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Flood in dreams: what it can mean

  • Fear and danger
  • Nature

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The short answer

A flood is water where it should not be, rising faster than you can move. Many dreamers connect it with feeling overwhelmed by emotion, work or events.

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Three ways to read it

Psychology and research

Research

Floods and tidal waves appear among the natural disaster themes that people report in surveys of typical dreams. On the continuity view, rising water is a vivid picture of being overwhelmed: tasks piling up, feelings that are hard to hold back, or news that spreads into every part of life. If you have lived through a real flood, these dreams can be part of how the mind processes that fear.

Folk tradition

Tradition, not science

Tradition: American popular dream books, around 1900

Miller's 1901 dream dictionary read floods as a sign of trouble and loss, and clear, calm water as better fortune. We report it as one old tradition's reading, not a forecast.

Questions to ask yourself

  1. What in your life feels like it is rising faster than you can manage?
  2. Did you find high ground, and did you help anyone else reach it?
  3. What feeling have you been holding back that might need somewhere to go?

Related symbols

Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

  1. Tore A. Nielsen, Antonio L. Zadra, Valérie Simard, Sébastien Saucier, Philippe Stenstrom, Carlyle Smith, Don Kuiken (2003). The typical dreams of Canadian university students. Dreaming 13(4): 211-235.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: typical dreams questionnaire, results (reference not yet checked)

    Survey of how many people report having had common dream themes (being chased, falling, teeth, flying, exams, nakedness and others) at least once.

  2. G. William Domhoff (2001). A New Neurocognitive Theory of Dreams. Dreaming 11(1): 13-33.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: pp. 13-33 (dreams as simulations of personal concerns) (reference not yet checked)

    Dreams as embodied simulations of personal concerns (the continuity view). The backbone of our psychology lens.

  3. Ross Levin, Tore A. Nielsen (2007). Disturbed dreaming, posttraumatic stress disorder, and affect distress: A review and neurocognitive model. Psychological Bulletin 133(3): 482-528.

    cited, not reproduced

    • Cited at: pp. 482-528 (distressing dreams and emotional distress) (reference not yet checked)

    Nightmares and distressing dreams in relation to fear processing and emotional distress.

  4. Gustavus Hindman Miller (1901). What's in a Dream (later reissued as Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted).

    public domain

    • Cited at: entry: Flood (reference not yet checked)

    An American popular dream dictionary. Its entries are written as omens ("foretells"); we only report how people once read a symbol, never as a forecast.