African American Woman Dreaming

Dream Symbols: What Do Dreams Mean?

Some experts say dreams are a reflection of your subconscious needs and desires. Others claim they're random combinations of sensory experiences in your daily life. After decades of research into the subject, there's still no clear consensus on what your dreams actually mean.

But we do know one thing: dreams are unique to every single individual. You're the only one capable of dreaming the dream you had last night because your unique perspective influences the way your dream unfolds.

Researchers have, however, noticed a number of interesting patterns in the way our dreams take shape. In other words, the dreams are unique, but the emotions, environments, and ideas are nearly universal. You'll find them in different cultures; you'll find them on different continents.

No matter where you go, almost all humans share a diverse collection of dream experiences, which experts call dream symbols. According to a 1958 study published in the Journal American Anthropologist, these symbols are usually an action or a feeling.

We'll dive into this in more detail later, but flying is a great example. Dreamers all over the world have flown in their dreams, and there's almost always a real-life explanation. Natural disasters are another common example.

You might see a tornado hitting your house or feel like you're getting washed away by an ocean of chocolate milk. While these disasters are obviously completely different, both are dream symbols, which means there's some kind of hidden meaning.

Now, in this case, you may be feeling overwhelmed by work, or you might have experienced some kind of hardship in your personal life, so your dreams are interpreting those negative feelings as a natural disaster.

Now before we dive deeper into some of the most common dream symbols, there's something important that you need to remember when analyzing your dreams. It's tempting to pay attention to specific details, but the details of your dream are not only hard to remember, they rarely ever make sense.

So don't pay as much attention to specific people or things. Instead, focus on thematic differences. Ask yourself what a dream feels like, or think about how you were affected by whatever you dreamt about.

Your subconscious interprets things in wild and nonsensical ways, but underneath all those crazy visuals, your dreams can tell you a lot about yourself.

The Never Ending Chase

Few dream symbols are more popular than the chase dream. I'm sure you've had one at least once in your life. Maybe you were running through your house with a monster nipping at your heels or sprinting down the street trying to escape a stampede of wild animals.

The experience is a little bit different for everyone, but the narrative is almost always the same: you're being chased by something. You're running for your life, but right before that thing's about to catch you, your dream ends, and you wake up in a cold sweat.

So the big question is, what do chase dreams really mean? Well, researchers actually have a couple of different explanations. One perspective says you're unconsciously avoiding something. You could be running away from a person, an idea, or just some feelings, but you're definitely running away from something, and your subconscious is paying the price.

Another interpretation is that chase dreams represent a guilty mind. You may not realize it, but your subconscious could be bogged down by feelings of guilt. Maybe you did something that you're ashamed of, or you're worried that a mistake will come back to bite you. Either way, that guilt will keep chasing you around until you take the time to figure out why.

Now, of course, these aren't the only two explanations out there. Because chase dreams are so popular, there are dozens of different ways it can reflect a person's life. But one thing's for sure: if you're having chase dreams, there's something in your life that needs your attention.

Public Embarrassment

Have you ever felt embarrassed or humiliated in a dream? According to a 2004 study from the Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, public embarrassment is another very common dream symbol. The classic example is realizing you're naked at work or school. That's the one most people are familiar with; it's been shown in countless TV episodes and movies.

But that's not the only embarrassing dream you can have. Sometimes you're bombing a presentation, and the whole room is laughing at you. Other times, you're just running around searching for a bathroom.

These three dreams seem really different, right? And they are, but each one has the same theme: insecurities. If you're feeling embarrassed in your dream, you could be experiencing something similar in your real life.

You might be self-conscious about the way you look or feeling unprepared at work. Either way, embarrassing dreams tell you that you're not feeling as confident as you should be. So don't let those dreams go unnoticed.

Falling Out of a Dream

Imagine you're in the middle of a dream. You're walking down the street; the world seems pretty normal. But then you take a small step off the curb, and everything changes. Suddenly you're falling off a cliff, tumbling through the air at a million miles per hour.

You hurdle closer and closer to the ground until you jolt up out of bed. You look around and realize it was all just a dream. Few dreams are more frightening or disorienting than falling. But what do these dreams tell you about yourself?

Well, stress is almost always involved. You're falling because something in your life feels out of control. That tension is triggering a stressful experience. So try to unravel that unnecessary stress in your life and save yourself from falling out of another dream.

Flying in Dreams

Flying is a universal dream symbol and has its fair share of different interpretations. But unlike the other dream symbols on this list, flying is almost always a positive experience. It's fun, it's freeing, and it leaves you wanting more. I mean, who doesn't want to soar through the air?

A study from 1977 in the International Journal of Symbology explored all the different meanings of this popular dream symbol, and it found that many people are flying in their dreams for the same reasons. It's a sign that your life is moving forward.

For whatever reason, you're feeling free and confident. Maybe you're enjoying your newfound success or embarking on an exciting journey. All of these positive experiences trigger a sort of weightless sensation. In real life, you're in a great mood, and your confidence is sitting at an all-time high. So that happiness finds its way into your dreams and literally lifts you off the ground.

Dream Recall

Now that we've covered four of the most common dream symbols, let's switch gears a bit because there's more to a dream than its content. For example, how well do you remember your dreams?

Most people struggle to piece together any sort of clear plotline. They wake up with a faint idea of what just happened, but most of that crucial information slips through their fingertips. The act of remembering your dreams is called dream recall.

It's a pretty challenging thing to do, but a small group of people can remember their subconscious chaos for hours or days afterward. And their personality type may be the reason why. According to a 2010 study from the International Review of Neurobiology, certain personality types make it easier to remember your dreams.

But which personalities retain the most information? To answer this question, let's look at the Big Five personality traits. You may have heard these categories before, but let's do a quick review. The Big Five traits are extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and agreeableness.

Every person has a unique combination of these five traits. So which one do you think affects your dream recall the most? It turns out openness is the key. Open people like to go on adventures, meet new people, and try different things. They place more value on exploration, so their brains are receptive to unfamiliar experiences.

And on top of that, open people have better retrospective memories, which means they can reflect more carefully on past experiences. Those fine-tuned reflective skills are critical for dream recall because they allow you to store information that anyone else would forget. So if you usually remember your dreams, you might learn something new about your personality.

Recurring Nightmares

Other dream behaviors can reveal aspects of your character. Going back to that same 2010 study, recurring nightmares are a telltale sign of another big personality trait. In fact, that personality trait may be the root cause of your bad dreams.

Recurring nightmares usually affect people who are nervous or worrisome. Normally, when you're awake, your conscious brain keeps your worries and fears under control, but after your conscious turns off, those fears run wild, which ultimately triggers a nightmare.

But recurring nightmares are especially important because repeating the same bad dream means something's continuously bothering you. You have an unresolved fear that's eating away at your subconscious and ruining your sleep night after night.

For most people, it's hard to figure out exactly what's driving your brain crazy because most nightmares look and feel nothing like real life. But each recurring nightmare will give you a clue, and each clue will push you one step closer to unraveling your fears.

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