I usually remember that I had the dream before when I wake up. It is usually a subject that is haunting me – unfinished business. I used to dream about the house I grew up in repeatedly that later burned down; we were moving back in, we were rebuilding it. Now I sometimes dream that my kids and my Ex are back home; although in most of them, we are still divorced.

When i was a child, I had some dreams that I incorporated into my real life memories until I was older and realized that they couldn’t have happened.

Right after I got out of college, with my BS, I kept dreaming of going to a test naked. Is that out there or not?

It depends. Could be any or all of the above, and you would be the best one to know, though it can help if others make suggestions and then you check in to see what seems right to you.

You can tell if it’s really recurring if you take notes about what your dreams are, and then check your notes, which is also a practice which leads to much more awareness of your dreams (may take some persistence but it get better), and can be really interesting.

In general though, a recurring dream is trying to get your attention about something that some part of you (or some dream spirit) feels is important.

The message and import of dreams tends to be more about the feelings than the symbols. The symbols (things we see or hear in the dreams) tend to be taken from whatever is available in our thoughts and memories, but the feelings are more what they tend to really be about.

Or getting picked up in a bar by Lorena Bobbitt.

I don’t know technically, but I considered it recurrent if you have it regularly rather close together. It might have a slight variation from one episode to the next, but the theme is basically the same. I’ve have nightmares a few times a week for weeks straight at different times in my life. The nightmares are about being chased and then seriously harmed by being stabbed or shot.

I do have dreams of not getting homework done. That dream often happens when I have an early flight coming up. It occurs once every 2–5 years, but it’s familiar when it happens.

Undealed emotions.

I often dream of being back in college and dealing with final exams for a class I never attended because I blew it off too much. I have that dream all the time.