Teeth

Dreams about teeth falling out – If single tooth – Bad tooth – Big or small teeth – Canines - Clenched teeth – Dirty teeth – Dracula type teeth - False teeth - Finding a tooth – Having teeth attended to - If crowns falling out or injured – No teeth – Spitting out lots of teeth – Swallowing teeth – Teeth falling out - Tooth being pulled out – Toothless - Woman swallowing teeth

Teeth can represent your bite, effectiveness or power in life. They may represent biting remarks, hurtful words. They are your ability to ‘chew’ over things, meaning to consider and think about, almost to get a taste or try to experience what you are considering.

Dreams about teeth falling out:

Often means a sense of loss, such as death of family member or loved one; the ageing process as it relates to maturity, so worries about getting older and one’s changing image. When our first teeth fall out at around seven, it is probably our initial experience of losing something from our body, something weird happening – we might even fear other bits of us could drop off or out.

If single tooth: This may suggest loss, change, or death of someone.

There are a great many associations we might have with teeth, so the environment and surrounding events in the dream must be taken as pointers.

As examples we might think of teeth or lack of them as indicating age. You might associate teeth with acute pain, as with toothache or dentistry. Because you lose your teeth while young and grow new ones, you might also use teeth in a dream to show change from one period of life to another, suggested by such idioms as long in the tooth, milk teeth, etc. In some dreams we have a tooth problem indicating infection, even infection in an ear.

In general teeth in your dream can depict aggression or defensiveness, as when we bite someone. They can suggest the ability to ‘chew things over’. In some dreams they indicate your ‘bite’ on life, or the ability to get what you want. For instance if we see someone with few or no teeth, it often arouses a feeling that the person has lost their effectiveness in life, their social power – they have ‘lost it’. This may be exactly what you are portraying in losing your own teeth in a dream – the feeling, even temporary, of ‘losing it’. This may be felt as the sense of not being able to get what you deeply want. But other meanings for tooth loss or falling out are given below.

Teeth can depict words we say or swallow – perhaps things we wish had not come out of our mouth. One of the biggest associations for many of us is how our teeth depict our social appearance – how others see us.

In some cultures the loss of a tooth often depicted the death of a family member. But when we lose a tooth we are very aware of the emptiness in our mouth – very aware of the loss.

Idioms: a sweet tooth; a tooth for a tooth; armed to the teeth; by the skin of ones teeth; cut my teeth on; fight tooth and nail; get one’s teeth into; gnash one’s teeth; give my eye teeth; grit one’s teeth; long in the tooth; teething troubles; milk teeth; scarce as hen’s teeth; set my teeth on edge; show one’s teeth.

Useful questions:

If I am losing teeth, what am I losing or feeling loss about in waking?

Am I meeting anything to do with my social appearance or self image?

Does something need attending to in my life?

What is coming out of my mouth in conversations – or what am I swallowing and not expressing?

Bad tooth: A painful or rotten part of your feelings, life or relationships; angry or regretful words. It might also of course suggest a problem with that tooth.

Big or small teeth: Big teeth suggest strength, power, or ability to harm, depending on dream. Especially in animal dreams it tends to show fear of being hurt or of aggression. Small teeth show the opposite, except that in a few dreams the small teeth belong to a snake or are poisonous in some way, suggesting something or someone putting emotionally damaging feelings in you – perhaps through ‘biting’ remarks.

Canines: The canines are what are left of larger teeth our ancestors used to defend themselves or warn off attackers. So the canine would particularly indicate your ability to defend yourself, or be powerful in the world – particularly for men. Losing a canine or canines might indicate that at times you feel more vulnerable or less confident. This might be accompanied by greater feelings of vulnerability. There might be some painful experience underlying such feelings.

Clenched teeth: This usually show an enormous amount of tension, but we also grit or grind our teeth when holding back great physical or emotional pain, anger or despair.

Dirty teeth: Similar to the poisonous teeth. The dirt suggest there is perhaps some sort of attitude that is obvious to others as you speak, and might also be influencing your body, or be injected by a bite.

Dracula type teeth: Similar to ‘dirty teeth’ or ‘big teeth’. But the Dracula type teeth indicate that you are being injected and thereby influenced by someone else’s subtle drive to control you or poison your feelings or mind. If you have the Dracula teeth, you need to ask yourself if you are trying to negatively influence someone else or using them like a parasite.

Finding a tooth: It could mean finding a part of you that was lost or memories of yourself at the age when we lost our teeth. Maybe even memories of a dead friend.

Having teeth attended to: Something that needs attention in your life that you might be putting off or delaying. It might link with pain you feel about something, or even be about an actual infection or decay. There might be a link with either your social appearance, your ability to deal with life effectively, or maintaining appearances.

No teeth: If this is an animal dream, it indicates harmlessness. If it refers to yourself or a human, it might also suggest harmlessness, but with the sense of lacking power and your ability to defend yourself, to get what you want from the world in the sense of biting off food, and also of course your social appearance – how you feel others see you. If you imagine yourself with no teeth, what in fact do you feel?

Spitting out lots of teeth: Something you want to ‘spit out’ in the sense of admitting, saying, or expressing something emotionally. But also perhaps the same as teeth falling out.

Swallowing teeth: See: Woman swallowing teeth.

Teeth falling out: If all your teeth are falling out it often links with feelings to do with ageing and loss of your good looks. Sometimes the feelings are acute enough to link with fear of death, even in young people. But this deals also with the feelings to do with loss of power, loss of ability to express. One dreamer says she dreams this when she feels she is not being understood, or being effective, or feels unable to communicate.

If crowns falling out or injured: This may relate to a sense of urgency that something has to be attended to.

Tooth being pulled out: Jung felt this dream represents giving birth if dreamt by a woman. In general it probably has associations with loss or painful loss, a difficult parting in a relationship, or loss of something that has been badly influencing your emotional and perhaps even physical health.

Toothless: Loss of effectiveness and or feelings about ageing.

Woman swallowing teeth: The throat and Eustachian tubes have a similar shape to the uterus and fallopian tubes, so can depict conception or fear of it. In ancient cultures, a tooth was extracted and swallowed as part of a death and rebirth symbol. This may have arisen from the observation of losing ones baby teeth and the growth of new teeth, suggesting the power of renewal. Swallowing teeth might also suggest ‘swallowing ones words’.

False teeth: Loss of youth and its power and opportunities, as with the ageing process and loss of good looks. Perhaps it suggests lies told or false appearances. Assumed social power and appearance, or not keeping spoken promises.