It's my experience that dream themes replay because there's something our insides are trying to tell us or something that needs fixing. Were your dream mine, I'd feel like something was out of control and I'll look at the day before the dream and see if I could see what might have upset me that day that I would dream that dream again, that night.

I use to have the recurring dream of cleaning up my apartment where I lived for 13 years in the 1970's and early 80's. There were often cockroaches in the dream (this was an inner City apartment) and they depressed the heck out of me and I didn't know why that should be after I awakened as I no longer lived in that apartment or had cockroaches. What was worse was dreaming I got everything all cleaned up and looking good and then waking up to find I was still a mess/hoarder, etc. And we're talking about this dream recurring through the 90's.

I went back to see the same therapist in the late 90's that I'd seen in the late 70's through mid-80's and she merely commented once that she thought it had to do with the time period that I lived in that apartment; whatever I had been "suffering" with then, I was now working on in the 90's so the dreams were trying to help me out in some way, bring deeper feelings and angst to my consciousness but before I had "words" to express them.

I finished therapy in 2005 and haven't had a dream about that apartment/cockroaches or anything like that for 6-8 years. I think sometimes the constancy of a bad dream situation is "good" because it keeps the situation in front of us and helps us want to work on feeling better/solving whatever the psychic problem may be. It's not fun while it's happening though!

But think about the dream rather than trying to "get rid of" it. Look over your day before the dream or what you were thinking about before you went to sleep, think about the symbolism, why a stair railing, etc. Stairs in dreams can mean going down to emotions/deep (cellar) feelings/libido, etc. or up to "intellect" (brains) if you're going to higher floors. If it's an outdoor stairway, what's the building like?

You could make stairs or railings "yours" and seek the dream. Going toward it instead of away from it, drawing it or otherwise working with it, sitting on steps to think or finding a good railing to slide down for fun :-) could reassure your inner self that "You" are working on it and not trying to ignore whatever it is that you're trying to tell yourself. That could help the dream not happen as much if you make an effort to tell it you're "listening"/trying to understand so it doesn't have to keep hitting you between the eyes with the dream. Maybe make a pact with the dream to think about it for 15 minutes first thing any morning after you have it, it could become a source of really good information telling you what's bothering you so you can work on fixing it.