Nothing compares to that sheer sense of relief when you wake up in a cold sweat to the blissful realisation that you weren’t actually stood butt-naked attempting to give a presentation in front of your entire company.
Ah, dreams. Sigmund Freud described them as the royal road to the unconscious and suggested that by taking the time to study them, we could uncover hidden and unconscious desires.
If you’ve ever pondered why on earth you’re having a recurring dream about meeting Mariah Carey, falling from a sky-scraper or, rather morbidly, burying a dead body, we’ve enlisted a dream decoder to answer exactly that.
“Your dreaming mind has so much it wants to tell you,” Theresa Cheung, Sunday Times bestselling author of The A to Z Dream Dictionary (Harper Collins) and The Dream Decoder (Laurence King), told GLAMOUR.
“Problem is, most of us don’t listen to the wisdom of our night vision. Read this list of commonly reported dreams to understand what they mean. You’ll be surprised just how much insight they can reveal about yourself and your life.”
Phone malfunctioning
Your mobile isn’t working in your dream. Perhaps the battery is dead or you find it impossible to make a call or you can’t hear what the person on the line is saying. Phones in dreams represent your ability to communicate honestly and you will usually have a dream about a phone malfunctioning when you have not been honest with yourself or someone else in your waking life. This dream is a warning but it isn’t anything to be alarmed about, yet. Your dreaming mind is simply urging you to express yourself authentically and be true to yourself because if you don’t things will eventually come to a head.
Meeting a celebrity
If you meet a celebrity, influencer or YouTube star in your dreams, typically this will be someone that you feel you have a connection to in your waking life. When other people appear in your dreams, they represent aspects of yourself that you need to understand, acknowledge or come to terms with. They can also represent aspects of yourself that you need to incorporate for your personal growth.
So when you dream of a celebrity, this represents your desire to feel important, admired and acknowledged. Pay attention to who the celebrity is and reflect on what it is about them that you admire. In many cases it could be as simple as feeling more confident about yourself, but if the celebrity has a unique talent this dream may be encouraging you to express your own unique talents.
Death of a parent
If your parents are not dead this dream can be very upsetting. You may fear that your dream is foreshadowing the real thing or be some kind of precognition. This is rarely the case. Death in dreams does not predict actual death but is a potent symbol of unavoidable change. Something in your life is changing rapidly or you may have outgrown a certain situation or relationship. It’s the end of an era and perhaps you feel that you have more grown up responsibilities than ever before. If an important relationship has ended, you’ve just finished your studies or you are leaving home or a job or moving house you are likely to have dreams that feature death (or end of the world scenarios) because although death is a symbol that suggests endings it is also a symbol of exciting new beginnings.
Unprepared for an exam
You are in an examination room but when you are given the exam paper you realise you can’t answer any of the questions. You are totally unprepared and it is too late to do anything about it. If you recognise this dream scenario, it can sometimes suggest that you are unprepared for an important event but is far more likely to suggest that you are placing impossible demands upon yourself. You are an over-achiever or perfectionist in waking life and your dream expresses your anxieties about not living up to your own expectations and the expectations of others. Your dreaming mind is cathartically expressing your worst nightmare so that you can adopt a more relaxed approach in waking life.
Flying or Falling
Dreams of flying can often feel euphoric. You may discover you have an ability to fly in your dreams and after a few adjustments you are soaring without wings. Such dreams often tend to occur when you are feeling positive about yourself or someone or something in your life. Some people have flying dreams after having satisfying sex. Others have them when they feel particularly inspired or creative.
Falling dreams, by contrast, tend to occur when you feel out of control in some aspect of your waking life. You may be going through a stressful time or feel confused and uncertain. Whatever the situation pressure is building and your dreaming mind is using the symbol of falling from a height to encourage you to pause, make adjustments and take some much needed time out.
Dreams about social media are becoming increasingly common as we dream about what is familiar to us. If you dream about losing large amounts of followers on your socials this suggests that you are feeling insecure and perhaps unloved. Similarly, if you aren’t getting any likes or follows in your dream you fear being rejected or ignored and are craving acceptance and validation in your waking life.
Your dreaming mind is using the symbol of social media and showcasing worst case scenarios there, such as losing followers, deleting profiles or accidentally liking an ex’s page, to perhaps send a message that you need to unplug more. If you dream in internet you are spending too much time cultivating an online presence and not enough time living in the real world.
Burying a dead body
If you dream of burying a dead body, or that you have killed someone, this means there is some undesirable aspect of yourself or your life that you need to let go of or put an end to. The dead body or the person you have killed represents what that part of yourself is and this is why there often isn’t remorse in this kind of dream. If the person you bury or kill is someone you know remember people in dreams don’t represent those people but aspects of yourself so try to identify the personality traits, characteristics or achievements this person represents and how this is holding you back from developing your full potential.
Having sex or being naked in public
You are in a public place or with a group of people and you realise you are naked or partially clothed. Eek! These dreams are symbolic expressions of your social identity in waking life and the way you feel you are being ‘seen’ by others or on public display. The key to interpreting this dream is how you feel about your nudity in your dream and how others react. If you are not concerned you feel comfortable in your own skin but the reverse is true if you are trying to cover yourself.
If others are not concerned about your nudity then you are worrying needlessly.
And if you are having sex in public, notice who your dream partner is as they represent an aspect of yourself you need to understand or acknowledge. If others don’t notice you are having sex, they are more concerned with their own problems than your own.
Sweet dreams!
