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Dream meanings/Fear and danger/Death and dying

What does it mean to dream about death?

A dream about death is rarely about dying. Most often it's about an ending: a relationship, a job, a stage of someone's life, or a harsh inner voice losing its hold. It can also reflect feeling drained, a hope that has died, or worry about someone you love who has been unwell.

Updated

Few dreams stay with you like a dream about death, and it's common to wake up shaken and tell it to everyone. In dreams, death is rarely about dying. Who died, how they are in real life, and whether it was you all change what the dream may be saying.

What dreaming about death and dying may mean

  1. AA stage of someone's life coming to an end

    Dreaming that someone close to you dies, while in fact they're healthy, often comes when their life is changing. They aren't going anywhere, but the version of them you knew is, and the dream may be mourning who they'll never be again.

    The person is healthy and going through a big change, such as leaving for college or getting married · Your daughter or son is about to get married

  2. BAn ending that makes room for something new

    Death in a dream is often about endings: a relationship, a job, an old way of living. Many dream psychologists read it as rebirth as well. Something has to be laid to rest before something else can begin.

  3. CA harsh inner voice losing its hold

    Sometimes what dies is a voice you've carried for years: a critic, a judge, someone whose opinion ran your life. Real change in dreams tends to look like that person shrinking, rather than like your own death.

    Someone who once had power over you turns small or harmless

  4. DFeeling drained of life

    If you were the corpse, the zombie or the statue, the dream may be about how flat life feels right now. You may be going through the motions while the spark has gone out of things.

    You became a zombie, a corpse, a statue or a stone carving

  1. EA hope that has died

    Sometimes the thing that has died is a hope. A person or an animal dying in the dream may stand for something you'd been counting on that now feels out of reach.

    A person or an animal died in the dream

  2. FWorry about someone you love

    Sometimes the dream is close to the surface. If someone in your family has been ill for a long time, dreaming of their death may simply be your worry about losing them, given a shape while you sleep.

    Someone in your family has been ill for a long time

  3. GMissing someone you've lost

    If the person who died in the dream has really died, the dream may be about feelings for them that haven't settled yet. These dreams often fade as those feelings find a way out.

    You keep dreaming about this relative

These are possibilities, not verdicts. The reading that fits is the one that matches the details and the feeling of your dream, and what's going on in your life.

Questions that tell the readings apart

  1. Q1Who died in the dream, and how are they in real life?Someone who is well and going through a big change points one way. Someone you've already lost points another.
  2. Q2Were you the one who died, or who turned into something lifeless?When it's you, the dream is more often about how alive you feel right now.
  3. Q3What's changing in your life right now that feels like a kind of loss?Dreams often borrow death to talk about an ending that's already under way.

Read your own dream about death and dying

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