Thread: NEED HELP - Recurring Dream

I really need some help, so I hope someone can assist in determining what is causing this recurring dream.

Thr dream starts off as if I'm awake. I'm in my house and decide to go to bed. I go into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I generally floss and do other kinds of cleaning to my teeth. Then I go to bed, but when I lie down something in my mouth breaks loose and I start to choke. In this dream, what broke off was some little plastic caps I was supposed to have removed from my teeth before bed. Somehow I missed two.

At this point in the dream, I began to wake up for real. In a semi-conscious state, I tumbled out of bed, landed in the floor on my knees & began coughing and holding my throat, convinced I had swallowed plastic. I could not cough it up, but could literally feel it sliding down my esophagus. At this point my husband woke up and was very concerned about me, eventually bringing me to full wakefulness.

I have had this recurring dream many times, and I wake violently, falling in the floor each time. But it had disappeared since last year. Last night was the first recurrence. Usually it happens when I fall asleep on my sofa. Last night I was in bed, and it was the first time my husband ever witnessed it. I have dreamed of choking on everything from hair to nails to last night's plastic.
What is this dream trying to tell me? At a guess, I would say that I need to expel something from my life, but what? How can I figure that out? I was also concerned that maybe I have some physical or pyschological sleep problem presenting itself in this abrupt way? Has anyone else experienced something similar?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!