10 Odd Ways Your Dreams Are Trying To Send You Messages
Your dreams are more than random scenes — they're cryptic messengers trying to tell you something important.
MAYA LAB | Shutterstock Dreaming is a universal experience. It’s impossible to remember every dream, but the ones that follow you through waking life reveal who you are. Falling asleep is a portal to a dream world, showing us an inverted version of our lives.
Dreams can be mystifying and crystal clear at the same time. They often resurface when you least expect them, which is one of the odd ways your dreams are trying to send you messages. Discovering the deeper meaning of dreams doesn’t happen all at once, but observing your subconscious can bring you closer to living your fullest life.
Here are 10 odd ways your dreams are trying to send you messages:
1.Recurring symbols
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Your dreams may send messages through recurring symbols representing universal themes like love, transformation, or rebirth.
An odd way your dreams are trying to send you messages is by repeating symbols from one dream to another. You might dream that you’re walking through an apple orchard, only to notice that apples reappear in one way or another in every dream that follows. You don’t know what the apples mean, but you get the sense that their presence points you toward something meaningful.
In his book “Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche,” Carl Jung wrote, “The dream is a spontaneous self-portrayal, in symbolic form, of the actual situation in the unconscious…The dream is specifically the utterance of the unconscious.”
For Jung, dreams had nothing to do with past selves or repressed instincts. He believed in dreams as emissaries for how the future could unfold. One of the ways Jungian psychology looks at dreams is on an archetypal or spiritual level.
In an archetypal interpretation, symbols that appear and reappear in dreams represent more prominent themes in the universal human psyche, like birth, love, and transformation, like rebirth and loss. Each symbol weaves your existence into the threads that bind all humans together.
Archetypal symbols are the essence of humanity. The spaces where those symbols resonate most reveal the areas in your life that need tending to.
2.Unfamiliar faces
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Seeing strangers in your dreams can highlight hidden aspects of yourself or foreshadow upcoming changes in your life.
Another odd way your dreams try to send you messages is by including unfamiliar faces and people you’ve never met. Seeing strangers suddenly appear can throw you off balance. From a subjective interpretation, every image in your dreams is part of you. The people you see represent the sides you accept and hide. Unfamiliar faces often signify uncertainty and instability.
In an objective interpretation, unfamiliar faces are people you saw while awake but didn’t consciously register. Spiritual guide Alexis Christine noted that seeing someone you’ve never met in a dream usually means nothing because “as we live our life, we are passing so many strangers, driving, walking down the street, hopping on public transport, everywhere you go, you are seeing the faces of people that you don’t know.”
“When we’re dreaming, and there’s a figure or a person that our brain needs to put a face to, it’ll just call up a face from somewhere in the world that we have seen,” she said.
How unfamiliar people act in your dreams shows what you value, what you’re hoping for, or what might make you feel whole. Sometimes, seeing a stranger means your life is about to change.
“If the dream is lifelike, if it feels real, it could be a premonition dream,” Alexis said. “That person could be coming into your life soon, whether a mentor, a relationship, [or] a friend.”
3.Vivid emotions
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Intense feelings in dreams reveal unaddressed emotions, often reflecting suppressed thoughts or unresolved issues.
Vivid emotions are another odd way your dreams try to send you messages. Dreams infused with intense feelings indicate unaddressed issues. Emotions you suppress in waking life seep into your dreams. You might tamp down how sad you feel to get through a day, but your sadness will increase when your subconscious mind takes over. These dreams show that you can't outrun how you really feel.
Rosalind Cartwright, a psychologist and dream researcher, upheld that dreams tie into our cognitive processing, including how we form memories. She believed dreams connect to significant life events. Feelings transcend experience to appear in the porous world of dreams. Our joys and worries always make themselves known, even when sleeping. We absorb the vibrations of those dream emotions and carry them with us forever.
4.Events from your past
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Revisiting past events in dreams helps process unresolved emotions and provides opportunities for healing and growth.
An odd way dreams try to send messages is by reliving events from the past. Revisiting your younger self could be a sign of unresolved emotions from childhood. As kids, we don’t have agency over how our lives unfold. Returning to a dream, with all our adult wisdom, lets us process it from a new vantage point.
The past that appears in our dreams doesn’t always match what we actually went through. It’s like watching ourselves through glass, seeing our reflection in a distorted mirror.
Reliving the past can be painful, but it serves a significant purpose. As psychic medium Kristine Carlson pointed out, “Our higher self and spirit guides are always sending us messages and clues, but we must make a point to pay attention.”
You permit yourself to heal when you receive who you once were without the barriers of waking life. Releasing the past leads you to a future full of the acceptance and compassion you always deserved.
5.Representations of your problems
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Dreams often present your challenges metaphorically, urging you to address struggles or seek transformation.
An odd way your dreams try to send you messages is by representing your problems differently. The setting of your dreams often represents the challenges you face when you’re awake. You might dream of yourself in the same location every night; only it’s so dark that you can’t see.
Objects in dreams are often metaphors for real-life hardships. You might dream of swimming in a lake with no horizon. The next night, you're stuck in a rainstorm. The night after that, you're lost at sea. Water can represent transformation, which means you’re seeking change you don't know how to find.
