For many workers, the boundary between work life and personal life is somewhere on the spectrum from “a bit blurred” to “totally nonexistent.” Is it any wonder, then, that work can infiltrate our dreams? If you find yourself emailing in your sleep, you aren’t alone. “Work can be so closely tied to your personal identity,” says Autumn Fourkiller, writer and mystic behind the newsletter Dream Interpretation for Dummies. “It can be hard to separate your work life from your life. Those things can get uncomfortably mixed.”
There are several possible ways to interpret dreams about work, especially because they can vary so vastly and some of them may not even appear to be related to work at all. In other words, it’s a particularly difficult category to analyze and interpret. So for maximum insight, we spoke to several dream experts to find out what it means when you dream about work.
First, it’s important to note that every dream is personal and individual; the person best equipped to interpret any dream, including one about work, is the person who dreamed it. “It truly comes down to what the dreamer’s relationship to the symbol or object is,” says dream worker and tarot reader Em Hexe. “It’s a disservice to the dream to just look up something and try to transpose it; you’re missing out on the deeper meaning that that image is presenting to you.”
Dream analyst Jane Teresa Anderson agrees. “You can’t really take a dream-dictionary approach,” she says. She does, however, believe it’s possible to make some generalizations as long as they’re treated as starting points for exploration rather than something set in stone. “Everyone’s dream is unique and personal to them, but you can get a general feeling, because we’re all humans and we all go through similar things.”
How can I interpret my own dream?
If you’re interested in digging deeper into the specifics of the dream you had, there are several expert-recommended methods you can try. Amanda Takuapu, a Guarani spiritual practitioner from Paraguay and an apprentice to the Tupi-Guarani traditions, recommends focusing on your emotional experience. “How do you feel in the dream? How do you feel when you wake up? How are you feeling when you recall that dream? That’s going to give you the biggest indication, and it’s going to strengthen you that you’re finding these answers within yourself because you’re looking into what these emotions bring up for you,” she says.
Hexe’s favorite method comes from a workshop they once took with Clarissa Pinkola Estés, the author of The Women Who Run With the Wolves: “Write down your dream in the present tense, as simply as possible — you don’t need to get into florid detail; you just want to capture the essence of the dream: I’m walking down the street, I see a trash can, there is a fire coming out of the trash can, and so on. Skip a line, so there’s room to write, and circle each noun: street, trash can, fire. Then write down your associations with each word. Read back the dream and interject the associations in place of the original nouns. That’s a simple way of doing your own dream interpretation.” That is similar to the approach that Justina Lasley, dream teacher and founding director of the Institute for Dream Studies, takes when looking at work-related dreams. “The first thing I would ask a person is to define work: What does that mean to you?” she says. She also believes it’s important to look at your emotional relationship to it. “We want to identify, in this particular dream about work, how did I feel?”
Anderson also recommends keeping it simple. “One thing that can help with any of these dreams is to stand back a very long way and summarize it in a simple sentence,” she says. “It can give you a clue. For example, you’re on top of the cliff and you’re looking over the edge and you don’t know whether you might fall or you might fly. I would summarize that by saying, ‘I’ve come to a point in my life where I don’t know whether to hold on or let go.’ I’ve made it vague. The broader you can be in the way you describe your dream, the more likely you are to find the source of it.”
Why am I dreaming about work?
There are many possible explanations for why you might be dreaming about work, some of which are obvious. “It could simply be that you spend the majority of your time there, so your brain space might only have the capacity to create this environment in the dreamscape that you’re familiar with,” says Takuapu.
Hexe adds that the setting isn’t always what it appears to be. “Oftentimes, your dreams will utilize the things that happened in your day in order to try to assimilate whatever the dream is trying to impart on you,” explains Hexe. “It could be that that is simply a transposition of a symbol that means something entirely different. Dreams are slippery and smart in these ways, where they pull from everyday life in order to tug at the deeper meanings of things that might not otherwise be accessible.”
Anderson suggests that a dream about work could just be your subconscious mind trying to help you out of a pickle. “One of the functions of our dreams is to problem-solve,” she explains. “Our dreams are processing our experiences of the last one to two days and trying to make sense of our world. If you’ve spent the last day trying to figure out how to do something, particularly a work problem, you might then actually work out what the solution is. Some dreams that appear to be about work may well indeed be about work, and they may be giving you a solution to something that you’ve been trying to solve at work.”
It can also, of course, be a sign that you’re simply working too much. “Remembering that your dreams are processing your experiences of the last one to two days, if you’re not doing much else other than work or worrying about work, that’s all your dreams have got to go on,” says Anderson. Psychologist and dream teacher Athena Laz agrees. “If you’re someone who looks at emails just before you go to bed, you’re priming your mind to dream about work,” she says. “That dream might just mean that you’re paying too much attention to work before bed.”
What can work symbolize in a dream?
