This was a dream question I was asked during the pandemic: If you’d like a chance for your dream question to be answered find out more about the The Dream Download™ here.
“As COVID-19 “curve” is flattening, more and more people are saying they are having wilder, and more worrying dreams. One common theme is insects. What does that mean?
A radio presenter told me this week (on air during her show) that she’d had a dream where maggots were on her face. The following day, a journalist called me to say loads of people she’s speaking to are having dreams about creepy crawlies.
It’s important to say first, everyone is different – so if you go fishing and use maggots as bait for example, the interpretation for you might be completely different than for the radio presenter I’ve mentioned above.
One explanation might be the language we use around insects, ie bugs. When we talk of a virus, you might say you “have a bug”, and if you have a natural fear and anxiety of catching coronavirus, then it makes sense you’d have a dream where insects are a little too close for comfort. (Incidentally, as we become more security conscious and cyber aware, ‘bugs’ may show up in dreams in the same way).
It may be that someone or something is “bugging” you. Keeping a dream diary can help you notice patterns in your dreaming, and whether there is any correlation between what you dreamt about at night, and what’s been happening during the day. If you have the ‘insect’ dream every time you see a certain person, this will hold a clue to its meaning. (I offer a template on keeping a dream diary in Answers In The Dark.)
The type of insect can also matter. A lot of people don’t like maggots, and may even associate them with death. Whilst we were hearing so much about the impact of COVID-19 and daily impact around the world, it makes sense if the subject of our own mortality comes to the surface, alongside any worries about people we love , so it would be natural to dream about something which represents that.
On a lighter note, insects like bees and butterflies are often seen as positive (for example around leadership or transformation respectively), so again it helps to take the content of your dream into context with what’s happening in your life at the time.
How you feel about the insect is also key: eg., were you scared, or were you irritated in the dream? Do you like that type of insect, or do they make you anxious? All of this is worth considering when exploring your own dream. (If you’ve been stung by a bee or other insect in real life for example, how you feel about that will matter too).
If you are worried about your health and well-being, especially if it’s affecting your sleep, always speak to your doctor or healthcare team.
Delphi is the author of Answers In The Dark: Grief, Sleep and How Dreams Can Help You Heal, out now on Amazon and Hive. The Dreams Maven™ is part of the Helping You Sparkle™ portfolio. You might also like Monday Mojo™.
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The 4 am Mystery: That’s an actual thing by the way. Even before a global health crisis, people found themselves awake in the middle of the night. Answers In The Dark aims to join the dots between sleep, dreams and our mental health, specifically how grief shows up, even if no one has died.
It explores some of the Big Myths of sleep, offers a Sleep Cycle Repair Kit and tips on how to decode your own dreams. Out now on Amazon and Hive.
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