Drowning
This is such a common dream and has been answered hundreds of times, we first ask you to look through the many answers given in Drowning – Many Replies Hopefully you will find an answer to your own drowning dream
Because of the water, drowning depicts fear of being overwhelmed by difficult emotions or anxieties, so it often points to struggles – conflicts – or fighting for survival you may have in your life. But this might apply not to dangerous emotions or urges, but to natural urges such as eating, loving or sex, that some people have enormous conflicts with. Drowning in a dream is also about struggling to survive as a person, so it applies to your identity as it is dealing with relationship with other people, but also with your own internal world of instincts, body activities and needs.
But the feelings of being overwhelmed can be caused by fear or anxiety. But if we can, we can meet and dissolve these. For whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear. So all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind.
So in dreams you cannot drown, but fear takes away your confidence, so then you go through the agonised emotions of drowning.
This is about being or feeling overwhelmed by something. One can ‘drown’ in sorrow for instance. So you need to look at your waking life to see what you are feeling threatened or burdened by and see if there are ways you can deal with it. If someone else actually drowns in the dream it may mean some of your feelings, your creativity and responsiveness are no longer ‘alive’. But they can be brought back to life if you care for that side of yourself. Sometimes it is simply anxiety we drown in, and much of anxiety is about situations we imagine. Separating what is imagined from what is real can help this. See Characters and People in Dreams
But such fear can be caused because if un-dealt with traumas from childhood are not faced, or by being exposed to awful film images that you believe are real. Read and Martial Art of the Mind
If you feel you are struggling to you ‘keep your head above water’ in a dream, do not give in for it is only emotions you are facing, not reality.
Water and drowning often indicates you are facing the unknown changes and so are afraid. But in dreams we can never die or even be hurt, for we wake without real hurt except for our feelings.
Going under water in a dream depicts you are going deeper into your awareness, so you are beginning to explore your unconscious. That is a major step in your development and is an evolutionary advance. It can lead to many major new abilities such as a wider awareness of life around you. A person describes one of the possible changes, “Unexpectedly everything changed and my fundamental self was something that existed throughout all time. It didn’t have a beginning or end. There was no goal to achieve. I am.”
Dreamt about someone else: May occasionally show Your apprehension about their health or well being, having the suggestion of death or breakdown.
Example: ‘I fell into a pond. My brother was frightened to be by himself so he jumped in. We were both drowning in the water and we shouted out for Mum. My brother drowned.’ Poppy S.
Poppy dreamt this while feeling insecure and anxious due to her father being seriously ill.
Example: I had been dreaming about sitting on a sofa with my friends – well watching horror movies, when suddenly everything comes to live. I was afraid of the ghost that had been drowning with her husband in the movie, and it comes to haunt me. I asked the ghost’s sister to help and she passes me a necklace with can protect me. And suddenly the ghost appears and tells my friend she was pretty. What does this means?
It means that you need to understand how your mind works. It means that you have nothing to fear about ghosts. As the ghost that appeared showed you, there was no harm in it. Dream images are like images on cinema screens – harmless unless you are haunted by your own fears. But the dream also shows you that whatever you believe in becomes a fact and alive in our dreams. It mean that the necklace gave you confidence, and in fact the necklace is only a crutch for your confidence. But we need such things until we can deal with our own emotions. See Facing Fear
Idioms: drown your sorrow; if you’re born to hang, you won’t drown.
Useful questions:
What powerful emotions or changes am I dealing with?
Am I feeling overwhelmed by something?
Can I define the strengths and ways I use to deal with threatening feelings?
Do I feel as if I am ‘drowning’ in a situation or relationship?
What is it I am feeling overwhelmed by recently?
Is this someone else drowning – if so what facet of me do they represent?
What resource or person could help me survive in this situation?
Another person or animal drowning still suggests it is an aspect of your own personality you need to care for.
Whoever or whatever it is, imagine yourself back in the dream and save them. If necessary imagine rescue services coming to your aid. In doing this you are using imagery to shift your feelings and anxieties.
All water in some way signifies your own inner world of feelings, but the sea often suggests meeting urges and wisdom lying beyond the boundary of your conscious mind. What is it you feel in the sea or river? Try putting it into words.
See Associations Working With; Techniques for Exploring your Dreams; Avoid Being Victims; Secrets of Power Dreaming
Comments
I dreamt that my ex was trying to keep a conversation with me, I was answering him reluctantly didn’t want to talk to him because in the dream I was angry with him, now he begged me for water in a calm way i didn’t know if i should give him the water, deep down me i wanted to give him but I was scared I didn’t know if he was trying to test me if i still love him to be kind enough to give him water and i reluctantly told him yes i would give him water but i was thinking if to give him or not because i didnt want to be used again then i woke up. he did break my heart and it was due to trust issues I didn’t trust him enough and it led to our breakup. So I am quite confused and i hope am not a horrible person
Every year I have this re-occurring dream. I’m strapped on to this table and I am slowly being drowned. A bucket is filled with water and it spilled on me. It’s going in a circle, like around a wheel and after it pours on me it refills and I’m slowly drowning. I pass out from all the water and as soon as I do that I wake up. What does this mean? Thank you.
