Dreaming about
a roller coaster

A roller coaster is fear you pay for, with the danger taken out and the feeling left in, and most of us say "it's been a roller coaster" about a year, a relationship or a job long before we dream of one. Dreaming about a roller coaster is usually about the same thing, a stretch of life with sharp ups and downs that you can't steer, only ride.

What decides the reading is how the ride felt to you. Screaming with joy at the bottom of the drop is a different dream from gripping the bar with your eyes shut, and both are different from being stuck at the top while the park goes quiet below you. Who was in the seat next to you counts too, and so does what has been swinging between good and bad in your life lately (money, a relationship, your health, your mood).

What dreaming about a roller coaster means

Roller coasters are odd things when you think about them. You queue for an hour to be frightened, you can't steer, you can't stop, and the ride ends exactly where it started. Each of those facts gives a reading.

Ups and downs you can't smooth out

The most common reading follows the idiom. If you're in a phase of quick swings, like great news followed by bad news, a relationship that's on and off, or moods that change by the hour, a roller coaster is the obvious picture for it. The dream often comes in the middle of such a phase, not at the end. Was the ride more up or more down? And were you looking forward to the next hill, or dreading it?

A thrill you chose

Nobody ends up on a roller coaster by accident. You bought the ticket and strapped yourself in, so a dream where you loved the ride is often about a risk you took on purpose (starting a business, moving abroad, falling for someone fast). That kind of dream says you're scared and enjoying it at once. It's good to notice, because we rarely give ourselves credit for liking the fear.

Strapped in with no way off

Once the bar comes down, you're not in charge of anything. And that's the side of the ride that frightening coaster dreams use. If you wanted to get off and couldn't, look at a situation you agreed to that has turned out faster or wilder than you expected, and where stopping now feels impossible. It may sit close to dreams of being trapped, only with speed added.

The climb before the drop

Anyone who's ridden one knows the slow clank of the car being pulled up the first hill, which is often the worst part. Dreams that stay on the climb, with the drop never quite arriving, are about waiting for something you know is coming (an exam result, a hard conversation, a birth, a court date), and the dread itself is what the dream is about.

Dreaming about riding a roller coaster

Riding one, with no disaster, is the plain version, and the feeling is the whole reading. Joy points to excitement about change, even a messy one. Nausea points to a pace of life you're not coping with, and boredom, which some people do report, can mean the drama around you has stopped affecting you. And if you rode it again and again, you may be stuck in a cycle that keeps putting you through the same highs and lows.

Dreaming about a roller coaster crashing

A car flying off the rails is the nightmare version. It usually means the fear that a situation you've been riding out is about to go badly wrong, the "off the rails" idiom in picture form. That fear is often about someone else's choices, a partner or a boss or a family member, since on a coaster somebody else built the track. None of that means anything will crash, but it does show how hard you've been bracing for it.

Dreaming about being stuck at the top of a roller coaster

Stopping at the highest point, hanging over the drop, is about suspense and helplessness. Something in your life has paused at the worst moment, like a deal waiting on a signature, a relationship waiting on a decision, or a test result that hasn't come. You can see everything from up there and do nothing about it. Sound familiar? If the ride started again, notice how you felt. Relief means you want the waiting over, whatever the result.

Dreaming about a roller coaster going backwards

Going backwards means you can't see where you're heading, only where you've been. This dream tends to come when you feel you're losing ground, slipping back into an old habit, an old relationship or an old fear after you thought you'd moved on. But it can also be about trusting a process you can't see, which is harder than it sounds.

Dreaming about being too scared to ride

Standing in the queue and stepping out at the last second, or watching everyone else ride, is about a chance you're hesitating over. It's common when friends are making big moves (getting married, having children, changing careers) and you're not sure you want the same ride. The dream isn't telling you to get on, only showing you that part of you is still deciding.

Dreaming about riding a roller coaster with someone

The person next to you is often the point of the dream. A partner points to a relationship with a lot of highs and lows, and whether you were laughing or clinging to each other says how you're handling them together. Riding with a parent or a child brings in family ups and downs. And riding with someone you barely know can mean you've been pulled into another person's chaos without quite agreeing to it.

Dreaming about a roller coaster according to Jung and Freud

Neither man wrote about roller coasters, but each left an idea that fits the ride, and where a reading applies an idea instead of quoting him, it says so.

Jung on the ride that takes the controls

Jung thought dreams balance the lopsided attitude you keep by day, handing you whatever your waking life leaves out.^[1] Read through that idea (our application, since he never wrote about rides), a roller coaster suits someone who runs a careful, planned life, because it's the one place where nothing is up to you. The bar comes down, the car climbs, and all that's left to decide is whether to scream. If you loved it, the dream may be pointing at the part of you that wants to hand over the controls for a while. If you gripped the bar and counted the seconds, it may be showing how tightly you hold on to them.

Freud on the climb and the drop

Freud's list of typical dreams, the ones nearly everyone has, includes flying and falling, and in one large survey close to three in four people remembered falling in a dream.^[2] A roller coaster packs both into one ride. He started from the day before, because a dream borrows its images from it (a ride you really took, a film, a week that went up and down), and from your own associations before any symbol.^[3] His list of symbols does have an entry for the first hill: climbing steps and ladders stands for sex in it, and the slow clank to the top followed by the drop is a climb with a release at the end. That's our application, since he never mentioned a coaster, and whether it rings true is for your own associations to say, which was his rule too.

Questions to ask about your roller coaster dream

The ride is the same for everyone in the car, but what it feels like isn't, so go back to your seat before you settle on a meaning.

• Did you want to get on, or were you pushed?
• Did you enjoy it, endure it or panic?
• Who was in the car with you?
• What happened at the top: a drop, a stop, a crash?
• What in your life has been swinging between great and awful?

Oniri starts from this kind of detail when you type in your dream, so your ride gets its own reading.