FROM teeth falling out to being chased down a dark alley, the majority of us will experience recurring nightmares at one time or another.

They can leave us with a pulsing heart rate to being unable to get back to sleep.

But what do they mean?

A recent study by hybrid mattress brand OTTY has found that over the past seven years searches for nightmares have risen by 146 per cent in the UK.

The sleep experts from OTTY have reached out to dreams expert Lauri Loewenberg, author of Dream on it, and psychic Inbaal who specialises in astrology, palm and tarot reading, to help those suffering from bad dreams figure out what exactly their subconscious is trying to tell them.

Why are we so curious about what our dreams really mean?

When it comes to the urge to understand our dream patterns, Loewenberg said: "We get nightmares when the subconscious wants to help us correct an upsetting or difficult issue in our life.

"So as frightening as nightmares are to experience, they are good for us because they are shining a light on something that is wrong, something we have been ignoring, mishandling or that has been overpowering us in some way."

Psychic Inbaal added: “Dreams can be lots of different things, they're a way for our subconscious to communicate our own fears and hopes to our conscious selves.

"They can be a way for us to go over the days' events and make peace with some hard moments, or understand the reasons for some other difficult experiences.

"I believe that sometimes dreams will be spirit messages - for example, if you have a dream about a person you have a romantic attraction to and at the same time, they are also dreaming about you.”

Looking at monthly searches around disturbing dreams, OTTY has ranked the top ten nightmares from around the world.

Below is each nightmare and what they can mean.

1. Snakes

Monthly searches: 9,200

Associations to specific symbols in dreams need to be applied when trying to figure out the deeper meaning, but there are ‘archetypal’ meanings that can typically apply to most of us. That being said, snakes most often represent a toxic person in our life. Someone who is exhibiting low down behaviour that could either be harming us or has the potential to harm us in some way.

2. Teeth falling out

Monthly searches: 5,500

Dreams that involve a doomed trip to the dentist are most often linked to communication issues in our real life. Losing teeth during a nightmare is most often connected to allowing something out of your mouth the previous day that you shouldn't have, like a secret or someone’s personal business.

If you regularly say things without thinking first, if you don't have a filter, or if you tend to say things you instantly regret, you are likely to experience this dream.

Another common element of this dream is how you’re going to look with missing teeth. This tends to be tied to the conscious concern about how others perceive you after what you have allowed out of your mouth.

3. Being Chased

Monthly searches: 1,500

This dream is caused by avoidance and most commonly experienced by those who run away from issues instead of tackling them head-on. The longer you run from the issue, the longer it will continue to cause you problems.

4. Falling

Monthly searches: 1,100

This dream tends to happen when we are feeling let down by someone or something in real life. When plans fall through when something you had high hopes for doesn't work out, or whenever something brings down your general mood, the subconscious result could be a dream where you’re falling from a great height and heading into the unknown.

This is also common for people that suffer from mental health issues and can be a warning from their body that they are about to "fall" into another depressive episode.

5. Dying

Monthly searches: 1,000

Death is the end of life, but to the dreaming mind, death is simply the end of life as you currently know it. You can dream of death when something in your life is coming to an end or significantly changing, like when a relationship ends, when you change careers, or when you first find out you’re pregnant. These are life-changing moments that the subconscious will equate with death... the end of the old you.

If you dream of someone else dying, then there is likely some sort of change happening with that person or a shift in your relationship with that person. It is common to dream of our child dying when they reach different phases of life: when they start walking, when they go to school, when they learn to drive, when they get married etc.

Death dreams allow us to recognise changes in our lives so that we can let go of what we no longer need and become more open to the change to come.

6. Drowning

Monthly searches: 600

A drowning nightmare occurs in those feeling in over their heads with something, such as responsibilities, debt or emotions. Like the falling dream, there is the downward pull at play here, although there is a bit more control involved with a drowning dream.

7. Bugs

Monthly searches: 400

When something or someone is annoying or "bugging" us, we may find that bugs start to infest our nightly dreams. The more bugs in your dream or the larger the bug, the bigger the problem is in waking life.

Bugs have been a prominent symbol in many people's dreams since the pandemic started.

8. Being cheated on

Monthly searches: 300

If you've previously experienced infidelity in a relationship, dreaming about it in the present indicates that there are still levels of distrust within you that need to be addressed.

If infidelity has never been an issue for you and this dream seems to be coming out of nowhere, then it is likely alerting you to something in your current relationship that feels like a third wheel. Your partner may be working too much, spending too much time on a side hustle, dedicating too much of his free time to gaming, or maybe a new baby is taking up all the time and attention you used to have for each other.

Whatever it is, your subconscious is bringing this to the surface so you two can figure out how to make up for lost time.

9. Killing someone

Monthly searches: 300

Whereas death is a natural ending, murder is a forced one. So if you are murdering someone in your dream, you are probably actively working to change or end something negative in your real life. If you’ve recently quit smoking, initiated a break-up or divorce, or if you’ve changed eating habits and have begun to lose weight then you are likely to dream of murder.

10. Being lost

Monthly searches: 250

This dream is often caused by indecision or uncertainty in real life, and the idea of not knowing "which direction" to take to reach a goal. We tend to say, "I'm lost" when we can't figure out directions or when trying to keep up with a confusing conversation. Our dreams have a neat way of bringing figures of speech and metaphors to life

But why do we have the urge to understand our dreams?

According to Lauri we wonder if there's something wrong with us and want to understand ourselves.

Psychic Inbaal said dream interpretation is as old as humanity itself and the desire to make sense of dreams would have been one of the few sources of entertainment in centuries past.

Apart from entertainment, the urge to understand dreams would have stemmed from a time that people had to figure out 'messages' to figure out how to live their lives.

Interpreting the randomness of nature helped people understand patterns and consequences.