Emma – It looks very much like a form of torture often used in films where people are trying to force someone to give them information.
You feel you are drowning by being again and again being forced to remain without any means of escape. Because you didn’t give me any background and feelings, I cannot guess what the dream indicates. But perhaps you can look at any situations where you feel you are unable to move from a relationship, a work situation or even a life situation.
As you have read, because of the water, drowning depicts fear of being overwhelmed by difficult emotions or anxieties. But this might apply not to dangerous emotions or urges, but to natural urges such as eating, loving or sex, that some people have enormous conflicts about. Drowning in a dream is also about struggling to survive as a person, so it applies to your identity as it is dealing with relationship with other people, but also with your own internal world of instincts, body activities and needs.
So, do you feel any of those feelings in everyday life?
Tony
I’ve been having dreams about my mother lately. We haven’t been getting along but I’m
Extremely close to her.
In my dream, (the one I literally just woke from)
We were in a car, and there were some workers on a dirt road by the ocean, what we didn’t see was there wasn’t a road, it had been demolished. So as my mom and I are sinking down, I took a breath in. To end it. But I didn’t die and it didn’t feel like water. It felt like oil. And I just started swimming up. I heard my mom scream as she passed under the water or oil.
Mimi – You were on a journey on a road “less travelled”. And going under the water shows you going deep within yourself. Truly a road less travelled, maybe even one you had never travelled before, for it suggests the road going beyond death.
I wonder though about you saying, “I heard my mom scream as she passed under the water or oil.” You were travelling up, but if she was travelling down, then the dream gives a warning about her death – but doesn’t say how soon.
You say, “We haven’t been getting along but I’m extremely close to her.” So I suggest you see her again before she goes – that is supposing I am right.
Tony
I am lying on a huge cradle located above the ocean, with my sis and her bf. looking from the cradle, water level is just 1 meter depth. I swing it until my sis and her bf fall to the sea. Then I realize the ocean is too deep to stand.
They get injure form rocks under the sea while trying to stand in the water.
I jump down with them and we swim to coast. But I lost my eye glasses after jumping, so in the end everything around me is a blur.
Hi – I am sorry I cannot keep up with number of dreams sent at the moment. But I have described a way that you can get to the meaning of your dream. It only takes a little time to work at knowing the meaning of your dream.
So please click on the link and find your dreams meaning – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
My dream
I saw myself trying to get saved but fell in water and got drowned and died and then I saw myself alive in someone’s house where a lady was trying to kill me with some blue ray which were coming out of her hands but she couldn’t . What does it mean ?
I had this dream where I was with this guy (not sure if we were in a relationship or just friends). He got sick with something which seemed like schizophrenia and I ended up committing him to the hospital because I couldn’t take care of him alone anymore. He said he wanted to see me one last time before he went away, at first I didn’t want to see him but I did anyways to calm his nerves. He lashed out and hurt people starting now a fire in the hospital. But eh time the police came he had already a dragged me down to the lake behind the hospital and I was drowning, fighting him under the water until I his under a concrete platform in the water because I knew e wouldn’t come get me there. He ended up being shot in the water and I could feel everything fading around me until someone quickly pulled me out. They didnt find his body.
My dream then jumped about a year or two in the future after I had spent some time away forgetting about the events of that night. I was either at university or a camp of some sort when we went down to the lake to play some games. It was my turn for swimming so I dove in when I couldn’t reach the surface of the water. Something was pulling me down and again I started to struggle and feel like I was drowning. At this point I was panicking so much I woke myself up but as soon as I fell back asleep the freak continued. I was in the change rooms having a shower and getting ready for the night. I didn’t do anything for a couple days but it reached Friday and everyone was going to the pit for drinks so I went along to have some fun. On the walls of the shed (the pit) were photos and news stories of the haunted lake, when I asked questions about why it was haunted I was told that the site that the university/camp ground was buoy on once was a hospital grounds however it was burnt down a few years ago and someone had reported died in the lake. It hit me that this was the lake I almost drowned in before, I wanted to go back to my room so I turned around and started walking, I couldn’t be here anymore. Then I heard a girl screaming. She had found, in the water, the body of the boy who I knew/ tried to drown me.
