WHAT DOES KILLING IN A DREAM MEAN?
“Dreams have their own wisdom and can point to missing aspects in our life that have resulted from a lack of perception in a waking life situation or from an unrecognized psychological state. The dream may simply provide us with more details pertaining to a specific life issue. It makes us pay attention to areas of reality that our conscious minds resist looking into.”
-PATRICIA ELTINGE, THE DREAM CLASS
Having a dream about killing someone or someone being killed can be scary. Understanding what this dream means can help you make the changes necessary in your life to start living the life you want to live.
Learning how to effectively understand your dreams can not only help you improve your life greatly – it can also help you no longer have scary and troubling dreams.
No matter what, dreaming about death is unsettling. Even after you wake up, these types of dreams may leave you feeling nervous and uneasy. A death-related dream might feel like a dark portent for the future, but in reality, they’re much less sinister than they may seem.
“Death in dreams is really about some kind of change or ending you’re dealing with in your real life,” says Lauri Quinn Loewenberg, professional dream analyst and author. “The subconscious will show us this change in the form of death so we can better understand the finality of it. We can let go of that which we no longer need so we can grow and embrace that which is coming.” Below, Loewenberg analyzes different dreams about death and what they may mean in terms of what’s going on in your life.
If you’re having dreams about death, there’s nothing to be worried about. Instead of being scared, this is a perfect time to think about what changes you might be going through in your life.
What does it Mean When I Dream About Killing Someone?
Murder and killing in dreams are often closely related to dreams of death and dying.
Most times, nightmares that involve a violent type of crime in a dream mean that feelings have become overwhelming or have gone ignored for too long. It has escalated to this point to get your attention. Fortunately, very rarely do these kinds of dreams predict the future. Most often, a dream of death, dying, or being killed is related to needing to make a change.
A Fear Of Change And Transformation
We as humans are often afraid of changes we need to make, and this can manifest in our dreams as killing, as it is scary to think about making necessary changes just as it is scary to dream about someone dying. Think carefully about your current waking life: are you afraid of making changes? Are you considering something new or different? This dream can help you understand a transformation that is underway and help you release your fears and concerns about moving forward with a change.
Feeling Lost And Confused
Most of us know that killing someone is wrong, not only is it illegal, but it also is morally objectionable. Dreaming of killing a person can mean that you are feeling lost and confused about your moral viewpoints. Many things in life are often a “double-edged” sword, meaning something can have both good and bad outcomes. You might get one thing you want, but have to sacrifice something else. You may have mixed feelings about this conflict in your life, and this appears in your dream as a means to express wanting to change or end things but not being certain which choice is best.
Power Struggles And A Loss Of Control
Have you ever heard the phrase, “kill-switch”? This is a complete loss of power, usually to an electrical device. Cutting off the power causes the machine to no longer work. When you dream of someone hurting you or chasing you to kill you, it can mean that you are feeling powerless and out of control in a situation. If you dream that you are physically ending someone or something, it can mean that you are struggling to gain power in your own everyday waking life.
Endings And Resolution
While the events in our lives are not entirely like a movie, all good stories must ultimately come to an end. Dreaming of killing someone or being killed in a dream could mean you are coming to the acceptance period of something coming to an end. You may be changing careers or ending a relationship. This dream does not mean you physically or kill something, but you are coming to accept the closure and end of something in your everyday waking life.
When you dream about killing someone, there might be two situations where you kill someone you know or you don’t know.
1. Dreaming of killing someone you know
If you dream that you are killing someone you know, this can mean one of two things. Either that person symbolizes a part of your own personality, or it can be a symbol for an aspect of your relationship with that person. People in our dreams are not always what they may seem – so it is important to know if you have a dream where you have killed someone you know you care about in real life that it is not necessarily a sign that you subconsciously hate that person.
It can be helpful to think about the different personality traits and personal associations you may have of this person. Write down 5 words that describe that person – whatever the first 5 words that come to mind might be. This will give you some clues into what you may not like about your own personality or behavior or give you some insight into your relationship with the person.
2. Dreaming about killing someone you don’t know
If you are killing a character in your dream that you do not recognize this is a strong indicator that your subconscious is trying to tell you that you need to change an aspect of your personality. It could also mean you need to stop a behavior you are doing.
Why Do We Have Killing Dreams?
In recent years killing has been featured as a phenomenon in the media. We see killing as baffling, morally challenging, and not entirely clear. Freud believed in a concept known as “transference.” This often represents a difficult problem that has entered our lives. We sometimes gravitate around these problems, especially in our dreams. It could be a problem from childhood or a work situation that did not go as planned. Killing somebody in a dream, from my research into psychology, indicates that a problem or issue from the past (where you are felt particularly abandoned) is being played in your subconscious mind through the dream.
Transference makes one’s reactions to situations extremely important. The word transference is from the German word “Ubertragung” which means “carrying something over from another place.” In psychological terms, this indicates a sense of projection. So, I am saying here that you are carrying over content from the past into your dream. That is the best definition that I can determine. Freud’s view is that we transfer projections into our dreams and create painful images when we were hurt in the past. In essence, it is the return of feeling repressed. When did you last feel this way? Consequently, if you dream of killing someone frequently then it could be that you need to address the transference of a relationship.
The most obvious interpretation regarding a dream of killing someone illustrates hidden conflicts, anger, and the fact that we are being controlled by somebody else. Dreams about killing someone could signal an external force such as an addiction or that you are trying to overcome some pain regarding the relationship in waking life. Our dreams are often occurrences that happen in our daily lives. To dream of killing somebody, you don’t know in real life normally in most cases suggests that you are trying to remove “something” from your life. Dream analysis is never clear cut and we often associate the dream under the classification of nightmares. The first thing I will say is in my experience, having violent dreams of an aggressive nature can often indicate hidden pain or a period of time where you control by others. There are many different aspects of dreams and killing can represent the fact that you are trying to escape something important in life.
PATRICIA ELTINGE in her highly engaging book THE DREAM CLASS, says,
“Some death dreams about fighting or killing can represent the process of being physically sick when cells are battling it out for the dreamer to get well. A dream of violence does not mean that the dreamer is violent in their waking life or considering a violent act.”
How to Stop Having Such Dreams?
We cannot go back and change aspects of the past for what we can do is look at what is missing and work on the future. Dreams of killing somebody can emotionally in practice represent that we need to focus on the future. Hopefully, this article helped you with understanding and knowing about such dreams.
To know more about how to deal with violent dreams dealing with death and killing, read the book THE DREAM CLASS by PATRICIA ELTINGE, where she not only talks about these dreams but also discusses real-life case studies involving violent dreams. This book is a wonderful tool to gain insight regarding dreams in general and violent dreams in particular.