Strange Dream themes: small openings??

I assume everybody here has noticed reoccurring themes in their dreams. My most common one is vertigo, which i think is pretty common. But recently I noticed another of my themes: small openings or doorways that I don't fit through. Am I the only one that gets that??

I'll give you an example from a dream I had last night: in it, i got a job as a waiter in a chinese food restaurant. I had no training and had to start serving tables. I didn't get the menu and I had no idea how things work. The funny part was that the reataurant looked more like a big sauna. It even had showers at the back. Anyways, the boss was upstairs and I wanted to ask a question, so i went up the stairs. they were the swirling circular type, but as I was going up, the staircase go smaller and smaller. Up to one point where it was too tight to pass without contorting my body. i could have squeezed through to get to the next floor but I decide against it so that I don't get stuck.

I get into situations like that all the time, where I COULD try to squeeze trough the small opening but I always decide against it. Sometimes, it presents itself as a door/opening/escape that would be helpful to my situation in the dream, but is too small for me to squeeze through.

What do you think that could mean?
If you guys have strange themes like that, I'd like to hear about it.

Thank you!

p.s. I'm not claustrophobic. Thats what confuses me. i am afraid of hights so that theme makes sense... but this one I don't get.

Hi VoyageurNocturne,

Are you studying eastern religions, Buddhism, maybe? A spiral staircase is a common symbol for evolution, and the way it is squeezing you tighter as you reach the top suggests a birth canal, in this case rebirth like reincarnation, I think. But then, you know, ladders are symbols for the way to Heaven, and staircases appear with angels coming down to visit in the Bible. So it could be graduating off the earth plane, but if so, I'd expect the way to be allowing more freedom at the top, rather than being smaller and squeezing me. That just feels like a birth canal to me. Of course some people believe reincarnation is all there is, and I'm not sure what Buddhists think about that.. I only suggest Buddhism because it's a Chinese restaurant.

I get a lot of health dreams, helping me to improve my habits and my health.

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...as I was going up, the staircase go smaller and smaller. Up to one point where it was too tight to pass without contorting my body. i could have squeezed through to get to the next floor but I decide against it so that I don't get stuck.

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... There are several scenes in the Lewis Carroll classic that parallel this experience perfectly.

In the book, I believe those scenes are meant to metaphorically represent the helplessness and frustration all children feel when they're told they're "too big" to do something. That whole movie is about the knuckle-bitingly frustrating experience that is childhood (and, by extension, life itself):

... You're too big for that, you're too little for this, you have to operate according to rules that make absolutely no logical sense to you, and there are so many distractions it's hard to think straight half the time.

Don't know if that sheds any light on your dreams or not... just thought I'd share.

I have experienced this phenom many times in dreams. It's not limited to just doorways, but other forms of space like the stair case. For instance a row at the library that is impossibly narrow the further in you go, the ceiling of room becomes an oppressive height after turning a corner, or something as simple as the sleeve on a shirt being disturbingly small.

Speaking of spiral staircases, in the Studio Ghibli Museum in Japan there is a spiral staircase that gets so narrow that only kids can fit through at the top to a kid only room. It's a great realization of this dream occurrence. Too bad it's just for kids though.

hey thanks for your comments. Here are my responses to your comments:

1)I have been studying buddhism... strangely. I love reading books about buddha.

2)funny that you mention being too big as a kid because, i'm a tall guy and I grew really quickly. I got too big from children stuff a lot younger than most of my friends and I used to be so jealous... i guess i might have some old bottled up issue regarding my height....

3)Also, I had another dream like that recently, and I did squeeze myself through this time... i was running away from something though, i had a little incentive haha

use those as a reality check and if you want to change scenes just imagine there being a different scene on the other side of the door/opening :D

Now that you mention it, I've had several tight opening dreams too, and not just sex dreams! I was once trying to get away from a zombie through a window and got stuck with my legs hanging in the room the zombie was in. Luckily there was a good zombie to help me.

Even though nobody else has said they have those dreams, I still suspect it's common enough.

As for that staircase, it's the shape of the stairs that triggered the tight spot. When you look at a spiral off in the distance, it looks smaller the farther away it is from you. The dream just took a tangent down that path.

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Originally Posted by The Cusp

Now that you mention it, I've had several tight opening dreams too, and not just sex dreams! I was once trying to get away from a zombie through a window and got stuck with my legs hanging in the room the zombie was in. Luckily there was a good zombie to help me.

Even though nobody else has said they have those dreams, I still suspect it's common enough.

As for that staircase, it's the shape of the stairs that triggered the tight spot. When you look at a spiral off in the distance, it looks smaller the farther away it is from you. The dream just took a tangent down that path.

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When I've had dreams that squeeze me like that, they're usually going DOWN, not UP. I think those dreams are about how I entered the Earth plane, not how I will be leaving it. I remember one vaguely, and have no idea which journal it's in, but from what I remember, I was a young girl, and an older woman, maybe my mother, had put me into a seat at the top of a Ferris Wheel (odd, right, to get on at the top?), and I had to ride the Ferris Wheel until it let me off at the bottom, and then go to this sort of children's slide, but it was enclosed, and I went whooshing down it, but it got tighter and tighter as I went through it, which slowed me down, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it through the opening, and it woke me up. I felt it was about my birth into the Earth plane.

I've had these dreams quite often too..and at least for me, lucid dream girl's interpretation really hit the nail on the head!

The reason you stated about being 'too big' for things never occurred to me until I read your post, and now it's very clear. The time that I was having the dreams was when I was going through a major 'growing up' phase in my life. Having to get a job, be 'responsible', save money, put off doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I can see now that the dreams were expressing my frustration at being 'too big' or too grown-up to do some things anymore.

I was looking through everyone's responses, and I thought it could be about growing up too fast. To me though, I always thought of it as a restriction your mind has made up to prevent you from reaching the end. It could be that you feel that you are pushing yourself, but you aren't getting anything in return. nobody is praising you for your efforts. another could be that something has changed and something deep inside you does not want you to proceed (reluctant to change, perhaps). but you know, it could be anything. this is just what I observed from myself. obviously it can be interpreted differently to other people.

Recently, I have had a recurring dream where I need to get through a very narrow doorway. Sometimes, someone else has just passed through the narrow doorway, with relative ease. In my dream , I have to breathe in to try to fit through. Once or twice I have awoken in a slight panic. Part of me thinks I might suffer from sleep apnea, and that I stop breathing when this dream starts?