Dreaming about your own death: what it means and what it is not

What dreaming about your own death usually points to

Dream interpretation is not prediction and not diagnosis. This article separates what sleep research observes from what popular interpretation associates with the theme, always saying which is which.

Dreaming that you died is not a prediction, is not a sign of illness and does not mean you want to die. The dream tends to show up in phases of endings and beginnings: a job change, a breakup, a move to another city, a graduation, children leaving home. It also goes along with deep exhaustion and the feeling of losing control over something.

It is a variation of dreaming about death in which the person who dies is you. When the one who dies is a family member, the right article is dreaming about a relative dying.

Read also: Dreaming about a funeral or a coffin and Dreaming about a cemetery.

The most common versions of this dream

When the center of the scene is the fall, the car or the attack, see dreaming that you are falling, dreaming about an accident and dreaming about a murder.

See also: Dreaming about a judge or court and Dreaming about humiliation.

Why the mind creates your own death

Seeing yourself dead and being killed are on the list of typical dreams that Tore Nielsen and colleagues studied with university students in Canada. It is a dream many people have had and talk about without any real consequence, which right away knocks down the belief that if you die in a dream you die for real.

Two explanations add up. The first is continuity: what worries you during the day comes back at night, and a phase of big change can take on the strongest image there is for an ending. The second comes from the Finnish researcher Antti Revonsuo, for whom dreaming about threats would work as a rehearsal by the brain in a safe setting; it is a debated hypothesis, not a consensus. In Schredl and Göritz's study of nightmare themes, physical aggression and the death of close people are among the most common.

Sources: Nielsen and colleagues, Dreaming, 2003; Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003; Revonsuo, The reinterpretation of dreams, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2000; Schredl and Göritz, Nightmare Themes, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2018.

When it is worth seeking help

If the dream turns into a recurring nightmare, if you start being afraid to go to sleep or wake up in panic several times a week, talk to a doctor or a psychologist. Frequent nightmares have evidence-based treatment, such as the imagery rehearsal therapy recommended in sleep medicine; see how to have fewer nightmares.

The dream is one thing; what you feel while awake is another. If, during the day, you have been thinking about dying, disappearing or hurting yourself, that deserves care, with or without a dream. Talk to someone you trust and reach out to a health professional. In the US, you can call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), free and available 24 hours a day. If you are in immediate danger, go to the nearest emergency room or call 911.

Source: Morgenthaler and colleagues, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2018.

Freud, Jung and faith in the face of your own death

In Freud's psychoanalysis. Freud's method asks you to break the dream into pieces and ask what each one brings to mind: the place, who was at the funeral, the clothes, a phrase you heard. He also observed that the feeling in a dream belongs to its deepest meaning. Dying in peace and dying in panic are, for that reason, very different dreams, and the emotion is the best clue.

In Jung's psychology. In Man and His Symbols, Joseph Henderson describes the initiation rites of many peoples, in which a symbolic death comes before rebirth into a new phase of life. In the Jungian key, dying in a dream can be the image of a part of you that is being left behind to make room for another.

In symbols and in faith. Chevalier and Gheerbrant, in A Dictionary of Symbols, point out that death is also read as passage and renewal, and not only as an end. In the Christian tradition, the apostle Paul speaks of baptism as being buried with Christ so that we too may "walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4).

Bringing the two readings together. Research says the dream is common and goes along with change; psychology and faith, each in its own way, speak of an ending that opens a beginning. None of them treats the dream as a sentence.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols; Chevalier and Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols.

Dreaming about your own death in dream books

In O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book, L. P. Baçan records under the entry for death: in life, change; in love, news. The entry for a corpse follows the same optimistic path, with long life. It is folk tradition, not prediction.

Jung was wary of lists of fixed meanings: for him, the same symbol changes meaning depending on the life of the person who dreamed. A dictionary line can serve as a starting point, never as an answer.

Sources: L. P. Baçan, O Livro dos Sonhos, 2014; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols.

What folk belief says

In Brazilian folk reading, dreaming that you died is almost always read in reverse: a sign of long life, of renewed health or that a problem is about to end. Your own funeral full of people is associated with being loved; an empty funeral, with feeling alone. Dying and being reborn is taken as a fresh start. In some spiritualist currents, floating above your body is read as the soul leaving during sleep. These are beliefs of tradition and faith, not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.