In the mysterious and fascinating world of our dreams, a pen is never just a pen, just like in surrealist paintings. Symbolic and metaphoric codes are being used to analyze our subconscious world. Deciphering dreams is not an easy task, even for the most skilled psychologists. And for those terrible and horrifying nightmares, people tend to have bad feelings about them, which make them more eager to know the nightmare meanings. While common dreams usually represent our most intimate desires and wishes, our nightmares represent our inner fears and anxieties. Through them, we can achieve a greater degree of introspection, which helps to understand and accept ourselves better.
10 Common Nightmare Meanings
Falling from Great Heights
This kind of nightmare has happened to people whose anxiety is linked (or believed to be) to the feeling that they are not in command of their own life or even themselves. This can be caused by the person’s work, intimate relationships, money, etc. After all, the feeling of rapidly falling from height towards a certain death clearly represents the lack of freedom and/or power.
Injuries or Malformation
Anyone seen Vanilla Sky? Dreams that you have an accident or you simply wake up with a horrible scar or deformities are quite common in patients. This case tends to represent the feeling of weakness or powerlessness in a person’s life. The dream is urging them to build on self-esteem and trust themselves in a way.
Natural Catastrophes
People usually find themselves trying to run away from a sudden tsunami, an enormous tornado or a volcano that has just erupted. These, again, are generally understood in the scientific community as revealing a feeling of anxiety and fear. Meteorological events are highly unpredictable and we find ourselves impotent and insignificant in front of the enormous powers of nature.
Being Trapped
These nightmares are particularly common in people suffering from claustrophobia—the fear (sometimes extreme) of being locked up in a small area without the possibility of escaping. However, they can also be experienced by people, fearing their inability to break away from their current bad situations like annoying relationship or dead end job. People that are going through a difficult financial situation are also prone to have these nightmares.
Teeth Dropping
This might not be so frequent, yet some people describe it as a profoundly anxious experience filled with a tremendous anguish. In the dream, the person starts feeling their teeth dropping suddenly from their mouth or generally surrounded by other people. This nightmare has been linked to profoundly personal worries about other people’s judgments on his physical appearance.
Being Naked
This is a common childhood dream we may have experienced. We may also remember how deeply stressful the experience was. You may dream about trying to hide without the possibility and other people laughing at you. Psychologists argue these dreams are a symptom of an inner fear of what other people might believe or say about us, particularly about our physical appearance, although the fact of being naked can also be perfectly seen as an allegory.
Seeing the Dead People
Many people have dreamt about seeing dead people. Most of the times patients dream they see people who they are familiar with and are now dead rather than the dead people they have never met. This can be seen as a representation of our fear of the unknown. If you see close people you have lost, like your grandmother, the nightmare is probably a projection of your inability to let that person go.
Missing Important Events
Ever dreamt about waking up (what an irony, isn’t it?) and realizing you have missed a very important date? It’s quite a common dream, too. Some people even dream they have missed their own wedding. These dreams represent the fears and anxieties that arise due to outside pressure and expectation on us. We may be excellent and perform great always, but these dreams often warn us that maybe we are anxious and negative inside.
Partner Leaving
These might be one of the worst nightmares we can experience, and also work as an alarm mechanism, keeping us attentive and precautious. These dreams represent one of the deeper human fears: the feeling of abandonment. After all, isn’t it the worst thing that could happen to a person? That fear remains in a person since childhood, latent yet very powerful. They can also arise because of insecurities, the feeling we are not good enough for our partner.
Being Attacked
This is the most common nightmare of all. Many of us find ourselves being chased off by people with guns or knives, dangerous animals, etc. This kind of dreams generally indicates that you have a difficulty in confronting something in your daily lives, or you may even want to run away from it. The strategy you choose to escape can also be significant, this is, whether you are running away or rather decide to hide in fear.
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