sometimes in dreams, you’ll remember a piece of something that really happened or a piece of something that’s close to what happened. You will not always remember it like a brilliant, bright memory, but it can be enough to make you question the veracity of an old bit of memory from the past.
Trauma remembered in dreams sometimes causes us to sort out our version of what happened because very often the version in our recallable memory is not the same. Our remembered version matters, but sometimes our brain is trying to illuminate things and make things clear. I’ve had patients who had their first recollection of trauma in dreams, which can serve as a catalyst to start to talk about it, and what they remember. Trauma dreams can be random and created by our present mind. But sometimes they can also be signals that perhaps you need to work through something or pay attention to a memory from your past.
When we look at the meanings of dreams, it is all very interpretive. Five people could have the same general dream theme, and it could mean different things for each. Even with this, it’s important to examine dreams, less in the way that some look at every detail as having a specific meaning or as a predictor of something. If you’re having certain dreams repeatedly, there could be a message there. If you’re struggling with the content of your dreams, consider seeing a therapist to talk through what’s floating through your thoughts as you sleep. You might even learn something new about yourself.
If you want to hear more about the science behind dreams, listen to my podcast episode “Dreams: What Do They Really Mean?”
Read more from Deborah Brown
Deborah Brown, Psychotherapist and Behavioral Health Entrepreneur
Dr. Deborah Brown is a psychotherapist and behavioral health entrepreneur. She is a thought leader in the field of mental health, working to fight mental health stigma and increase public awareness about mental health-related issues. Dr. Brown developed Brownstone Mental Health Services, a large group practice that is revolutionizing the way that mental health therapy is provided. She can be heard on the My Session with Dr. Deborah Brown podcast.
