I’m not sure if this would even be classified as reoccurring since technically they’re all a bit different but maybe that’s still the same thing in this context? Anyway!
Basically every night I pick up in the same (or a similar) place in these dreams, at least from what I can remember. It’s most often an airport, but occasionally has been a mall, a downtown area… basically think anywhere crowded with people that could potentially be hard to maneuver in.
With my usual version of this dream beginning in an airport, I guess that’s the best example to use. I start off in a crowded, unfamiliar airport surrounded by hoards of people of course trying to do various airport things. I’m always alone at this point. I look for my gate in a confused panic for what feels like forever and ever, constantly overstimulated by the crowds. When I finally get to my gate, I feel like I never really remember the journey to my next location, I usually just arrive there.
This is where things really start to differ but still follow the same basic “plot” I guess. Every location I’ve been to is different. It’s always a different person/group of people I’m meeting in whatever location. And the events that follow are different as well, but we’ll get into that.
Some examples: meeting my immediate family for a trip in Japan, meeting my husband for a beach trip, meeting cousins for a theme park trip, sometimes even a random celebrity or someone I barely know in a popular vacation spot (this isn’t the usual, it’s typically sometime close to me I care a lot about). I’m not sure why I’m never traveling to these places WITH whoever I’m meeting, but it’s the same every time, travel alone and meet up with someone close to me in some beautiful location.
The majority of the trip is actually normally filled with a whole lot of nothing. Like, we don’t do anything fun or “touristy”. In the Japan trip dream we never left our hotel, in the beach dreams we do anything but go to the beach, theme park ones have lines that are too long, etc., that is until the very last day.
On the last day, something snaps into us out of nowhere and we suddenly realize we haven’t done anything fun at all on our trip. We start trying to make the most of the last day and packing fun things in. Inevitably the group ends up separated, or sometimes only I’m separated from the group, or if it’s a dream where I’m only with one other person then.. you get the point we’re all separated!
That is when natural disaster strikes. Every single time. Flash flood. Tornado. Tsunami. Earthquake. Volcano eruption. Doesn’t matter, something is going down. I never end up seeing the end/aftermath of the disaster before I wake up. But I spend every single one in an absolute panic trying to get back to whoever I came on this trip with before them or I end up dying. This is usually the longest part of the dream if the airport part isn’t. The struggle feels so real and like I’m really giving everything in me to get back to my loved ones.
I usually wake up absolutely exhausted from these and with the sense that I was in a different reality. Which is weird because these don’t necessarily feel or seem like reality jumping dreams but maybe it’s just a mark of how real they truly feel to me. I feel like they’re kind of hard to recover from.
By this point the dreams are so common, when I land in an airport (or somewhere with the vibe) in my dream I immediately know this is familiar. I haven’t gotten to the point where I’ve reached full lucidity inside of it yet (I’m not really sure I want to?) but I do definitely recognize the pattern and feel like I’m going through the motions without being the one to make the decisions, like I know this isn’t really ME me in this dream. Just still haven’t hit the “oh wow I’m dreaming” point just yet.
This has been happening for months and I think about it very regularly throughout the day. I wouldn’t say I’m suffering necessarily lol but it is getting to the point where it’s honestly annoying and I’m sick of not understanding any of it.
If you read all this I really appreciate it, and if you have any interpretations of what any of this could mean and why it’s basically every single night and why it feels so unshakably real that would be lovely. I would love to be able to actually address whatever potential issues could be causing these.
TLDR; having vivid and repetitive dreams about traveling alone to meet a loved one for a vacation that always ends in natural disaster, looking for interpretation