Dreaming About Clowns: What Do Clown Dreams Really Mean??
It All Depends on Your Feelings About Clowns
Clowns can mean many things to many people. In fact, you could say the word “Clown” to two different people and get two different reactions. When I hear the word, I think of positive words and emotions: Fun, laughter, free-spirits, happiness… But I know several people who actually have clown phobias and when they hear the word “clown,” they grimace like they just saw a three headed snake with a nasty attitude.
If, like me, you associate clowns with happiness, dreaming about clowns is an expression of happiness and fun. It could be that you’re having a lot of fun with life lately and your dream is just an extension of this fun. However, it could also mean that life isn’t all that fun recently and you’re CRAVING laughter and happiness. Needless to say, when you have a clown dream, you’ll know which of these is the case simply by thinking about where you are in life right now.
If you have a clown phobia – or even if you simply think they’re a little scary – your dream has a different interpretation. When we dream about our biggest fears, most of the time it indicates that we are apprehensive about something in particular. We know something lies in front of us that we’re fearful about and this fearfulness takes on the form or our biggest “real life” fear(s).
However, when we dream of personal phobias, it could also indicate that we’ve recently overcome a particular fear or faced a problem head on. The dream is sort of a celebration of this achievement! Generally, when this is the case… in the dream, we will either overcome the thing we fear the most or will simply see it with an absence of fear.
Dreaming About Lost Loved Ones…
What Do These Disturbing Dreams Mean?
One of the most frequently requested dream interpretations on our dream blog had to do with dreaming about lost loved ones. For the month of June, the top 3 dream interpretation requests were for:
- dreams about lost loved ones, family members, friends…
- dreams about exes
- dreams about snakes TIED with Dreams about knives
I wasn’t too surprised with the requests, to be honest. These subjects are typically the ones I hear the most. I was a little surprised that “knife dreams” tied with snake dreams, though. They’re moving up in the ranks of disturbing dreams!
Dreams about loved ones who’ve died can sometimes be comforting and even enjoyable. I like to think of these dreams as our mind’s way of keeping our loved ones alive. We get to see their faces again and even spend time with them once more.
Why we dream about lost loved ones varies from one dream to the next. Sometimes we dream about them simply because we talked about them recently or thought about them that day. I recently had a dream about my mother-in-law for this very reason. She showed up in my dream because one of my daughters and I had been talking about her that very day. My daughters were pretty young when she died, so I like to keep her name and memory alive by talking about her. She was quite a character and I like for them to know that!
The dream was not disturbing in any way. She was simply eating supper with us. When I woke up, I couldn’t help but realizing that she looked EXACTLY like I remember her looking. She was even wearing the type of top (loud and floral!), pants, and shoes she always wore.
Some dreamers have similar dreams about their loved ones and wonder if the dreams mean something “deep” or “disturbing.” More times than not, they simply mean your mind is keeping their face in your life – and if you think of your dreams this way, they’ll disturb you less.
However, some dreams about lost loved ones ARE dark and unsettling. Our loved one may be in trouble, crying, or need our help – help that we’re often unable to give. Many experts believe that these dreams indicate that we have unresolved emotions surrounding their death – usually guilt of some kind. The thing about guilt is that 9 times out of 10 it’s completely unjustified. Oftentimes this “guilt” is very unrealistic and if we stand back and look at it rationally, we’ll realize there’s no way we could have possibly saved them.
Rather than guilt about their death, some dreamers feel guilty about how they treated them when they were alive. They’ll have ridiculous thoughts such as, “I should have spent more time with them…. I should have called him/her more…” These thoughts can lead to disturbing dreams My advice to anyone with these thoughts is to realize that if THEY had died in place of the loved one, the loved one would have probably had the same guilty thoughts. We NEVER feel like we did enough for a lost loved one. Ever. That’s just how it is.
Other times, unsettling dreams about lost loved ones may have more to do with us than them. We may feel that we’re developing some of the habits or traits they had or we may fear going down a road they went down. Sometimes fear of developing a disease the loved on had will cause disturbing dreams.
To keep your dreams about lost loved ones as light as possible, try to dwell on positive, happy thoughts about their life and push thoughts about their death, illness, and so forth out of your mind. It’s how they’d want it after all!
Finally, in times of stress, we may dream about a loved one simply because we associate them with a simpler, easier time. Very often, they represent the past to us and, let’s be honest, the past almost always looks simpler – even if it really wasn’t.
As for our loved ones “trying to warn us about something,” my first instinct is to say NO WAY. However, in a sense, this could be sort of possible. As I’ve said many times on Dream Prophesy, dreams are not (in and of themselves) prophetic. BUT, some people are much, much, much more intuitive or “in touch” with the world around them than others. These people can often “sense”danger because they are so incredibly in tune with everything and everyone around them. People like this often have dreams that seem “prophetic” simply because they are so uncommonly in touch with the world around them. They often “see” things other people don’t see and, therefore, their subconscious mind is able to sense perceived danger and potentially harmful situations.
