Dreams of stairs that keep going down

Stairs that never end, corridors that get darker, a light switch that does not work: endless descending is a common recurring theme. Recurring dreams often return in stretches of stress and fade once something in waking life eases. It is also a beautiful dream to rewrite: halfway down, someone switches on a lamp, and the stairs end in a warm kitchen.

Can a dream symbol mean something?

Dream dictionaries give fixed meanings, but research does not support them. What dreams do seem to carry is feeling: the continuity hypothesis suggests they borrow worries, memories and moods from waking life.

So the useful question is not “what does it mean?” but “how did it feel, and does that feeling remind me of anything right now?” And no dream predicts the future.

If this dream keeps coming back

1. Write it down in the morning, in a few lines, including how it felt.
2. Choose the moment where you would like it to turn. You don’t need to relive the whole dream.
3. Write a new ending and rehearse it for about ten minutes a day for a week. This is imagery rehearsal, the method sleep medicine recommends for recurring nightmares.