Meanings of Bad Dreams

A bad dream, or one that causes you to experience fear or anxiety, may leave you feeling restless in the morning, or filled with a sense of impending doom. Most often, dream interpretation deals with finding a parallel, within your life that can help in identifying what the dream is trying to tell you - psychologically, a dream is considered a reflection of the subconscious, which is the starting point of understanding the dream's significance. Experiencing a dream that has caused anxiety or fear, is more common than one might realize. Sometimes, these are recurring dreams which occur almost as a pattern, and more often than not it can be linked with a prevalent theme in the dreamer's life. Though there are many theories regarding the interpretation of bad dreams, the majority agree that dreams are ways in which the brain works through emotion. Although each dream is peculiar to its dreamer, and the messages your subconscious mind tries to convey are unique, there are some dreams that are common in content, such that most of us experience them at some point in our lives. Some people advocate maintaining a dream diary, to establish a pattern in your dreams, that may seem evident over a period of time when your dreams are recorded regularly. Combating bad dreams is also done by learning lucid dreaming techniques, wherein you train your mind to understand that you're dreaming within a dream, thereby giving you conscious power over the dream.

What Bad Dreams Mean

The interpretations below relate to common dreams that most people experience fairly regularly. Though they may not always seem like they are bad dreams, these dreams can often cause feelings of discomfort, embarrassment or humiliation. In dream interpretation, an important point is to understand how the dream made you feel - this is often the key to what your subconscious is trying to tell you. The causes of bad dreams can be manifold, and can seem unrelated to the dream sequence entirely. The following are the most common bad dreams, and the meaning as per dream interpretation.

Death
Experiencing death in a dream can be especially traumatic, and may leave you with a feeling that it was a premonition of bad things to come. Strangely enough, it's very very rare, to experience death yourself in a dream, and most dreams that are connected with death will feature your near and dear. However, most often, death in a dream signifies a change that is imminent or ongoing in your life. Once you can analyze the overriding emotion that surrounds the death (fear, anger, abandonment), you may find it easier to link it with the area of your life that it corresponds to. Many times, death can mean the end of a relationship, and the emotions that you experience in your dream may be the emotions that the end of a relationship symbolize.

Being Chased
Being chased in a dream, or 'chasing dreams' as they are commonly known, are thought to represent anxiety or fear about something in your life. It can also signify the dreamer's tendency to run away from problems or a consuming need to avoid confrontation. Depending upon whether you're being chased, or the one doing the chasing, the interpretation of this disturbing dream will change - if you are chasing something it can indicate the imminent realization of an ambition, or conversely something slipping out of your grasp.

Teeth Falling Out
Dreams where you feel like your teeth are falling out, or where you find gaps where your teeth should be, can be very realistic, and cause much confusion as regards their interpretation. On the whole, most dreams of this sort indicate insecurity in your appearance, or some form of rejection, connected with your interpretation of your outer self.

Understanding the meanings of bad dreams can help you come to terms with sections of your life that may need attention - dreams open a window into the subconscious mind, giving you the ability to see what your conscious mind may avoid or find ways to evade. Many people also associate precognitive dreams with the mind's power to clear through life's daily debris, and give you a warning, through the medium of a dream. The power of the mind is difficult to describe, and when you are dreaming, the ability to rationalize your surroundings seems to happen seamlessly and continuously, which is why your surroundings don't seem strange in your dream - however odd they may appear once you wake up!