Dreaming about
running

Running is something most adults only do for a bus, a train or a workout, which is part of why it stands out so much in a dream. Dreaming about running usually means one of two things. Either you're trying to get away from something you'd rather not face, or you're pushing hard toward something you want, and the direction you were running is the first clue.

The second clue is how it felt. Running in fear, with your heart pounding and your legs heavy, is a very different dream from running easily along a beach. And both differ from a race where everyone else keeps pulling ahead. Your waking life adds the third, since for a runner training for a marathon, the dream may be nothing more than the day's miles coming back at night.^[1]

What dreaming about running means

Most running dreams sort themselves quickly once you ask what you were running from, or toward. These are the readings that come up most.

Avoiding something

The commonest reading is avoidance, a problem you keep stepping around, a conversation you won't have, a decision that keeps getting closer. In the dream you run because that's what you've been doing by day, just less obviously. If you never saw what you were running from, the dream may be about a feeling more than a situation, and the being chased page goes deeper into that version. English has plenty of running sayings too (running away from your problems, running out of time, running on empty), and one of them often describes your week better than any symbol.

Chasing a goal

Running toward something is ambition in motion, and it tends to come when you're working hard for a promotion, a deadline or a big change, and it can feel exciting or exhausting depending on how the waking push is going. If the finish line kept moving, ask whether your goal has been shifting too, or whether you keep raising the bar on yourself.

Freedom and energy

Some running dreams are simply joyful, with no threat and no goal, just the pleasure of moving fast. They tend to come after a weight has lifted, or when you feel healthy and strong. But they can also be a wish, especially for someone who can't run in waking life (an injury, an illness, age).

Dreaming about running away

Running away from home, a wedding, a job or a group of people is about wanting out. It's often a dream of pressure, a role or a set of expectations you feel you can't keep up with. Where did you run from? That place says which part of your life it is. If you felt relief as you ran, the wish may be stronger than you've admitted. If you felt guilty or kept looking back, you may want change but also want to keep what you have, which is a very normal place to be.

Dreaming about running from someone

When you know who you're running from, look first at that relationship. A boss, a parent, an ex or a friend can all show up as a pursuer when their demands or their judgment take up more room than you'd like. When the person is a stranger, the reading from Jung further down is worth a thought.

Dreaming about running from the police

Running from the police is about guilt, rules or fear of being found out. It doesn't mean you've done anything wrong. More often it comes when you feel you've broken an unwritten rule (cut a corner at work, let someone down, said something you shouldn't have). Or when you feel judged by an authority. Ask what you'd be afraid of being caught at, and who in your life plays the role of the police.

Dreaming about running a race

A race adds other people and a winner, so the dream is about competition and how you measure yourself. Winning easily tends to come with confidence, while falling behind, losing a shoe or running the wrong way points to a fear of not keeping up. If you were racing people you know (siblings, colleagues, old classmates), the dream is probably about comparing your life with theirs, and the race page goes into that further.

Dreaming about mice or rats running around

This is a different kind of running, and people search it often. Mice or rats scurrying across the floor tend to stand for small worries that multiply and get everywhere, bills, messages, chores, little doubts. They're hard to catch and hard to ignore, but they're also small. The page on mice goes into what these dreams can mean, including the sense that something has got into your home that you can't control.

Dreaming about running water

Running water is another sense of the word, a tap left on, a stream, a river moving fast. Clear running water tends to be about things flowing well, emotions moving and not stuck, but water that won't stop running, or floods from a tap you can't turn off, is closer to feeling overwhelmed, a situation that keeps going whatever you try. Since water often stands for feeling in dreams, it's worth noticing how full the room got.

Dreaming about running according to Jung and Freud

Between them the two men's ideas cover both the fleeing kind of running dream and the joyful kind, though the readings below apply them and don't quote either man on running.

Jung on running: the shadow you can't outrun

Jung used the word shadow for the part of you you'd rather not look at, and he saw it turning up in dreams as a figure of your own sex who pursues or threatens you.^[2] Read that way, running from a stranger is running from a part of yourself, which is a very human response. His whole approach, though, was about getting to know the shadow rather than outrunning it, and a dream where you turn and look at the pursuer fits that aim best.

Freud on running: the wish behind the escape

Freud's idea of the dream as a wish carried out fits the joyful kind of running best.^[3] For someone who can't run any more (an injury, an illness, age), a dream of running easily is the wish granted. A dream of running away asks his harder question, which is what wish the escape is disguising, since wanting out of a job, a role or a relationship is a wish you may not have admitted.

Other readings

Antti Revonsuo, a Finnish psychologist who argues that dreams rehearse threats and the escape from them, tested the idea, with a colleague, on a set of home dream reports from Finnish university students.^[4] Aggression was the commonest threat, and counting escapes and pursuits as aggression it made up 42% of the threats recorded. It's a theory, and a contested one.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of running in dreams

The Bible has two very different pictures of running, one about fleeing a task and one about staying the course.

Running away in the Bible

Jonah is told to go to Nineveh and runs the other way, paying for passage on a ship to Tarshish.^[5] The storm, the sea and the whale follow. It's the oldest story of running from a task, and many people find it fits dreams where they flee something they know is theirs to deal with.

Running the race in the Bible

The letter to the Hebrews uses running in a gentler way, asking readers to lay aside every weight and "run with patience the race that is set before us".^[6] For a dream about a long, tiring race, that idea of patience, and of putting down what slows you, is a helpful one.

Questions to ask about your running dream

Running dreams are fast, and the details slip away quickly, so jot down which way you were going before anything else. Then look at these.

• Were you running away from something, or toward something?
• Could you see what was behind you, or ahead of you?
• Did you run easily, or did your legs feel heavy?
• Was anyone with you, and were they faster or slower?
• What in your life feels like it needs running from, or toward, right now?

Oniri works from the same details when it reads a dream, so tell it which way you were running and how it felt. If running nightmares keep you up at night, there are practical ways to have fewer nightmares.