Taylor – Being pulling me down and again I started to struggle and feel like I was drowning, is a sure sign that you are not dealing well with life. In other words, you are starting to suffer stress, which can lead to feeling depressed – often symbolised in dreams as drowning.
Whether we remember or not, each time we sleep we create on apparently real world out of our remembered impressions, habits, fears and emotions. Yet, because a dream is our own creation, no part of it, no emotion contained in it, no flight of fancy portrayed, is other than oneself. Even when we dream vividly of another person, the dream personality is made up of our own impressions, hopes and feelings.
Also, whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear; so all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind.
The boy who tried to drown you is most likely a traumatic incident that happen when you were young, which nearly downed/drowned you, because it felt like you couldn’t survive. Also a lake in dream language is the boundary between your conscious personality, and your unconscious self, the life processes that keep you alive but are not conscious of. So going into the lake is going into yourself, the parts of you that are below the surface, that continue to pull you down emotionally.
You can do this consciously to find what trauma is behind it by using http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson
Or if that is too difficult to handle, use http://dreamhawk.com/body-and-mind/the-slow-breath/
Tony
I had a dream where I was running away from some unknown disaster with a friend, we somhow got caught in a whole crowd of people and got stuck. Next thing I know there’s water everywhere and we all begin to sink. I tried to swim up but there was something keeping me in place. I was panicking so bad I ended waking myself up.
Dear Anita – Your dream may reflect the way you respond to difficult feelings; you rather avoid feeling them and so you run.
Because you do not become aware of your feelings you end up feeling stuck and overwhelmed by them.
Sometimes our dreams show us what does not work in our inner life, so we can decide to experiment with a different approach.
Another approach could be to practice mindfulness; become aware of your feelings and “name them to tame them”; http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/self-observation/ and http://www.drdansiegel.com/about/mindsight/
Anna 🙂
I ռɛɛɖ ɦɛʟք ʊռɖաʀstaռɖɨռɢ a ɖʀɛaʍ ɨռ tɦɛ ɖʀɛaʍ I ɦaɖ sաօռɢ aċʀօss աatɛʀ aռɖ I ʟօօҡɛɖ ɮaċҡ aռɖ tօʟɖ ʍʏ ɮʀօtɦɛʀ tօ ċօʍɛ օռ aռɖ ɦɛ saɨɖ I ċaռ’t ɖօ tɦɨs aռʏʍօʀɛ.tɦɛռ I ċօʊʟɖ ɦɛaʀ ɦʊʀʀʏ ɦɛ’s ʄaɖɨռɢ ʄast .I աօҡɛ ʊք ɨռ tears
I had a dream where my brother was drowning and I would pull him up at the very last second; he would gasp then he would be completely fine and we acted like it was normal and he almost drowned about 3 times and I finally started freaking out then I woke up.
Could someone help me ? I had a dream of me being in the car with my dad and boyfriend and 2 people I didn’t recognize, we are driving to someone where not sure where and i keep saying about mud so i got out 2 mintues away so i walk to the places. I thought they should be there. I then hears the one person i didnt recognize calling me goes over and there car under water and my boyfriend was on a log and my dad was in the car I got him out the I was in the back of the ambulance with a baby and there was a little girl I didnt no with me then I woke up
Could someone help me ? I had a dream of me being in the car with my dad and boyfriend and 2 people I didn’t recognize, we are driving to someone where not sure where and i keep saying about mud so i got out 2 mintues away so i walk to the places. I thought they should be there. I then hears the one person i didnt recognize calling me goes over and there car under water and my boyfriend was on a log and my dad was in the car I got him out the I was in the back of the ambulance with a baby and there was a little girl I didnt no with me then I woke up
I had a dream I was on a latter and it was a pool under me and the latter slipped and I fell in the pool and the latter fell on top of me and I couldn’t move as a struggled trying to get free I couldn’t and I gave up I knew i was gone . What do y’all think this indicates?
Last day I saw a dream that I was playing with my friends in the pool. Suddenly I started to drowning and none of my friends helped me. They were laughing at me.
Hello there. I had a dream that I was in a hot tub with my sister, she wanted to go to the pool so we walked there and I saw my husband. I jumped into the water next to him and could not figure out which way was up and began to drown. No one came to help, but eventually I pulled myself out of the water. I was choking and gasping for air, even as I woke up. What does this all mean?
The Dream That Felt Real:
Really all I remember..was that I fell asleep and that….it was pitch black but…blue, and i kept sinking and sinking i tried to swim up but something just kept pulling me down…then theres the last breath. And i thought to myself i dont want to go like this. And there i lay sinking to the bottom of the ocean never to be seen again..then i woke up just right after I had my last breath. There was a trail of tears coming down my face. It..felt..so..real..what does it mean? Does it mean thats going to happen to me one day?