We sometimes wake up from a dream and wonder, how in the heck did that get into my brain? And luckily, we’re not alone. Some of our most bizarre and frightening dreams also plague the general public. The next time you have one of the most common dreams, chances are your buddies will know exactly what you’re talking about.
In 2016, Amerisleep conducted a survey to find out which reoccurring dreams were the most common among Americans. Out of 2,000 people surveyed, 53.5% of participants reported having reoccurring falling dreams.
These types of dreams often signal a lack of control over some aspect of your life, says DreamDictionary.org. Depending on the context, falling dreams could be letting you know that it’s time to grab ahold of the reigns within a situation, if possible.
However, the feeling of falling right before settling into sleep can also be blamed on the dreaded hypnagogic jerk. This jerk happens when nerves misfire just before you transition into sleep. It can feel as though you’ve just saved yourself from falling to your death, but in actuality, your body just spazzed out for a quick sec during your drift off to sleep land.
If you haven’t dreamt about falling all that much, you may have had a run-in with a chasing dream. Amerisleep reports that 50.9% of survey participants had reoccurring dreams about being chased.
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Dreams about being chased by someone or something may be alerting you to issues that you have yet to deal with. Your subconscious knows that you’re putting something off or repressing a certain emotion, and it’s trying to nudge you in the right direction and confront your fears.
Other super common dreams are being unprepared for a test or an important event, flying, being naked, and trying to run or yell, but not being able to.
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Although falling dreams (and every other stress-related dream) are pretty scary while they’re happening, we can remind ourselves that it is just a dream — a dream that a ton of other people have had. Sleep soundly knowing that your weird dreams aren’t so weird after all.
