Dreaming about
escaping

Escape is the happier half of a familiar nightmare. In one large survey of typical dreams, being chased came top of the list (more than 80% had dreamed it),^[1] and an escape dream is the version where you get away. Dreaming about escaping usually means you want out of something in waking life, a job, a relationship, a duty, or that some part of you has already started to leave.

The dream is read through two details above all. What you were escaping from gives the shape of the problem, whether it was an animal, a person, water, a building or a whole city. And how you felt once you were out says how ready you are, since relief, guilt and a fear that it would catch up with you are three very different endings.

What dreaming about escaping means

Escape dreams are active dreams, unlike being trapped or chased, because you're doing something about the threat, and so they often come when a change in waking life becomes possible.

Wanting out

The plainest reading is a wish to leave. A job that drains you, a house you've outgrown or a relationship that has gone quiet can all turn into a prison in the dream, with you working out how to get past the guard. If the escape felt thrilling, the wish is probably stronger than you've admitted.

Getting away from a feeling

Some escapes are from something inside you. If you never saw the threat clearly, or it seemed to come from everywhere at once, the dream may be about an emotion you keep busy to avoid (anger, grief, dread). Running from it is the night version of filling every free minute so you don't have to sit with it.

Rehearsing for danger

One theory holds that dreams like these are practice, the brain running escape drills at night so we're readier for real threats by day.^[2] It's a theory, but it fits how physical escape dreams feel, with the pounding heart and the legs still twitching when you wake.

Dreaming about escaping from a lion

This is the most searched escape dream, and a lion is a particular kind of threat, powerful, proud and in charge. Escaping one often lines up with getting away from someone who dominates, like a boss with a temper or a partner whose moods run the house, or from your own anger or pride, something strong you don't trust yourself with. If you escaped by staying calm and still, that may be the way to handle the real situation too.

Dreaming about escaping a flood

Water rising through the streets and up the stairs is one of the clearest pictures of being overwhelmed, and escaping a flood tends to come when feelings or demands build faster than you can deal with them. Higher ground, in waking life, might be a bit of distance or a break, and where you escaped to matters, whether that was a roof, a hill or someone else's arms. If you saved others on the way, look at who you feel responsible for at the moment.

Dreaming about being kidnapped and escaping

Being taken against your will is about losing control of your own life, but the escape is where the dream turns. If you got free by your own wits, the dream often comes when you've started to take back a decision or a bit of independence. If someone rescued you, ask who in waking life might help you get out, and whether you've let them.

Dreaming about escaping and running away with someone

Running off with someone is a more romantic escape. With a partner, it can be about wanting time alone together, away from family, work or other people's opinions. With someone you're not with, it may be about attraction, or about what that person stands for (freedom, a life with fewer rules).

Dreaming about escaping a sinking car

Getting out of a car as it fills with water is one of the most frightening escape dreams. A car is how you move through life, so one going under suggests your usual way of coping is sinking. Getting out means you've found, or can find, another way through, often by letting go of something you thought you needed. If you struggled with the door for a long time, ask what you're holding on to past the point of sense.

Dreaming about escaping from prison

Breaking out of a prison is about rules, guilt or a sentence you feel you're serving. Ask who put the walls up, whether you'd done anything wrong in the dream, and how long you'd been inside. These dreams often come when you're breaking with an old obligation, and some guilt is normal even when the change is right.

Dreaming about escaping according to Jung and Freud

Neither man wrote about getting away from something, so these readings borrow their ideas and point them at the escape.

Jung: the flood and the pursuer you outran

Of all the images for the unconscious, Jung found water the one that turns up most.^[6] Applied to the flood and the sinking car, what's rising is whatever your life has kept underneath (feelings, memories, a want you haven't named), and the roof or the hilltop is you keeping your footing while it comes up. His shadow, everything in yourself you've refused to own, can wear the face of a stranger, and a getaway from that figure leaves a question behind. The night is settled but the meeting never happened, and a pursuer who returns in the next dream may be asking for it.

Freud: the wish to leave

For Freud, a dream plays out a wish, usually in disguise,^[7] and an escape dream is about the least disguised version there is, since the dream hands you the exit you can't find awake. His method asks where the exit led and what you'd been dealing with the day before, with your own associations ahead of any list. Guilt in the dream is ours to add, not his: someone who looks back or stops to help others may be holding a wish to go and a wish to stay in the same dream.

Other readings

Antti Revonsuo, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Turku who proposed the rehearsal theory above, put it to the test with 592 dream reports that Finnish students had written down. Aggression was the commonest threat, 42% of them once escapes and pursuits were counted in, the dreamer was the target in 73%, and none of the dreams ended with the dreamer's death.^[8]

The biblical and spiritual meaning of escaping in dreams

Escape is one of the oldest plots there is, and two Bible stories are the ones people most often bring to a dream like this.

Lot's wife looks back

When Lot and his family flee Sodom, they're told not to look behind them. Lot's wife looks back and becomes a pillar of salt.^[4] If you kept looking back in your escape dream, ask what you're still attached to in the situation you're leaving. The dream may be about how hard it is to go without regret, but it isn't a warning against going.

Peter walks out of prison

In Acts, an angel wakes Peter in his cell, his chains fall off, and he walks out past the guards and through an iron gate that opens by itself. He thinks the whole time that he's seeing a vision, and only realizes it was real once he's in the street.^[5] Plenty of people know a way out that seems too easy to be true, and the dream may be telling you a door you thought was locked isn't.

Questions to ask about your escape dream

The escape is yours to read, and it helps to go back over it slowly while you still remember it.

• What were you escaping from, and could you see it clearly?
• Did you get away in the end, or wake up still running?
• Was anyone with you, helping or slowing you down?
• How did you feel once you were out?
• What in your life do you most want to get away from, or have just left?

Oniri asks about these before it reads an escape dream, since dreams track what we live through and worry about^[3] and the escape usually has an address in your week.