What does it mean when you dream about someone dying? The Dreamworld is one of the most fascinating and mysterious phenomena known in this world. We all dream daily and experience unusual events that may or may not be related to our lives.
It’s fairly common for people to dream about tragic scenarios; they get unpleasant and bad dreams, usually when they are under stress or extremely anxious. One of the most common things that people dream about is someone dying. Death of a loved one, a stranger, or even their death. Seeing a dead body in your dreams can feel like watching a horror movie in real life.
But does that imply something in the real world? Could these death dreams be somehow connected to the real world? Today we’ll answer these questions and look at how dreams affect our reality.
1) The Connection Between Dreams and Reality
Is there a connection between dreams and reality? This has been a huge mystery for people since old age. There are no solid proofs to answer it, but when there are no definitive answers, there are indefinite theories.
The Ancient and religious folks believe that dreams are tied to something spiritual beyond our control. While Modern minds analyze these reality dreams to form a meaningful connection.
According to the studies conducted in the last few decades, there have been some strong hypotheses to understand the impact of reality on our dreams.
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Most dreams are considered a continuation of what took place in reality, even if the event doesn’t affect you personally. As per Alessandro Fogli, in his new study, everyday life events result in dreaming; for instance, people with anxiety and depression often see dreams with a negative connotation and vice versa.
Dreams also affect the skills people have in real life. This is also called the Continuity hypothesis of dreams Alessandro Fogli, along with different other researchers of the 20th century, believes that even the complexity of an individual’s dreams can be understood by observing the dreams in the context of their real-life activities. This implies that no matter how ridiculous a dream is, there’s always a cause-and-effect relationship between dreams and reality.
2) Why Do We Dream?
The answer to the question “Why do we dream” is more complex than understanding its relationship with reality. Since most dreams are vague and constantly changing, conducting a proper study is almost impossible. However, there have been some theories with solid explanations.
At a certain point in an individual’s sleep, the brain starts acting up the same way as it does when the individual is awake; this point of time is called REM sleep. This is the time when people start experiencing their dreams. According to research conducted on a mouse, when the mouse doesn’t get to achieve its REM sleep, it starts forgetting things in real life.
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The theory suggests that Dreams often prepare us for the experiences that we’ll encounter the next day. It filters out all the unimportant things and stores all the important things throughout the day.
Other theories also suggest that these dreams represent our unconscious wishes which is quite debatable, but it’s one of the most popular theories. Dreams are also like interpreters of specific signals from the brain and the nervous system.
3) What if Someone Dies in Your Dream
The major difference between reality and a dream is that we open our eyes in a dream. Witnessing someone dying in your dreams could be quite traumatic and worrisome, depending on how vivid the memory remains.
In extreme cases, people even wake up crying and get depressed or scared due to the memories alone. Despite it being just a dream. This led people to question, what does it mean when they dream about someone dying?
3.1) The Symbolic Theory
There are several theories on a long range of scientific and religious spectrum on death dreams. The most popular spiritual theory is that dreams are symbolic. This means that what we experience in our dreams hints towards something different.
In the case of a person dying, it denotes that something is coming to an end. This “Something” doesn’t refer to the physical death of the individual but something much simpler, like the end of something you used to do with them. Or, on a positive note, it could be the end of their debt, sadness, illness, etc.
Image by S. Hermann / F. Richter from Pixabay/Copyright 2017
The believers of this theory emphasize that the death of a person signifies that a message is being sent to you directly by the ultimate power. You need to take some action either to support that person you dreamt about or distance yourself from them.
3.2) The Omen Theory
It could be an extremely fearful and painful memory when we dream about someone dying. Thus some People see these things as good or bad omens. For some, it means that the person who dies in your dream will die in real life soon, specifically if they are terminally ill, while for others, it means that this individual wouldn’t die young or they shall live a long life.
