A huge proportion of dreams happen at my parents house

[Urside]

I started dream journaling 4 months ago (I also started to decently remember my dreams 4 months ago!) and one thing struck me, while I was searching for dream signs: 30% to 40% of my dreams happen in or around my parents house. I lived there from the age of 3 to the age of 22, when I left my parents house, in 1996. It is not associated with a trauma: I had happy childhood and teenage years. Nevertheless, a huge proportion of my dreams take place there. I don't have a single recalled dream which happenend in my own house, where I have been living for the past 10 years! I suppose there is an imprint in my subconscious that associates "home" with the place where I spent either my childhood, or my teenage years. In my case, it is the same house. Have you noticed something similar?

[Sivason]

I have noticed that I often dream about things that happen in a house I lived in between 16 and 23. It was in that house that I first got into lucid dreaming. I am not sure why I dream of it, as I rarely dream of other places I have lived. You should use this as a dream sign. Repeat to yourself (in your head) over and over, that if you are in your parents house you must remember to RC.

[Urside]

I will! I noticed that my prospective memory needs a rather precise visualization of the future event for it to be effective. For example, if I visualize myself in the living room, sitting in a specific chair, I will remember to do the intended action (RC for instance) if I happen to be at this exact spot. If I am in the same room, but from a different point of view, I have a high probability to miss the cue. Do you have techniques to "generalize" the visualization process?

[NyxCC]

Pretty much the same thing with me and it happens even in my lds. In addition to nlds, I also get lots of lds in our first house. I think it's a very comfortable starting ground for my subcon, whether lucid or not. After all I have woken up there like 6570 + times plus spent ages in my room, knowing its ins and outs. The interesting thing is, I don't actually become lucid in the old place - it's a starting ground like I would be lucid maybe from wild or chain from another ld and then find myself there. At any rate, if you do get a lot of nlds in a place from the past, as Sivason said, you can train yourself to recognize this as a dream sign. I use a mantra like "I'm at place X, I realize that I'm dreaming". This has worked well for my school where I also come back in my nlds. Good luck!

[FryingMan]

Yep, I've had probably hundreds of dreams in my childhood home (lived there from 2 to 19), and only a small handful in my 2 adult homes. What I've done in the past to pretty good effect is just mentally walk through the childhood home, each room, from different perspectives, and create "targets" in each place by telling myself "I'm dreaming...I'm dreaming....this is a dream.." repeatedly in each place. Give it a shot!

[TravisE]

“Me too!”—Most of my “home” dreams seem to take place either in my current house or at my childhood house (also lived there from 2–19, I think!). The other places I lived for less time appear sometimes but less frequently—some more than others. Perhaps a lot of it has to do with the significance of your memories living at that place to you—dream settings with more strong memories attached seem to show up more often than those with less. I should try some of the dream sign recognition techniques—I often have dreams of certain past houses with positive memories attached, even cases of us actually moving back to that house in the present time, which is highly improbable, yet I tend to miss being lucid. Seems like a good opportunity here!

[Sivason]

Oddly, I lived in an apartmnt for 3 years while in school, and another for 18 months, but I do not remember a single dream about those place that took place after I was no longer there.

[insideout]

Most of my dreams take place in one of five locations, my childhood home, my parents' house, the church we use to go to when I was a kid, or one of my grandparents' house (one more than the other). I haven't been to any of those places in waking life in around 10 to 20 years. Very seldom do my dreams take place in the house I am living in now. I guess those places just left a really strong impression on my subconscious/psyche.

[FryingMan]

In addition to the childhood home dreams, I used to dream a LOT about returning to my apartment in grad school (and I'm usually concerned that I'm *years* behind on the rent! and in each dream, I think to myself, "Ah, *this* time I've really returned for real!"). I only lived there for 2.5 years, in my early 20's, but it was my first time away from the city of my birth. In contrast I've only dreamed a few times about the house I lived in in college (with a bunch of roommates). Interesting that I don't think I've had a "return to grad school" dream even once after starting LD practice, though...

[Urside]

Thank you! I guess it is a common phenomenon. I will work towards turning this into a dream sign. Without having read your posts, yesterday night I tried something similar to what FryingMan suggested: I mentally walked around and inside the house, looking at my hands and visualizing that I was getting lucid in a dream. I didn't have a lucid dream, but I didn't dream of my target house (at least, for the 3 dreams I could remember). If I can get lucid in a significant proportion of my dreams taking place at my parents house, I'm in business!

[TravisE]

[…]and in each dream, I think to myself, "Ah, *this* time I've really returned for real!"[…] Exactly! There's one particular house I lived in for just a couple of years that was kind of nice, and I'll be like, “It's funny how we're actually moving back here for real”. Going back over my dream journal, though, it appears I didn't miss lucidity as often as I thought I did—I seem to become lucid most of the time this happens, in fact! (Though I tend to be quite surprised and maybe a little disappointed.) Now I just need to work on lucidity at my childhood house.

[Urside]

Quick update: Since the last four days that I have been visualizing a tour of my childhood house, turning lucid at every corner, I haven't been dreaming of that house (one time I was running in the street, but I won't count it, since my visualization don't include the whole street). Normally, I would have expected my childhood house to appear two or three times in that period. Run of bad luck? Causal relation between wanting to dream of it, and not dreaming of it?

[FryingMan]

^^ Once I really started noticing and paying attention to dreams being in my childhood home, I too noticed the frequency dropping. Dream themes come and go. By the time you finally take notice "HEY! So many dreams in my childhood home!" the run may be near its (current, they always come back, at least for me they do) end. What I've noticed is that it takes careful review of recall -- many dreams take place in and around my childhood home, but this is not on my mind at all in the dream a lot of the time. Only afterwards, when awake and considering the images from the dream do I realize, "Hey, that was probably in my backyard/back steps/on the deck/living room, etc." It's definitely one of my SC's major "stock images" sources!

[NyxCC]

Quick update: Since the last four days that I have been visualizing a tour of my childhood house, turning lucid at every corner, I haven't been dreaming of that house (one time I was running in the street, but I won't count it, since my visualization don't include the whole street). Normally, I would have expected my childhood house to appear two or three times in that period. Run of bad luck? Causal relation between wanting to dream of it, and not dreaming of it? That's a really great practice, keep it up! Your old house will feature in a dream of yours sooner or later and you will be prepared and turn it into an ld!