Most commonly, dreaming about work directly relates to our finances. “This is how you are supporting yourself,” says Jean Benedict Raffa, a Jungian scholar, dream worker, and spiritual teacher. “Money is the energy and the ability to do what you want to do and have what you need in your life.” Still, she emphasizes, it all depends on the specific details of the dream you had.
Takuapu says the workplace can also stand in as a symbol for internal work that needs to be done. “It’s not always about work. It could also be ‘What is it that I need to work on?’” she says. “We’re given deadlines and markers for achievement within our work. It translates in our dream space. What are you working on within your life, within yourself, within your relationships?”
What are some potential symbols that represent work in a dream?
Because work takes up so much of most people’s lives, it’s common to dream about work even when you’re not literally dreaming about the workplace. Since dreams tend to be symbolic and heavily metaphoric in their imagery, Anderson says that a dream that seems totally unrelated — like being on a cliff’s edge, deciding whether to take a leap or turn back around — could actually be about your working life. “It would not mean the same for everyone, but it could be saying, ‘I’ve had enough of this job. Should I leave?’” she explains. “It’s a dream about work, but it doesn’t look like it’s about work.” Similarly, there are other common symbols that could be related to work: Dreaming about a constant shadow over your shoulder, or an overflowing sink of endless dishes you must wash, could symbolize a micromanager you’re dealing with at the office. Or if you’re feeling unsupported in the workplace, you might find yourself dreaming about jumping into a swimming pool and sinking to the bottom instead of being held up by the water, starting to climb a ladder and then realizing it’s going to fall, or having your legs give out from underneath you.
Now, here’s what it might mean if you’re dreaming about work:
If your boss is in your dream …
Takuapu says that it’s important to consider the actual relationship you have with your boss and how you feel about them; dreaming about a boss you hate could have a very different context from dreaming about a boss you just went out for drinks with. Still, there are some common cultural associations. “A boss can signify a parental figure, somebody who represents a sense of control and order,” she says. “Some people have a lot of respect for their boss. You could be dreaming about a boss because they represent something that you might be looking to achieve.”
If your co-workers are in your dream …
Usually, Anderson says, it’s about what those co-workers represent to you: “If I’m dreaming about that old lady Joan in the office, what do I think about her?” Ask yourself about that colleague’s personality, their approach to life. You’re likely to make some discoveries about your own.
Raffa says dreaming about your colleagues can actually help illuminate your subconscious perception of them or yourself. “Maybe you weren’t aware and you need to be,” she says. “If they’re accusing you of doing something that’s making them annoyed, I would ask myself, ‘Do I do that in waking life?’ Could that be part of my shadow, the part of myself I don’t want to face? The truth is that if the dream is telling you somebody’s annoyed at you, maybe you’re annoyed at yourself or maybe the person is annoyed at you.”
Lasley says that, ultimately, everyone in your dream is still you; a dream about your co-workers often contains a dose of self-awareness that you may not possess in your waking life. “I would encourage the dreamer to be those people, because they will start seeing themselves,” she says, recommending that you take on the perspective of each “character” when writing about the dream in your dream journal. “The individual needs to look at the dream and write it down. What is the scenario? What’s happening? Who’s there? What are their personality traits, and what responsibility do I have? How am I acting and reacting?”
If you dream about losing your job …
Don’t worry — our dreams don’t have the ability to predict the future, and just because you dream about losing your job, it doesn’t mean you actually will. “Dreams never come to tell us something we already know,” says Lasley. “If I dream I just lost my job, it’s not saying I’m going to lose my job tomorrow. Dreams don’t do that. It’s metaphorical language. What does losing my job mean, other than specifically losing my job? I’m not going to be in a particular position any longer.” Think about other places in your life where your position feels unstable or insecure. That could be the root of your dreamspace firing.
Anderson says this kind of dream is similar to the classic failing-an-exam dream and can often come up when you’re feeling tested in a situation. “It may be based on a fear of not being good enough to hold down this job, to meet other people’s expectations or your own expectations,” she says. But, she reminds, “a dream about work is not necessarily about work. If you dream about losing your job, it may be about losing a relationship or losing yourself or losing anything; your dreaming mind just decided to put it in the context of work because our dreams tend to avoid the actual situations and make them a bit more symbolic. A dream about a relationship will generally show up as a dream about being out in the field or being at work. The dream about work is trying to get you to step back and see a conflict from a different perspective.”
Laz says this is often an anxiety dream — or, less often, a sign from your subconscious that the workplace isn’t right for you. But like Anderson, Laz adds it’s rarely anxiety about losing the actual job you have. “Losing a job is a catastrophic event for most people,” she says. “I think most people would find that quite overwhelming and feel helpless and powerless. What in my life is making me feel that way, and what can I do to prime safety within myself?”
If you dream about getting a new job …
“When you’re dreaming about getting a new job or opportunity, there’s usually a lot of inner transformation happening,” says Takuapu. “It typically doesn’t have a lot to do with our work, but because work is such a significant part of our life, it signifies there’s transformation happening in some capacity.”
