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!

The part with the plastic caps on your teeth seems very graphic...and cool.
That was the part that stood out.
This dream may have a mundane explanation, but from a more spiritual point of view....waking up is like coming to a new level of awareness about your self, so going to bed is more like doing some inner work, getting to know yourself, your authentic-self which takes you again to more awareness. The plastic caps could suggest that without being aware you take in ideas that are not truely yours as if by way of imitation, instead of getting to know yourself better and expressing yourself authentically. So it may be like your wise-self chokes on the wrong kind of energy you allow yourself to take in. So the general feeling of such dream is all
about increasing self-awareness and embracing or expressing what feels right on a deeper level.

Thanks so much for replying. This is definitely food for thought.
I have been meditating and doing a lot of introspective work lately, and I think your answer is very perceptive. I will have to see which energies I have been lax in allowing in. Thanks for your help!

WaaayOutThere,

Perhaps you have a sleep disorder such as sleep apnea. I would recommend you contact a sleep lab for diagnosis.

I did consider a sleep clinic, but I know my luck. I'd probably sleep like a rock and not move at all... :zzz: