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:

1. dreams about lost loved ones, family members, friends…
2. dreams about exes
3. 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?