If you are an overtly intuitive person, your dreams may, in fact, be somewhat prophetic in nature. Your subconscious mind may, indeed, use a lost love one to get its point across. And what better way than to get your attention than with a lost loved one?
Dream Analysis of a Potentially Life Changing Dream
One of the Best Dream Symbols I’ve Read About in a Very Long Time
Dream for Analysis:
This is a pretty detailed dream and I think I may know what the meaning is, but wanted to ask to be sure. First of all, I am a wife and mother in my 50’s. My 2 sons and 1 daughter have all moved out of the house. My husband works long hours and I’m left alone most of the time. My sons and their wives don’t come around much at all. Maybe 1 time a month. My daughter is in college 3 hours away, and used to come home every weekend. But she got a boyfriend who lives in her college town and she only comes home about once a month now. Each time she and my sons come over I tell them just how lonesome I’ve been for them and how empty my life is now. It seems to make them stay away even longer. I always tell my husband how down I am, but he doesn’t have any answers. He doesn’t even talk to me much anymore. He works, then comes home and reads the paper. When I try to tell him how I feel, we end up arguing.
I just wanted to give a little background info to let you know how lonely I am because I believe the dream’s meaning is tied to this sadness. My dream was very vivid and colorful, making it even more griping and intense. I felt all of the emotion just like it was real life. My family was all together at our home. My sons, their wives, my husband, and our daughter. Her new boyfriend was there too. Each time I sat beside one of these people they would either walk away or get up and move. Suddenly, in the dream I was wearing my nightgown and I instinctively pulled part of it up to my nose and realized it smelled bad. My gown smelled like dirty laundry or something. I started crying and kept saying, “I smell bad!” over and over again but none of them looked at me. They all kept talking to one another. I cried and told my husband, “I will change my gown, please don’t let anyone leave. I’ll put on another gown!” But he just looked past me then walked away.
I woke up with a profound sadness and (disturbingly) an overwhelming feeling of being unloved. Worst of all, I can’t shake the feeling even though the dream was two nights ago. Please help me because this dream is a black cloud over an already bleak life. – Katharine
Reading this dream made me nearly as sad as the dreamer, herself. There’s just so much sadness and discouragement in the words that I could practically see the dark cloud she spoke of myself. Below is my dream analysis for this particular type of dream:
Katharine, it’ll probably come as a surprise to you but the dream doesn’t really have as much to do with your husband and children as it has to do with YOU. I can certainly see how you’d think the dream depicted your family members “staying away from” or “avoiding” you, but the actual dream interpretation goes much deeper than this. The good… make that great!… news is that this particular dream is a perfect example of being able to use our dreams to improve the real world in which we live. Your dream is handing you a golden key to unlock the door to more happiness, peace, and contentment!
The fact that you, yourself, smelled the nightgown in your dream and realized that it was causing others to stay away from you is beautifully symbolic. I believe that, deep down, you realize that when you tell your husband and kids how miserable and unhappy you are that you are, in effect, pushing them away. This realization may be so deep down that it’s your subconscious doing the realizing!
Here’s the thing: People are DRAWN to people, places, things, and situations that make them happy. People, places, things, and situations that make them:
- feel good about themselves
- feel good about life
- laugh
- smile
- have fun
- in the end… people, places, things, and situations that they can’t wait to return to because they brought about so much happiness!
In your own words, you say that you tell your husband and children how “empty” your life is and how unhappy you are. Apparently you do this at just about every available opportunity. With all the respect, compassion, and genuine concern in the world – I have to ask you this: Why would anyone be DRAWN to that? The answer is they wouldn’t! They’d be PUSHED the other way and would even come to dread facing what must feel like guilt trips and depressing encounters.
Your subconscious mind is alerting you to this situation in your dream. I have to tell you, I get SO excited when I hear about dreams like this because – for one thing – dreams utterly fascinate me and when they are so DEAD ON like this one, it just blows my mind. Dreams and the subconscious mind are simply amazing. Also, I get excited because this type of dream proves what I’ve said all along – dreams have the power to change our lives for the better – IF we listen to them!
When you smelled your gown in your dream, the gown was symbolic of YOU. It was on you, just as your sadness, loneliness, and, perhaps, bitterness are on you. When you brought it to your nose and realized it was BAD – you knew it was the cause of everyone being pushed away. I even love the fact that you referred to the smell as being like “dirty laundry.” What do we often refer to bad things people keep talking about? Their dirty laundry.
This is your subconscious mind telling you that what you’re “wearing” in your day to day life is, in fact, driving everyone away.
I suspect that the arguments between you and your husband have gotten so out of hand that your marriage is on shaky ground. The fact that you plead to him in your dream (promising that you’ll “change” – literally!) tells me that the two of you may be nearing a breaking point. When we actually cry in our dreams, it always means serious, serious business.
On my self help blog (Self Help Daily), I frequently write about how to cope with empty nest syndrome because this is a subject women (and many men) battle as their children grow older, get jobs, boyfriends/girlfriends, etc. The waves of emotion can tear families apart if you aren’t careful. You aren’t alone – this is something a lot of people deal with. Just know that when you tell your loved ones how sad (lonely, empty…) you are over and over again – you are pushing them further away.
Your dream just sent you a powerful warning and I’m hoping you’ll take it to heart. If I were you, I’d plan a big family get together. Let your daughter know you’d love for her new boyfriend to get to know the rest of the family. Cook out, bake lasagna, or simply go out to your favorite restaurant. Whatever you do, this time wear something better than a “smelly gown” (frown, sad countenance, bitterness, anger…). This time put on your best! Wear a smile, give out hugs, ask everyone about their lives, jobs, school, etc. Smile more, frown less. Laugh more, cry less. Talk TO your loved ones and not AT them.
Basically, create the type of environment people can’t wait to enter, hate to leave, and can’t wait to return to.
Your wonderful dream has just handed you a life changer!
Dreams About Exes are Always Unsettling
Dreaming About Exes Can Be Just as Scary!
Dreaming about exes (ex-boyfriend, ex-girlfriend, ex-husband, ex-wife) seems to rank amongst the most unsettling dreams – bordering on nightmares for some people! Snake dreams, dreams about dying, and dreams about loved ones who have died are still the MOST disturbing dreams, but dreams about exes aren’t far behind.
Almost daily I hear from dreamers who want to know what their dreams are trying to tell them. The dream’s meaning, as you might expect, varies from dreamer to dreamer. As with all dreams, you have to look at several things to find your own dream’s interpretation.
If you dream of an ex (or have recently had such a dream), ask yourself the following questions:
- Do I have lingering anger, resentment, or bitterness toward my ex?
- Do I still have feelings for him/her?
- Do I feel guilty for something I did or said to them or for something I put them through?
- Do I feel guilty, in a way, that I’ve moved on and found happiness when they have not?
- Irregardless of my feelings for this person, was I happier THEN than I am NOW?
- Do I simply miss being in a relationship… just not with them?
- Do I have trust issues that stem to this relationship?
- Has this ex caused me to now fear getting hurt – so much so that I am overly cautious with my relationships today?
Your dream is not so much about the ex as it is about your feelings. I’ve heard from people who have ZERO feelings for the ex, but simply wish they were in a relationship. Their ex (even though they wouldn’t want to get back with them) represents the word “relationship” to them. Their dream simply means they want to find a special someone to share their life with.
I’ve also analyzed dreams for people who are carrying baggage from the relationship. Sometimes the baggage is packed with pain that hasn’t quite healed yet. Sometimes there are trust issues or even residual anger and resentment. I once talked with a young woman who kept having dreams about a “really sweet ex boyfriend.” She had moved on and was happy with another guy – in fact, they were planning their wedding. However, she kept dreaming about her “sweet ex.”
She said she was certain she didn’t have any feelings left for him. They’d remained friendly since the break up and she was happy that he’d started dating another girl. When I picked up on the fact that she didn’t have any feelings for him, romantically, I asked her to name the 3 feelings she associated with him. I’ll never forget her reply:
- Guilt
- Guilt
- Guilt
She had cheated on him, lied to him, and hurt him pretty badly. She said her heart still broke when she remembered the look on his face when he found out. She was obviously overcome with guilt. After all, she’d hurt someone very badly and yet, here she was, happier than she’d ever been in her life.
I told her that the dreams sprang from these feelings of guilt and that the best way to deal with the feelings was to forgive herself. After all, he obviously had forgiven her if they remained friends. I also told her that when someone is overcome with feelings of guilt and sorrow for something they’ve done, a heartfelt, face to face apology can help ease the pain. She said she intended to do just that.
When you dream of an ex, think of the three feelings you associate with him or her. The interpretation for your dream is lying within the words that come to mind.
What Does it Mean to Dream About an Army?
Your Dream’s Telling You Something Very Important
Someone recently told me they’d had a long, epic dream about an army marching through their town. Soldiers came to his door to recruit him in the fight! The dreamer said he never really saw what – or who – the army was fighting, but he picked up on their fierce determination to win anyway. Naturally, he was anxious to learn what this dream means and asked for my dream analysis.
To dream of an army, war, battlefield, or even weapons means something very important. These types of dreams indicate that you feel that you are “up against it” right now. You have apparently been fighting some type of battle in your life and this dream is your mind’s way of coming to terms with all of the drama.
I’ve heard of people who had army dreams while battling disease, relationship problems, and issues with their job. I have also heard of people who had similar dreams while battling their own personal battle with something in their life (weight problem, bad habit…).
Only the dreamer can say, for certain, what battle is symbolized in the dream.
This type of dream should be seen as a warning. You’ve probably been pushing yourself too hard (as indicated by the subconscious mind thinking of your situation in terms of a battle!). It might just be time to relax a little and take a new approach to the situation.
On rare occasions, army or battle dreams symbolize a battle you’ve recently won or lost. Again, only the dreamer knows for sure.
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