DID you get a good night's sleep last night? Or were you one of the millions who awoke feeling shaky or depressed after suffering yet another bad dream?

According to a new survey, stressed-out Brits, but especially nurses, accountants and IT workers, are being plagued by nightmares - and those who live in the south suffer most.

Researchers for the hotel chain Travelodge questioned 2,000 people and discovered that the most common recurring dream is the one where something or someone is chasing us.

The second most common dream is that our teeth are falling out and, on average, we're having these nightmares at a rate of one a week with three per cent of sleepers suffering with one bad dream every night. Other nocturnal nasties included bad dreams about Jack Nicholson - unsurprising given some of his movie roles - and one about being sung to by Cliff Richard!

But why do we have bad dreams? And is it true that what we dream about while we're in the land of Nod has any relevance or bearing on our waking hours?

According to Charles Lambert McPhee - who used to run a clinic for patients with sleep disorders, dreams are expressions of thoughts, feelings, and awarenesses that are represented through the creation of sensory environments in our minds.

"The creation of the dreamscape is caused by stimulation of the sensory cortex, that occurs naturally during REM sleep," he says.

"Recurring dreams reflect feelings and awarenesses that have not been successfully resolved in our waking lives. Unresolved feelings often include the sudden loss of a loved one, or an abrupt end to a romantic relationship. We wish the situation could have ended differently, so we tend to replay it in our minds."

Although the debate rages over what dreams mean, according to McPhee they ARE relevant to ordinary life, representing thoughts and feelings that have been preying on our mind.

So what do these dreams mean?

Experts differ but the general view is that chase dreams often stem from anxiety, with the pursuer representing feelings of anger, fear or jealousy.

Losing your teeth reflects anxiety about your appearance or feelings of powerlessness. Being naked in public - another favourite national nightmare symbolises deep-rooted fears that you could be exposed or caught off-guard.

Dreaming about a stressful exam could mean you feel unprepared for life's challenges, while falling from a building can reflect a sense of inferiority or failure. Toilets symbolise the chance to get rid of useless things in your life.

This is all fine but what can you do if you are a bad-dream sufferer?

The advice is simple. Don't watch disturbing films or news reports just before going to bed and try to unwind before sleeping, with a warm bath or milky drink.

More unconventionally, you could always buy or make a Native American "dreamcatcher", a twig and feather circular device about the size of a plate which can be hung above your bed to "catch" the bad dreams. Their invention stems from a legend about a spider who was saved after a grandmother prevented a child from crushing its web.

Grateful, the spider shows the grandmother how to make a web to snare bad dreams and allow only good ones to come through to the dreamer.

Nightmares can become all too real

IT'S nice to know I'm not the only one who suffers from recurrent bad dreams. Many's the night I have awoken looking like Munch's Scream, having suffered what seems like hours of horror, being chased by something nasty, or having my teeth falling out into my hands, or pulling at my face because I'm convinced insects are crawling all over it.

If it's not that nightmare it's the one where I suddenly find myself in a high building and then I have to inch across the floors because they are all crumbling to pieces. And then there's that dream which I have regularly where I'm in this creepy, deserted railway station and I see this horrible-faced woman staring at me and no, I am NOT looking in a mirror!

However, I'm not sure if I believe in the official explanations for all this. One of my nastiest memories is having four teeth extracted and also of the day I awoke on a camping trip to find ants all over my face because my dear husband had pitched the tent on an anthill.

And, now I come to think about it, the falling through the building dream came on after the day, as a cub reporter for this newspaper, I crept up to the top floor of a derelict Boscombe church and only decided to leave when I put my foot through a rotting floorboard and saw the wood plunge yards to the ground below.