Why do I Keep Dreaming About The Same Person?

Not again! How many nights in a row will you dream about the same person? Even if you can control your thoughts in your waking life, dreams are a different matter altogether. When you have recurring dreams about the same person, that can be confusing, frustrating, or maybe a little intriguing?

So, what makes you have repeated dreams about a particular person? Can you stop yourself from repeatedly dreaming about someone? Is this a sign of something deeper? Let’s take a deeper dive into what your subconscious mind might be trying to tell you, and tips on how to get a better handle on these recurrent dreams.

Potential Reasons For Recurring Dreams About The Same Person

There are many reasons that you may be having recurring dreams about the same person. Dreams reflect the subconscious mind, and are often a way of working things out. If you’ve been repeatedly dreaming about someone, it can help to reflect and gain insight into what may be happening.

Why Should You Explore The “Why” of Recurring Dreams of The Same Person?

It can be a challenge to your balance to find yourself dreaming about someone night after night. You wrack your brain for possible meanings. Your sleep quality may suffer, as well as your well-being, if you avoid sleep or develop anxiety-related insomnia. You may miss out on important REM sleep or deal with impacts on your waking life.

You Have Unresolved Feelings or Unresolved Issues

You have pretty good control over your conscious mind. That’s why you may not think of a specific person while you are awake. Your subconscious mind is a different matter altogether. You don’t have nearly as much control of that, meaning you may have recurrent dreams or nightmares whether you want to or not.

Often, these recurring dreams mean that you have unresolved conflicts, feelings, or desires. Even if you really want to be “over it” when it comes to this person, you may not be. Another possibility? You’ve caught feelings.

Buried Anxiety About a Loved One or Family Member

The people we care about get under our skin, even when we wish we could let go. You may be worried about a family member’s mental health or concerned that an ex is falling back into bad habits. Even if you have worked hard on acceptance and believe you control your feelings around a person’s actions, those emotions may be buried beneath the surface. The dreams you’re having could be your brain’s way of processing worry and anxiety.

It Isn’t The Person But Their Symbolism

It’s not you, it’s me! Have you ever started dreaming of someone and been baffled by it? You’re just unsure of why this person has entered your dreams out of all the people in the universe. Don’t worry. You aren’t crazy. Symbolism may explain why you are dreaming about someone.

Not all dreams or nightmares should be taken literally. They are often reflections of your subconscious as it works to process your life and make sense of your feelings.

What does this mean? Recurring dreams don’t always indicate that you have feelings for a person. Instead, you may be dreaming about someone for symbolic reasons.

Dreaming of Someone Out of Habit And Presence

This isn’t very exciting, but recurring dreams aren’t always that deep. You may spend time searching for various meanings and significance, but reality is often boring. Sometimes, dreams just reflect daily life.

Have you ever dreamt about a cashier or someone that you regularly see, but that doesn’t play a significant role in your life? That could just be your brain doing a weird replay of things that have happened to you.

There Might be Spiritual Significance to Recurring Dreams

Is there a spiritual significance to your recurring dreams? That depends on who you ask. It’s a bit controversial. Atheists and those who see themselves as pragmatic realists might dismiss this as wishful thinking.

On the other hand, the notion that dreams are attempts to communicate with the spiritual realm are nothing new. There are many religious traditions and cultures that believe dreams may be related to communications from deceased loved ones, connected to your past lives, or a deity influencing your thoughts. You may even see dreams as the universe trying to tell you something.

In the Hebrew Bible, sleep was believed to “thin the veil” between the living world and that of angels and demons. It was also thought that God may choose to communicate with a person through their dreams.

Related reading: Step Into Your Spiritual Awakening Path

Understanding More – Dream Interpretation

A person who desires more insight into their dreams can use tools like dream interpretation to process just what their brain is trying to tell them while they sleep.

A Warning

The topic of interpreting dreams is a bit controversial. Many see this as a pseudoscience. If you choose to follow a specific methodology or use a specific book to guide this process, proceed with caution. Not all experts in the interpretation of dreams are experts at all. Their beliefs about dreams are just reflections of their own thoughts and experiences.

Before you take another person’s interpretations about the details of your dreams, do some research. You don’t need to dismiss them, but you should be aware of their motives or rhetorical goals.

Start a Dream Journal

There’s a very good chance that you already have the key to understanding your dreams. The best way to working things out is by keeping a journal. Start by writing some reflections before you go to sleep.

You can jot down:

• The emotions you are feeling most before going to bed
• Relationship issues and goals that stand out to you
• Worries and anxieties you have about yourself or your family
• A digest version of a funny or touching story about your day
• Real life events that made you feel emotional
• A list of memories that have cropped up recently

If you can, get back to your journal when you wake up. This is when your memories of your dreams are most accessible. Just write down what you remember about your dreams with no attempt to interpret or edit them. Then, see if there are any clear connections to your dreams and what you wrote about your life before you went to sleep.

The longer you can keep your journal the better. Eventually, you will have a history of your dreams and your daily experiences. With time, you may see a clear relationship between the two.

Can You Stop Dreaming About Someone?

You might be wondering: is it possible to stop having dreams about someone? Especially if those dreams are causing you to feel negative emotions, relive past trauma, or just spend time thinking about somebody you’d rather forget. Well, sometimes, you can do this on your own via journaling or choosing to spend time focusing on positive things to get that person off your mind.

But if that doesn’t work, consider working with a therapist, especially one that has expertise in relationship history and trauma healing. They may be able to give you the tools to understand your emotions, process your relationship with a person in healthier ways, and find a way to resolve fears that may be causing these dreams in the first place.

Are You a Dreamer or Not?

Everybody dreams, but experiences and emotions around those dreams can vary greatly. Some people remember dreams vividly. Others don’t have any recollection at all. You may get very emotional about your dreams, so much that you might feel stress for hours after waking up. Conversely, a friend may have an almost inexplicable ability to shake off their fears after the scariest of dreams.

It’s very rare for a person to never remember their dreams. Only one in 250 report having no memory of their dreams ever. On the other end of the spectrum are the folks who visibly remember all of their dreams in great detail. Most of us fall somewhere between these two extremes. Some days we wake up emotional and deeply connected to our dreams. On others, we may barely have a vague hint that we even had a dream.

The more bizarre the imagery in dreams, the more difficult it is to remember. If the dream is following a logical path, then the brain kind of knows what’s going to happen next and stores it in memory. Moreover, it seems that how we wake up may have something to do with whether we remember dreams.  The details involve our neurochemistry, more specifically noradrenaline levels. When noradrenaline is high, we forget.

Michael J. Breus Ph.D., clinical psychologist, expert in sleep medicine

There are some personality differences too. Dreamers may share qualities like a tendency to struggle with anxiety. They may feel stress deeply. At the same time, dreamers are often in touch with their emotions and more interested in spending time analyzing dreams to improve their emotional state.

None of this means that people who don’t remember or particularly care about their dreams are shallow or emotionally stunted. They may be self-aware, insightful, or just have their own healing journeys. There’s nothing inherently wrong with not seeing dreams as a sign of anything deeper or the window to one’s soul.

Related reading: Dreams About Your Ex-Boyfriend – What Do They Mean?

What to do With Your Dreams

Only you can decide what your constant dreams of another person means to you. More importantly, whether you determine this is a sign of something deeper or just a temporary glitch in your subconscious, you get to control what happens next. Whether this means riding things out, using this experience as the start or a spiritual journey, or choosing therapy as a way to find resolution, you are the one in control.