[ReneeDawn]

In my dreams there are always stairs that play a factor. Usually beneath the stairs is dark bottomless pit making them scary to go on if I have to.

One dream was I was back in high school with my old graduating class. The bell would ring for us to go to the next class and I would follow them but somehow I would lose them and get lost. If I manage to find the next class I would be really late and it would be practically over. I would always have to take the stairs (which is weird because my old high school didn't have stairs. It was actually laid out more like my Elementary school). The bottomless pit was under them and the stairs seems unstable. If I went up the stairs to the 3rd floor, I would somehow manage on the 1st floor. If I went up the stairs from the 3rd floor to get on the 4th I would be on the 2nd. Making me confused and frustrated.

Another dream with stairs was where I was falling down a concrete staircase. There was nothing but blackness all around and I was just falling. I stopped myself by grabbing on the rail and forced myself to go back up the stairs. Which was really hard for me to do. Then, everything just started spinning and I found myself back in the bed but I couldn't move.

This is usually how my dreams that involve stairs go. The stairs usually take me on the wrong floors or I can't go up them and end up falling down them. And they seem to be more frequent lately. Any idea what this may mean? I'm not afraid of heights or anything.

[Sunna]

You go and and down, it's scary, you fall, keep going but get there late...
Visual symbolic expressions of anxiety, stress, worries?

Not being able to move is part of REM sleep. Our body gets protected from acting out our sleep motions by being paralyzed, and sometime when we partially wake from a dream we may experience the inability to move for a short while.

[ReneeDawn]

I do go through a lot of anxiety. Mainly financially. More so than ever because we are moving and money is already tight. You could be right. Thanks

[Sunna]

I forgot to add that stairs may mean transitions, life changes, since we use stairs to move from one level to another.

Often some feelings that bother you, but you are too good at sweeping under the rug will play out through the subconscious mind in dream. But that mind does not use language so all you get is pictures. Objects as symbols of feelings and states.

I sometime write my dreams down. Especially when I feel a sense of "importance" attached to them. Putting them into words sometimes will reveal what your subconscious mind is churning.

As an example. Once I had a dream about a city, there were lots of details, different buildings, things people, statues, and it kinda didn't make sense, but I started the writeup of this dream like so:

"I left my home without a map and no particular destination. Soon I was lost..." BINGO! It's about my feelings of being without a goal or purpose in my life.

and then:

"After wandering for a while, looking at this and that, I found a beautiful house, guarded by 2 golden lions. People who lived there were learned and enlightened, and they welcomed me. And I felt that they must have confused me with someone else". And that part sort of suggest to me how my lack of self-worth prevents me from finding my place (the beautiful house) in life, because even when I am there I don't believe I am worthy.

You may want to try something like that and see if it will click for you. Just write out the fresh dream on paper, 3 or 4 sentences, just how it was and read it back to yourself. Some meaning may jump out at you. Not always.