Dreaming about
hands

Hands are how you reach the world. You make things with them, greet people, hold a child, sign a contract or make a fist, and most of what you do for other people goes through them. So dreaming about hands usually points to what you're able to do, how you connect with others, and what you give or take. A hand in a dream is nearly always doing something, and that action is where the meaning is.

A dog biting your hand is about trust in a way that holding hands with a friend isn't, and washing your hands over and over says something else entirely. Think too about what's been happening around you, whether that's a falling-out, a new relationship or a job you'd like to wash your hands of.

What dreaming about hands means

Hands do three big jobs in dreams, much as they do in life. They act, they connect, and they give or take, and most of the readings come from one of those.

What you can do

Hands are capability. If your hands were strong, skilled or busy in the dream, it may reflect confidence in what you're doing. If they were weak, tied, shaking or missing, it's often about feeling powerless, with your hands tied by a rule, a boss or a lack of money. The fingers carry the finer work, and a dream that focuses on them is usually about skill more than strength.

How you connect

A handshake, a wave, a hand on someone's shoulder or a hand held across a table are the small signs that keep people close. Hands that reach for you and pull back, or a hand you can't quite grasp, often come when a relationship feels uncertain. A hand that's offered and refused is just as telling, whoever was doing the refusing.

What you give and take

An open hand gives and a closed one keeps. Dreams of hands full of money, food or gifts can be about generosity or about greed, depending on whose hands they were and how you felt. Someone grabbing your hand or taking something from it can be about a person who takes more than they give.

Dreaming about a dog biting your hand

This is by far the most searched hand dream, and it fits an old saying almost exactly. To "bite the hand that feeds you" is to hurt someone who has helped you, and the dream often comes after a betrayal from a friend, a relative or a coworker you went out of your way for. If it was your own dog, the hurt is close to home. If you were the one who reached for a strange dog, the dream can be about a risk you took by trusting someone new, and there's more on dogs and what they bring to dreams on their own page.

Dreaming about holding hands

Holding hands is one of the simplest pictures of closeness there is. With a partner, it often reflects how the relationship feels right now, warm and steady or held a bit too tightly. With someone unexpected, like an ex, a coworker or a celebrity, it tends to be about wanting what they represent more than wanting the person. And holding a child's hand is about responsibility, guiding someone who can't yet cross the road alone.

Dreaming about washing your hands

Washing your hands in a dream is about getting clean of something. It can be guilt, a mess you were part of, or a situation you want to be done with. In the Gospel of Matthew, Pilate washes his hands in front of the crowd to say Jesus's death isn't on him,^[1] which is where "washing your hands of" something comes from. And in Macbeth, Lady Macbeth sleepwalks while rubbing at a spot of blood only she can see. If the water wouldn't run clean, or the stain wouldn't come off, the guilt in the dream hasn't finished with you.

Dreaming about hurt or bleeding hands

Cut, burned or bleeding hands tend to point to something you did that cost you. You may have helped someone and got hurt for it, or taken on a job that's wearing you out. Burned hands are close to the idiom of getting your fingers burned, a risk that went wrong. If there was blood on your hands and it wasn't yours, the dream is probably about guilt more than injury.

Dreaming about someone else's hands

Hands that belong to someone you know can carry them into the dream all by themselves. A grandparent's wrinkled hands, a parent's hands cooking or a partner's hands on the steering wheel are often memories of care or of control. Strange hands, or hands with no body attached, can be unsettling, and they often point to a force in your life you can't put a face to, like an institution, a rumor or a decision made somewhere above you.

Dreaming about hands according to Jung and Freud

Neither man's symbol list includes hands, so each section here puts his ideas to work on them.

Jung: hands you can't put a face to

Jung described the shadow as the side of yourself you've disowned, often appearing as a stranger or an intruder.^[2] A hand with no body, or one reaching for you out of the dark, may be a trait you've pushed away reaching back, and blood on your hands that isn't yours is the same idea at its starkest.

Freud: whose hand you held yesterday

Freud's symbol lists don't include hands, so his method carries this reading.^[3] He'd ask whose hand you shook or held the day before, then which wish the dream was disguising, and holding hands with an ex or a coworker, read his way, is a closeness you'd never ask for awake.

Other readings

Artemidorus was a 2nd-century Greek who collected dreams, and what came of them, from diviners around the Mediterranean. He read the hands together as crafts, writing and speech, so strong, skilled hands were a good sign, above all for a craftsman.^[4] Each hand also stood for people: the right a son, a father or a friend, the left a wife, a mother, a sister or a daughter.

Questions to ask about your hand dream

Most hand dreams turn on one action, so start with that and then ask what it echoes in your days.

• Whose hands were they, and what were they doing?
• Were they giving, taking, holding, hurting or being hurt?
• Did they work the way you wanted, or fail you?
• Who have you helped lately, and how did it go?

Your own days feed these dreams, so a betrayal at work or a new relationship is often right there in the hands.^[5] Oniri works the same way, asking about your situation before it reads the dream.