Dreaming about death can be unsettling and even frightening. Whether it was about your death or someone else’s, death dreams can stick with you long after waking—sneaking into your conscious life and leaving you wondering, what does it really mean? What does it say about me or the person I dreamt about?
Some people are able to shrug off these questions and move on with their days. But others find it difficult to stop thinking about their dream content, especially if dreams about death or dying are a regular occurrence. These dreams can really disrupt your life and cause you to obsess over them, according to Dr. Nicholas Farrell, a regional clinical director at NOCD. If your death-related dreams significantly impact you during waking hours, they may even be tied to mental health conditions.
Keep reading to learn about possible causes for dreams about death, and coping strategies for dreams that are unwanted and intrusive.
Are death dreams causing you a lot of distress, and even becoming an obsession? Our therapists can help. Book a free call.
What do dreams about death mean?
If you’re looking to find meaning and clarity about your dreams, you’re not alone. There are countless books, articles, and social media threads dedicated to analyzing dreams. Some people even go so far as to keep personal dream interpreters on speed dial. Yet, dream analysis is not an exact science.
If you ask a dream analyst, you may hear an interpretation that suggests dreams about death are not actually about dying—rather, that they’re symbolic. Some think that dreams about death represent periods of change or transitions. For instance, they could represent the “death” of one chapter in your life and the beginning of a new one.
All this said, there’s no concrete evidence that dreams about death—or any themes—signal anything specific. They might mean nothing at all, or they might be a space to understand and work through emotions in a low-risk environment.
While the exact purpose of dreams remains unclear, what we do know is that everybody dreams, and the majority of our dreams take place when we are in REM sleep, a sleep stage that makes up around 20-25% of a good night’s rest.
What does it mean when you dream about a loved one dying?
Dreams about a loved one dying aren’t uncommon—and they can be the most unsettling of death-related dreams. But once again, most dream analysts say that they shouldn’t be viewed as an omen. They can, instead, be symbolic—showing you your fears, like the fear of being abandoned by this person, wishing for more intimacy and closeness, or having a strong desire to protect them from something bad happening but feeling powerless to do so.
What does it feel like to have a dream about death?
Despite their disturbing content, dreams about death don’t affect everyone the same way. Some people wake up from a death dream and quickly move about their day, fully unbothered. Others might feel fearful, confused, and panicked—and may even experience physical symptoms like a rapid heart rate or sweating.
Some people wonder if they’re having an “intrusive dream”—the sleeping version of an intrusive thought: something unpleasant that pops into your mind, uninvited, and leaves you distressed and can feel difficult to shake off, sometimes becoming an obsession.
“A thought is labeled or defined as intrusive not by its raw content, but by a person’s appraisal of it,” notes Dr. Farrell. For example, two people could have similar dreams about dying after getting bitten by a zombie. For one person it’s humorous; for the other, the dream becomes intrusive and distressing.
If you have frequent dreams about death, check in with how you feel when you wake up. If you forget the dream by breakfast, it’s probably not intrusive. If you’re still ruminating about it later in the day, it may be considered intrusive and worth talking to a mental health professional about. “The experience of recurrent, disturbing dreams around death may be a prominent symptom of an underlying mental health condition,” says Dr. Farrell.
Do dreams about death always signal a mental health disorder?
No. Anyone can be affected by dreams about death. You don’t need to have a mental health condition in order to be shaken up by a nightmare involving death.
However, if you’re dreaming about death regularly, and it’s causing you distress, there may be an underlying mental health condition at play. Here are some examples:
Anxiety: There are times when a death-related dream is a manifestation of actual anxiety, says Dr. Farrell: “There’s some evidence to suggest that the content of your dreams is a continuation of the cognitive noise in your head during the day.” In fact, people with anxiety are more likely to have dreams that contain more misfortune and negative emotions, according to a 2021 study published in the journal Dreaming.
