Dreaming the same dream

“My wife and I both dreamed that our house was violently broken into. Why did we have the same dream, on the same night, at the same time?”

I was on a Breakfast radio show in Perth, Western Australia, and the question came from Pete, one of the presenters. Since our discussion was live, I can share the story with you here.

Many people might wake up from this dream and check the house for signs of a break in, or double-check their security and locks, worried that the dream foretells a future home invasion. When a partner mentions having the same dream, it’s natural for concern to escalate. It also adds a touch of spookiness: what causes two closely related people to have the same dream on the same night?

Pete’s house hadn’t been broken into.

“If you had asked me about the dream but not told me about your wife having the same one,” I began, “I would have said it sounded like you were feeling that your personal space was being violently invaded, that you weren’t getting the privacy you needed, that your personal boundaries were being trespassed. Sometimes this kind of dream can also come up when your body has been invaded by a virus or bacteria, and you’re about to get sick.”

This was radio, so there was no time to get the full details of the dream and spend time exploring it. But it was a start.

I went on to say that one reason why Pete and his wife might have had the same dream might have been that a loud noise – such as, especially in Australia, a possum scrabbling over the roof, or a tree branch breaking, or an unexpected wind rattling the windows – found its way into whatever they each were dreaming. External sounds as well as smells and sudden temperature changes can find their way into our dream story lines from time to time. Since dreams are processing our conscious and unconscious experiences, these external stimuli, if sufficiently intense to register on our senses while we are dreaming, will be subject to the same processing. So a possum scrabbling over the roof might translate, in dream terms, to someone scrabbling inside the house.

I don’t know how similar Pete’s dream was to his wife’s. They both dreamed of a violent break in at their home, but there wasn’t time to ask for other details. It’s most likely that they shared a similar theme – a violent home invasion – but with differences in the details.

“The other explanation for your shared dream,” I continued, “is that you were both feeling that your personal space was being invaded, that your personal boundaries were being compromised. You’re partners, living in the same house, sharing similar experiences, and probably talking about them. It wouldn’t be surprising to both go to sleep and process those similar experiences in similar dreams.”

This isn’t an exact transcript from the show, but this is more or less how it went.

This turned out to be the case. Pete shared with his listeners how their three-year-old isn’t sleeping well at night, and how much this is disrupting their sleep and their lives. They had been talking about this before bed, wondering what to do, both exhausted and feeling that they had very little personal space and ‘us-time’.

Our radio chat of only a few minutes established both the basic meaning of the dream – what it reflected about Pete’s life at the moment – and the reason why he and his wife had the same kind of dream. It also demonstrated how succinctly our dreams process our experiences.

As I mentioned to Pete on air, every parent will be able to relate and commiserate with his situation, but here’s something he might like to try:

This is a dream alchemy approach to finding a solution to Pete’s predicament. I suggested Pete (and his wife) each reimagine their dreams while they are awake, only this time they each imagine standing firm in their house with an unshakeable confidence in their security. In their imagining they must summon up a feeling of enjoying their space, of being safe and secure, free to peacefully breathe easy. Their unconscious minds had chosen the symbols of their house and a break in to symbolise their feelings.

By reimagining the dream, they communicate with their unconscious minds using the same language, a language expressed as their house and whether or not there is a break in. What this does is trigger their unconscious minds to come up with solutions. It does this by reprogramming their beliefs about being powerless to restore some personal space into their lives.

I don’t know what solutions they’ll come up with, but I can imagine some possibilities, as I’m sure you can too, even if it’s as simple as getting a babysitter from time to time.

Before looking for spookier explanations for your shared dreams, think about which waking life experiences you both shared, and explore how your slightly differently detailed dreams might reflect your slightly different perspectives on the situation.

There are certainly cases where spookier explanations may account for shared dreams, but there’s more value in taking the more rational approach. The resulting insight, especially if you look more deeply into the dream, is potentially life-changing.

You might also enjoy

Online learning at your pace

Listen to The Dream Show