3.3) The Context Behind the Dream
The most important thing for interpreting a dream is its context. The context of reality and the circumstances in the dream can be overlapped. Let’s take a few examples :
i) Dreaming about the death of your close Friend or the death of family members when they are healthy and fine. Under this context dreaming about their death would indicate that you love and cherish him/her. However, you are quite scared of losing them, or your love for them is so strong that you can’t imagine your life without their existence.
ii) Dreaming about the death of your close friends or family members who are sick, in trouble, or terminally ill people. Seeing their death in such a dream stresses your inner feelings regarding their situation. Your dreams indirectly remind you of your guilt or push you to take responsibility or help your friend.
iii) Seeing the death of a friend you haven’t met in a long time in your dream. In such a dream, it means that you are missing your friend. It could be that you suddenly had to leave the town, or it could be due to a fight that separated you both.
iv) When you dream about someone’s death which isn’t even close to you. Let’s say you saw a person’s death in your dream and aren’t emotionally attached to that person. This points towards the feeling of jealousy or some unresolved issues.
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If they are more successful or possess qualities you don’t possess, it could lead to jealousy. Even if you aren’t aware or not acknowledging that you are jealous, your dream will stir your subconscious mind to remind you that you have foul feelings for this particular person.
v) Dreams about the death of someone you dislike or hate. This is another case that depends on your relationship with the person and your response to their death in your dreams. It’s quite a complex thing to understand.
If you feel guilty after seeing them dead, it could be a sign of betrayal, where you are the one who betrayed the other person. However, if you get a happier response, you hate them and enjoy seeing them in misery.
These are just a few of the most popular situational examples that explain the emotion behind someone dying in your dreams.
Check out: What Does It Mean When You Dream About Someone – 18 Fascinating Dreams With Meanings
4) Dreams About a Child’s Death
Seeing a child dying in your dream is an extremely unfortunate and unsettling. These are the most unpleasant dreams someone could have. But it doesn’t imply that something wrong will happen to them.
One of the reasons for having such death-related dreams is that your child is approaching something important in their life. This could be in terms of their thought process or physical changes. Such dreams about someone dying are always about a change in waking life.
Another possible reason for recurring dreams of a child’s death is that you have anxiety and worry for your child. This is common for new parents as they could be questioning themselves on how to be a good parent or changes that they need to make to nurture their child.
5) Dreams About a Pet’s Death
People who have pets care for them like a family member or a best friend. Dreams about your pet dying could fill you with negative emotions. But this also serves as a warning sign as one of the major reasons people dream about their pets dying is because they feel like they aren’t doing enough for them. Having a pet signifies a relationship of responsibility and love. But if you see their death when you dream, it means you seek change in those two factors.
6) What if You Dream About Your Death
People often dream of their deaths, which could be extremely scary for anyone. As someone who has seen death dreams multiple times, It felt heartbreaking to see everything end in a second. But does that mean that you’ll die in reality too?
As per some professional interpreters, such dreams imply the end of a phase in your life or your personality. It stresses a significant change or a transaction that will significantly impact your life and change its course. This could be a positive change like a better attitude, a change in habits, or a negative one that indicates your downfall. So it acts like a wake-up call for the individual.
Another interpretation of such dreams is that you are tired of your life and circumstances. It’s fairly common to resist change, but this is a wake-up call that you wish to break free now. You want to change your situation because you are under a lot of stress because of it. Dreaming of your death is like an indirect wish to find an escape.
7) Solution
Dreaming about yourself or someone else’s death might as well indicate something big and impactful in your life. Even though it might feel traumatizing. Whatever the case, finding true meaning behind dreams is still quite difficult. In this era of constant advancement, people have started taking mental health seriously. Including the stress and anxiety caused by dreams. Thankfully, some therapists try to interpret their patients’ dreams to put them at ease.
They look for clues and perhaps unconscious desires that match the patient’s real life. One of the most reliable dream interpretation reports is called the “Hall Van de Castle dream system” it decodes the dreams as per the things that appear in the dreams, how they interact and how they affect the dreamer.
Efforts are being made by sleep Scientists every day to make the process of identification and interpretation of dreams as easy and automated as possible. But whatever the case may be, there’s always help.
Last Updated on by ritukhare
