Dreams during the coronavirus epidemic

Have your dreams become more vivid, crazy, momentous, and scary during the coronavirus crisis?

Last week I wrote a blog about Dreams in the time of Covid-19 for my online learning platform, The Dream Academy. It covered the kinds of issues people are dreaming about, the value of using dreams to discover insight and potential solutions to issues and problems (think job loss, relationships, and so on), tips on how to quell middle-of-the-night anxiety, and more. You might like to read it as a prelude to this one. What it didn’t do was list specific dream themes you might be experiencing and give some insight into what these might mean. I reserved that for today’s blog:

But first, why are so many people’s dreams more vivid, crazy, and momentous during the Covid-19 crisis?

The job of dreaming is to process your conscious and unconscious experiences of the last 1-2 days, compare these with similar past experiences, and, sometimes, project forward to possible future scenarios and how you might handle them. Think of dreaming as a nightly mindset update. The sheer volume of experiences many of us are processing at the moment is the reason why our dreams are crammed full and spiced with high emotion. You may have had vivid, crazy, momentous dreams during past personal crises for similar reasons.

Dreams tend to be more vivid when you’re processing strong emotions: the emotions you are aware of, those you try to repress, and those of which you are unaware, but which simmer in your unconscious mind. The more vivid a dream, the more likely you are to recall it when you wake up. This can give the impression that you are dreaming more then usual. In reality, you generally spend the same proportion of your sleeping time dreaming, but many of those dreams fade from your memory as morning dawns.

You may be dreaming scarier dreams during this time because you’re processing your fears about Coronavirus and all its implications.

Whenever you feel fear in a dream, fear and stress hormones are released into your blood, preparing you for fight or flight. This hormone burst will often wake you from a scary dream – a nightmare – leading to broken sleep and feelings of exhaustion the following day. Here’s a tip: When you wake up from a nightmare, reimagine the dream with a positive ending. What you need to do is imagine transforming whatever was scary in the dream into something more positive. (Don’t kill off the scary thing. You must transform it.) This changing of the story in your imagination not only begins to calm you but also triggers your unconscious mind to start finding positive ways to address and resolve your fears.

So what kinds of dreams might you be having during the coronavirus epidemic?

Dreams of feeling out of control

There’s only so much you can control during times of uncertainty. Dreams of driving an out of control car, trying to control a crazy situation, trying to pack and organise in the middle of a state of chaos, may all reflect your conscious and unconscious feelings of being out of control. When you examine the details of such a dream, you’ll discover your deeper beliefs about control, and perhaps understand where issues of control have been limiting you in the past.

The opportunity is to accept what you can and what you can’t control. It can be an opportunity to open to change, to flow without needing to control, to be curious about what might happen if you loosened your grip on the metaphorical steering wheel and opened to exploring different ways of travelling through life.

Dreams of earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis

You can’t take a dream dictionary approach to interpreting dreams. Every dream is unique and personal, so take my suggestions and see how they fit in your life. It’s the details of a dream that deliver an accurate interpretation. In this blog, we’re looking at general themes. You may dream of earthquakes because life, at the moment, feels like it’s constantly rumbling and shifting and changing. The known ground you were so sure about yesterday (your workplace, the promise of travel, your income, your freedom to hug those you love) may no longer be there to support you. Tornadoes in your dreams may be excellent metaphors for how you feel at the moment, or for your fears about what is yet to come. Tsunamis may represent that feeling of overwhelm that threatens to knock you off your feet, or leave you drowning (in your emotions).

The opportunity is to welcome the good things that change may ultimately bring, to build new and firmer ground under your feet, ground that supports you in different and better ways. The crisis may continue, but you may develop or find innovative ways that get you – and others – through and offers brighter longer-term prospects.

Dreams of being trapped

I’m sure you know what this means in the current context! Such dreams most likely reflect your feelings or fears around being in isolation, quarantine, lockdown, sickness, or unable to pay your bills, support others, travel. Again, interpreting these dreams can help you to understand your mindset around being trapped, physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. Self-awareness is part of the solution.

The opportunity is to discover how you can expand. You may feel physically trapped indoors, but how can you expand mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, or perhaps in a business or altruistic sense, during this time?

Dreams of bugs

I have heard many dreams about bugs during this time – bugs like insects biting peoples’ skin, or huge lice in their hair, or swarms of flying, devouring insects coming towards them. On one level these dreams may symbolise your fears of the virus invading your body. On a more likely level these dreams may be about feeling irritated or bugged by the situation or issues around you. Things can easily get ‘under your skin’, and you might be super sensitive. The details of your dream will reveal what’s going on for you and offer potential solutions.

The opportunity is to explore your personal boundaries, or to acknowledge your propensity towards feeling irritation and reach out to respond to life in more gracious ways.

Dreams of loss

This theme looms large in many people’s dreams right now. It needs no explanation. The list of potential losses is never-ending: health, money, security, job, business, relationship, fitness, intimacy, physical connection with family, control, sense of identity (job title and so on), sense of belonging, the old way of life. Such dreams may be processing your experiences of actual loss or your fears of potential loss.

The opportunity is to transform loss into found. What new job, business, or identity might you find in the face of loss? What news ways of connecting might you find with your family? What new ways of being in the world might evolve for you when we finally emerge from this crisis?

Dreams of death

While some of these dreams may be processing your grief for those who have died from the virus, or your fears around contracting the virus yourself, or your fears and beliefs around death, death dreams at this time are more likely to be symbolic. Think ‘death of the old’: what has died in your life, or what do you feel is dying in your life (your energy, your income, your previous lifestyle, your physical social life, certain dreams, aspirations, and ways of being in the world)?

The opportunity is to discover what to birth from the death, what new ways to bring into the world as the old ways fade away.

Naked in public

This dream theme also seems to be increasing for some people. Essentially the dream is about feeling or fearing being exposed, being seen in your true colours, letting your public image slip. Possibilities here might include fears around not being able to keep up with perfect haircuts and colouring, Botox or other beauty treatments, because of social distancing. Another possibility is fear of being seen in your home environment on those Zoom meetings that used to take place in the boardroom. Instead you have perhaps iffy lighting, domestic backdrops, and the occasional child popping in for some attention. At a deeper level, an increase in these kinds of dreams may reflect exploring fears around changing how you present yourself to the world, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

The opportunity is to embrace authenticity and vulnerability, and to relax notions of perfection.

There are other dream themes prevalent at the moment, but let’s stop there!

Vivid dream themes like these can all help you to acknowledge and validate your emotions and vulnerabilities, while revealing – through the dream details – any blocks, limiting beliefs, or unresolved issues that may be holding you back from flowing with change in healthy ways. The dream details, once interpreted, add valuable personal insight to help you through these challenging times.

Each of the opportunities I’ve suggested can serve as points of contemplation in waking life.

You might ask yourself, for example, If I feel trapped, how can I expand? Or, If I feel loss, what can I find? Or, if I feel exposed, how might I flip that into embracing authenticity?

There is wonderful value in such waking life contemplation. You will come up with fruitful answers. But if you include working with your dreams, you’ll access deeper insight and unique personal truths to guide you on your way.

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