To uncover meaning in dreams, you have to accept them entirely. After you wake up, stay in bed for as long as possible. Lie still. Let your dreams wash over you, and write down what you remember.
Dream journals map out your mind’s inner workings. Tracing patterns and themes illuminates your challenges. Dreams with metaphorical representations are mysteries, and solving them provides peace.
6.Physical sensations
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Dream sensory experiences reflect unmet needs, stress, or health concerns, guiding you toward self-awareness.
Feeling physical sensations is another odd way dreams try to send messages. In our conscious lives, we focus on meeting our needs. We search for connection and a sense of purpose. We all have a driving need to feel autonomous and competent, which makes us feel like our lives are heading in the right direction.
If your needs aren’t met, you’ll feel that frustration unfold in dreams. You might feel like you’re flying, falling, or frozen in place. If you feel overwhelmed, you might dream of drowning. If you feel trapped, you might dream that you can't breathe.
The feelings you rush past during the day reappear at night, rising from your subconscious to call out the areas of life that need attention. You might be depleted, and the discomfort you feel while dreaming means you must rest. You could have unnoticed health concerns, and your dreams sound the alarm, so you think about how you feel when awake.
Dreams sift through your stressors, laying bare what lies under the surface so you can find a resolution.
7.Alignment with real life events
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Dreams may align with actual events, revealing your subconscious processing or forewarning future situations.
Another odd way your dreams try to send you messages is by aligning with events that happened. Sometimes, alignment can be taken at face value, a way your brain organizes and processes your days. Dreams about real life don’t always happen in real-time. Studies have uncovered the “dream lag effect,” which shows that lived experiences can take up to six days to appear in a dream.
Some dreams are forewarnings, predicting events that haven’t happened yet. You might go somewhere you’ve never been, but you know it as it exists in your bones. You might feel like a new situation is eerily familiar, as though it were something you’ve already lived.
In his book “The Symbolic Life,” psychotherapist Carl Jung wrote that “dreams prepare, announce, or warn about certain situations, often long before they happen. This is not necessarily a miracle or a precognition. Most crises or dangerous situations have a long incubation, and only the conscious mind is unaware of them. Dreams can betray the secret.”
The realization that a past dream reflected a future experience is unsettling. Having dreams that skip through time is often a sign that you have a strong spiritual intuition, which is nothing to fear. Letting your intuition guide you can be grounding and illuminating, letting you settle into authenticity and live in deep alignment with yourself.
8.The feeling your dreams are incomplete
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Unfinished dreams signify unresolved areas in your life, pointing toward closure and future possibilities.
Waking up with the feeling your dreams are incomplete is another odd way they try to send messages. Dreams don’t obey the laws of linear time or tangible space. You float through them like you’re appearing out of thin air. In your dream world, everything makes sense, even when it doesn’t.
For all the strange hairpin turns dreams take, they usually follow some arc. Unfinished dreams point out unresolved parts of your life, all the ways you seek closure. You'll feel like you’re on the precipice of an essential truth, and then the dream ends, leaving you wondering what it meant.
According to Carl Jung, dreams are always trying to tell you something new. They reveal the paths you need to walk for your life to unfold. Some psychological approaches see dreams as the past reappearing, but Jung sees them as revelations for the future. Incomplete dreams reveal the gaps you need to fill before moving on.
9.Repeated nightmares
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Recurring nightmares force you to confront fears or patterns you avoid, offering clarity and eventual peace.
Having nightmares is an odd way your dreams try to send you messages. Nightmares make you face the fears you actively ignore when you’re awake. They’re powerful, haunting forces that arrive when you need them most.
Recurring nightmares point out patterns that require your conscious attention. Dreaming of the same terrible things repeatedly shows that what's familiar isn't working. Welcoming your nightmares will lead you to peace.
Clinical psychologists Dr. Peter Sheras and Dr. Phyllis Koch-Sheras believe in dreamwork, which involves drawing subconscious messages into one's waking life.
“A key element to understanding your dream is looking at ‘why now?’” they explained. “Ask yourself why you're having this dream at this particular time.”
They noted that “there are no ‘bad dreams,’ only misunderstood and scary dreams. They all have something important to tell you.”
“Once you have received the messages you need from your dream, you might want to change or finish the dream in a new way. This is especially helpful for recurring nightmares that may no longer reoccur once the feelings are addressed,” they concluded.
10.Dramatic transformations
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Fantastical dreams of transformation symbolize personal growth and the evolution of your truest self.
Dramatic transformations are an odd way your dreams try to send messages. Having fantastical experiences often represents the epic changes coming your way. You might dream of shapeshifting, which means you’re shedding old versions of your identity and entering the era of your truest self. Transformative dreams emphasize personal growth and freedom, which everyone hopes for.
Psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz touched on Carl Jung’s idea of “big dreams,” stating, “Occasionally, one has a dream that is so remote from one’s life, so numinous (Jung’s favorite word for intensely moving experience), and so strange and uncanny that it does not seem to belong to the dreamer. It is like a visitation from another world, which in truth it is.”
She described the otherworldliness we find in dreams as “the subterranean [world] of the unconscious.”
Dreams are a portal between worlds. You uncover who you truly are when you enter them as your most curious and wholehearted self.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.