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Claudia Picard-Deland, a lecturer and dream researcher at the University of Montreal in Canada, said, “People around the world and throughout history experience the same dream scenarios.” However, each person interprets these themes in their own way.
“It’s striking how often we encounter the same plots or images in our dreams that reflect our worries, fears, and desires,” Picard-Deland said.
In recent years, she and other dream experts have analyzed search-traffic data and the content of the online platform Dream Moods, which helps users interpret the meanings of their dreams.
Teeth
The most common theme turned out to be losing teeth. This topic is searched most often by people in North America and Europe, suggesting it is especially prevalent in industrialized regions.
A 2018 study listed in the National Library of Medicine found that about 40 percent of people worldwide often dream about their teeth falling out, breaking, or decaying.
Picard-Deland says dreams about losing teeth may be linked to heightened anxiety or to grinding teeth during sleep (bruxism). These dreams may also appear in connection with feelings of coldness.
Other studies have found that dreams about teeth often happen during major life changes. Still, the exact cause of these dreams remains unclear and probably varies from person to person.
Snakes
Snakes are another common dream symbol that appears for people around the world. Data from Dream Moods shows snakes turn up most often in dreams among residents of regions where snakes are common, such as parts of Asia and Oceania.
In those areas, snakes live alongside people and are a familiar symbol of danger, Picard-Deland said. She adds that snakes in dreams can also be tied to cultural symbols or beliefs.
There are other theories about what snakes mean in dreams. For example, Newsweek reports that U.S. dream analyst Lauri Quinn Loewenberg sometimes interprets a snake as representing a problematic or toxic person in the dreamer’s life.
As Picard-Deland pointed out, studies worldwide show how prominent and recurring these two themes are in people’s dreams. “These themes not only dominate but are also quite common overall. Such a high prevalence of typical themes suggests that the formation of dream scenarios may be regulated by stable and universal mechanisms,” the researcher concluded.
