Dream types

Regular

A regular dream is a non-lucid, everyday dream where you are unaware that you’re dreaming. It might seem unimpressive compared to vivid, lucid, or nightmare dreams, but it still serves important functions, such as helping to process emotions, consolidate memories, and integrate daily experiences. Even dreams that seem mundane or strange can hold subconscious insights, so don’t disregard them.

Vivid

A vivid dream is a dream that leaves a lasting impression. It is so detailed and hyper-realistic that it can feel like waking life and may even cause you to wake up with intense emotions. Often, after having such a dream, you might tell your friends, ‘Wow, I had this dream…”

Nightmare

A nightmare is a distressing dream that reflects deep fears, unresolved emotions, or subconscious stress. While nightmares might seem frightening and cause distress or other strong emotions, in reality they are an opportunity for integration as they hold very strong messages from the subconscious about your the underlying worries.

However, when we wake up and push the nightmare away, the psychological energy that created it remains unintegrated. Nightmares can be used to gain lucidity and integrate existing traumas and shadows. By facing these dreams consciously, we can transform them into a tool for self-awareness, emotional healing, and personal growth.

Pre-lucid

A pre-lucid dream is a dream in which you almost recognized that you were dreaming, but then quickly disregarded it. It can also be a lucid dream that ended too soon, before you were able to perform your planned actions. It’s a transitional state between regular dreaming and full lucidity, often a stepping stone for beginners practicing lucid dreaming. If you’re here, don’t give up and next time make sure to do a proper reality check! ;)

Lucid

A lucid dream is a dream in which you’re aware that you’re dreaming and can influence its scenario. You might jump up and fly or call out a specific dream character to ask meaningful questions. While achieving lucidity can require extensive practice, these dreams hold incredible potential—not only for entertaining experiences but also for psychological healing, trauma integration, PTSD recovery, and even deepening spiritual practice.

Anxiety

An anxiety dream is a dream where you’re replaying a certain scenario, which might be connected to your day-time event, and it’s causing you anxiety. Missing a flight that you have in two days or worrying about an upcoming presentation at work. In these dreams, you’re not just preparing for the event but also experiencing a version of failure, which helps your mind process potential challenges and prepare for the actual event. Studies have shown that people who have anxiety dreams are more likely to succeed at the activity that they dream about.

Insight

An insight dream is a dream that brings new knowledge or a revelation about a situation, emotion, personal challenge, or even a spiritual teaching, to the surface of your awareness, thus helping you gain fresh perspectives or find solutions to problems you’ve been facing in waking life. These dreams often feel meaningful and enlightening, leaving you with a sense of clarity or direction upon waking.

Recurring

A recurring dream is a dream that keeps coming back over time with little change in context, scenarios, or the emotions that accompany it. These dreams often carry an important message or highlight unresolved issues, and they tend to persist until that message is acknowledged with conscious awareness. Recurring nightmares are common in cases of PTSD, where the mind is trying to process unintegrated trauma. Recognizing patterns in recurring dreams can be a powerful step toward emotional healing and self-understanding.

Conclusion

There is no dream that’s “bad” for you. Each has its own function and simply requests your attention to resolve something in your psyche. The first step to understanding your dreams is to start writing them down. And that’s exactly what Dreamsome is made for :)