Per Laz, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the market for a new and different career, though. “If someone is working and they love their working space when they dream of getting a new job, it might just be the dreaming mind’s way of telling them that there are lots of opportunities available to them,” she says. “That is a positive dream: new avenues to explore. Also, I would ask the person: Is this new job something you would want? If the answer is no, then maybe you need to bring the energy of newness into the space you’re in. How could new energy be helpful in the current environment?”
“That can be a desire dream, wanting a new job,” says Samantha Fey, author of The Awake Dreamer: Lucid Dreaming, Astral Travel and Mastering the Dreamscape. “I would definitely pay attention to your emotions in that dream. If you’re in a new job or you’re getting a new job, are you happy about it? Are you worried about it?” This can help you determine whether it’s something you actually want to seek out.
If you dream about doing your job …
“On a basic level, dreaming about work means you’re taking your work home and there’s no stop and start for you,” says Fey. “That’s often a message that you need to set boundaries with yourself and work.” That’s especially true if the dream is more of a nightmare, she says. “When you have nightmares about work, that’s a big sign that you’re overworked and overstressed. You need to change something in your daily routine.”
If you dream about doing a different job …
“Often, people will see themselves in a work situation that they think is way beyond their capabilities,” says Lasley. “It feels really good in the dream. They’re like, ‘But I’m not qualified to do that.’ But if they really look at it, and go for it, sometimes the dream will give them the support to look into it and say, ‘Oh, maybe I need a little bit of training, but I love the way I felt in that job in that dream. That’s the way I want to feel at work.’”
If you dream about an old job …
This kind of dream is incredibly dependent on the context of what else is happening, but Anderson says it can often indicate unresolved issues, either within yourself or at that previous job. “They might have forgotten all about you, and you’re still thinking, I didn’t feel good about how I did this or I did something brilliantly and nobody supported me,” she explains.
Laz also says you should focus on your particular context. “I would look at three things: Did you like the job? What was it like there? And how did you leave?” she says. “Say you dream that you’re at your last job and you’re seeing everyone and it feels so good. It might just be a nostalgic memory to try and prime the same emotional feeling space. Your dream might just be asking if you feel this way in your current work life. If you have a really positive work life now and it previously was really positive, I would look and say, ‘What is it about that space? What did it teach me?’ See if that’s being applied to the workspace now.”
“It could mean that something that wasn’t working at your previous job is repeating at this current job,” says Fey. “You need to look at what that pattern is. Was it a negative boss? Was it a gossipy co-worker? Was it your ideas not being heard or validated? If we’re dreaming of an old job, it’s not necessarily that the job is coming back to us, but an aspect that’s unhealed and unresolved that is going to be or might already be recurring at this current job.”
If something unusual happens at your usual workplace …
“People will often have dreams where they’re in meetings with co-workers, and weird things will happen,” says Fey. “Some people have dreams where they walk into their office and it’s not their office; that can mean that something is going to change for you at work. It might be a little reminder from your subconscious to start putting the résumé out there. Let’s get back on LinkedIn.”
If your work dream is sexy …
Relax: If you dream about having sex with a colleague, especially one you haven’t been attracted to in your waking life, it generally does not mean you secretly have feelings for them. Instead, there’s a biological explanation. “Sex dreams can reflect our hormonal state while we’re dreaming, but it’s interesting to know who our dream picks for our partner,” says Anderson. “Symbolically, in a dream, to be that close to someone, it’s really uniting with them. It’s normally related to what they represent to you. My dream is showing me that I am uniting with that trait myself.”
Fourkiller says dreams about sleeping with a co-worker or your boss are more common than they used to be. “With the advent of working from home, that’s encroaching on your space in a way that going to your cubicle wasn’t,” she explains. Fey assures that there’s nothing unusual about this type of dream. “Some people have sexual dreams about co-workers. That’s also very common and does not usually mean anything other than releasing stress.”
If you dream about being late for work …
A dream about being late is often rooted in anxiety and self-doubt, especially when it comes to work. “Being late for work will often come up for someone that’s never late for work and has a dream because they’re really worried about not showing up,” says Anderson. “The dream is revealing that unconscious mind-set; you’re always 101 percent prepared because you’re worried what people will think if you don’t perform as well as you wish.”
If you dream about showing up to work naked …
“For a lot of people, work functions like a classic anxiety dream,” says Fourkiller. “They show up to work naked, or so late they get fired, or they’re forced to work throughout the night.” To Fourkiller, these sorts of dreams say more about society than they do about the individual dreamer. They’re indicative of the idea, internalized by most people in a capitalist society, that work is somehow morally superior to leisure. “People bring me dreams where they are literally being told they’re lazy or inefficient at work, even though they are workaholics and they work so hard. They can’t even escape from work in their dreams. They’re like, ‘Do you think that means I’m lazy or inefficient?’ No, I think that means you were made to feel that way so you will be even more efficient,” says Fourkiller.
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