Depression: One 2021 study of more than 40,000 people published in Sleep Medicine found that persistent nightmares—and death dreams can definitely qualify—tended to be indicative of pre-existing depression, though they weren’t shown to cause depression.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): PTSD occurs after experiencing a traumatic event and nightmares can be a common symptom. “Dreams centered around death are characteristic of PTSD, where there was a precipitating event, trauma, or exposure to actual or threatened death,” notes Dr. Farrell.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD): Death obsessions are quite common in OCD, a chronic mental health condition. They refer to intrusive thoughts, fears, and images related to one’s own death or the death of loved ones. These obsessions tend to be highly distressing, leading to compulsive behaviors aimed at reducing anxiety and preventing death-related events. “If someone is spending so much of their waking life trapped in the OCD cycle, echoes of their obsessions, anxieties, and compulsions can show up when they’re asleep,” says NOCD therapist Lisa de Guzman, LCSW, PPSC—hence, the recurring death dreams.
Obsessions in OCD are ego-dystonic, notes Dr. Farrell, meaning that the thoughts are not in line with who you are or what you believe. “So if you had a disturbing death dream there may be a tendency to spend excessive mental energy trying to analyze or interpret the meaning or significance of your dreams the next day. There’s an inability to leave it as just another dream that you had,” he says.
When death dreams become death obsessions
If repetitive dreams about death are following you into your waking life, and leading to obsessions, you may have any number of intrusive thoughts. Here are some examples.
Common death-related obsessions
- What if my dream about dying actually happens?
- What if I never stop having bad dreams?
- What if I can never wake up from a terrifying dream about death?
- What if I actually die in my dreams?
- Why are my dreams always so depressing?
- My death-related dreams are violent. Should I be concerned?
- I dreamed my boyfriend died, does that mean I want to break up with him?
- I fell to my death from my roof; I should avoid going up there ever again.
- I died of COVID in my dreams, so I have to avoid COVID at all costs in real life.
- What if my dreams about death are telling me I need to take a certain action in my life but I can’t know for certain what that action is?
Keep in mind that what makes OCD distinct from other mental health conditions is the presence of both obsessions and compulsions. This means that your obsession about death, whatever its nature, will be followed by a compulsive behavior or mental act.
Common death-related compulsions
- Excessive research about dream analysis
- Mentally reviewing your dreams to decipher what they mean
- Seeking reassurance from loved ones or professional dream interpreters
- Time-consuming tracking of dreams (“If I don’t write everything down in a dream journal, something bad will happen.”)
- Monitoring bodily functions after waking (“My heart is beating fast after I dreamed my mom passed. Does that mean I want her to die?”)
- Sleep avoidance: You may be reluctant to go to bed, or actively try not to sleep at all, says Dr. Farrell. This may manifest in other ways, too, such as setting an hourly alarm to make sure that you don’t get “stuck” in a disturbing dream.
- Thought neutralization: Tracie Zinman-Ibrahim, LMFT, CST, a therapist at NOCD gives this example: “Because I had a dream about something that’s so disturbing, I’m going to sit and attempt to just have good thoughts so that they can replace what just happened,” she explains.
How to cope with persistent dreams about death
If you are having disturbing dreams about death that are affecting your daily life or ability to sleep, it’s important to seek out help from a mental health professional who can help you develop tools to cope.
For one thing, a qualified therapist can help you work through unresolved issues. For instance, if past trauma is playing a part in the content of your dreams, you can address them in order to move forward. They can also help you spot other possible symptoms that could meet the criteria for a mental health condition.
If you have OCD, exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy is an evidence-based treatment that is highly effective. ERP is unlike traditional talk therapy—there’s no analyzing and interpreting why you’re dreaming about death. Instead, you work with an ERP therapist to gradually expose yourself to your fears. The goal is to find new ways of responding to your obsessive fears—things that don’t involve compulsions or avoidance behaviors (like delaying sleep or asking people for reassurance that you’re not going to die).
The takeaway
While it’s natural to have a curiosity about what your dreams mean, when death dreams start to cause you significant distress, stepping away from the online dream dictionaries and reaching out to a qualified therapist is key. This will have a far greater impact on your well-being than continuing to attempt to decode the exact content of your dreams.