Dreaming about
war

Most people today know war from screens, from the news, films, games and history lessons, and that's where many war dreams come from, though plenty arrive without any of it. Dreaming about war usually points to a conflict in your own life, with a person, a group or between two parts of yourself, or to fear soaked up from the headlines. And it's no sign of a real war on its way.

Your part in the war matters most. Fighting on the front line is a different dream from hiding in a cellar while soldiers walk past, and both differ from watching from a hill as a city burns. The times matter too, since a war dream in a quiet stretch usually has a more personal source.

What dreaming about war means

A war is the biggest picture of conflict there is, with two sides, territory, losses and no easy way out, which is why dreams borrow it for conflicts that are smaller but feel just as total. Four readings cover most of them, and they overlap with dreams of violence and of fighting.

A conflict in your life

A long fight with an ex over custody, a feud at work, a family split down the middle: any conflict that has dragged on and hardened into sides can become a war at night. English already treats them that way, with wars of words and battles over money. Ask which of your conflicts has stopped being an argument and started being a campaign.

Fear from the news

We dream about what fills our days,^[1] and in a year of wars on the news that includes air raids and invasions. If you've been reading or watching a lot about a real war, your dream may be your mind working through it. That's particularly common if the war is close to you, in your country or involving people you know.

A war inside you

Some war dreams are about two sides of yourself, like the part that wants to leave a job and the part that's scared to. Look at who the two armies were, and which side you were on, because the dream may be showing you a stalemate you've been living with for months.

Survival mode

Long stretches of stress, from a hard year of caring for someone to a run of bad news, can leave you living as if under siege. War dreams often come in those periods. If you were rationing food, hiding or always on watch in the dream, ask whether that's how your days have felt.

Dreaming about being in a war

Fighting as a soldier is the most common war dream, and how you fought matters. If you were brave and effective, you may be handling a conflict well, or be ready to stand up for something. If you were terrified, lost your weapon or didn't know which side you were on, you're caught up in a fight you didn't choose and don't feel equipped for. People from your waking life in the trench with you are often the ones you feel allied with.

Dreaming about war breaking out at home

Soldiers in your own street, tanks outside your childhood home or bombs falling on your town bring the conflict close. This is often about tension inside your home or family that feels like it could explode, or a sense that the outside world is no longer safe. If it came after news of a real war, it's also your mind asking what it would be like if it happened here, which is a natural question and not a prediction.

Dreaming about hiding or fleeing from a war

Running for the border, hiding in a basement or packing one bag in five minutes is about feeling overwhelmed by something bigger than you, a crisis you can't fight and can only get away from. It often comes with a big change you didn't choose, such as a redundancy, an illness or a divorce. Notice what you took with you and who you were trying to protect, because those are what matter most to you in the waking situation.

Dreaming about World War 3 or nuclear war

Dreams of a third world war or a nuclear strike tend to follow frightening news. A dream like this is usually about a general fear of losing everything at once, the same fear behind dreams of the apocalypse. If you saw the flash and the cloud, it points to sudden, total change, and if you were waiting for it to start, to a dread you can't put down.

Dreaming about someone you love going to war

Watching a partner, a child or a parent leave for war is about separation and fear of loss. It often turns up when someone is moving away, starting a dangerous job or going through something you can't share. If they came back, the dream may be reassuring you, and if they didn't, it's your fear speaking, not a forecast.

Dreaming about a war you lived through

For veterans, refugees and anyone who has lived through war, war dreams can be memories coming back, sometimes exactly as they happened. Those are part of trauma, not symbols, and they can be treated. If they keep waking you, talk to a doctor, since there are treatments aimed at exactly these nightmares, and the tips in how to have fewer nightmares can help alongside them.

Dreaming about war according to Jung and Freud

Jung gives the enemy soldier a second look, and Freud sends you back to the day the war was on your screen.

Jung: the enemy soldier and the two armies

In Jung's thinking the shadow holds whatever you've refused to see in yourself, and in dreams it likes to wear the face of an enemy of your own sex.^[3] Read that way, the soldier across the field deserves a question. What did he want, and does part of you want it too? His persona, the mask you show the world, gives a second reading, and a uniform is a persona in the most literal sense. If one army is the person you are at work and the other the one you are at home, the dream has drawn the front line between mask and shadow. Both readings are his ideas carried over to war, and ours.

Freud: the war on the screen and the wish to win

For Freud, the raw material of a dream was the residue of an ordinary day, and a day spent on war news leaves a heavy one, with its sirens, a map and a voice on the radio.^[5] His other idea, that a dream plays out a wish under cover, fits the conflicts closer to home. If you won, or the enemy fell, ask who you'd like to see lose in waking life, since a dream war lets you fight without anyone being hurt. Neither idea reaches dreams that replay a war you lived through, which the section above treats as trauma and not as a wish.

Other readings

Antti Revonsuo, a psychology professor at the University of Turku in Finland, proposed that dreams rehearse threats,^[2] and he and a colleague tested the idea on 592 dream reports from Finnish students. Combat, being shot at and being assaulted were rare or absent in the students' waking lives but "not very uncommon" in their dreams, and 79% of them had at least one life-threatening dream.^[6] A dream that builds a whole war out of nothing is that finding at full size.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of war in dreams

War in the Bible

When Jesus speaks of the end of the age in Matthew, he warns that people will hear of wars and rumors of wars, and tells his listeners not to be troubled.^[4] If your war dream came from the news, that line has comforted anxious readers for centuries.

War in the Quran

The Quran says God showed the Prophet Muhammad the enemy army as few in a dream, so that the believers wouldn't lose heart.^[7]

Questions to ask about your war dream

War dreams are loud, which makes the quieter details easy to miss, so go back over them once you're awake and calm. Where were you standing? Who was next to you? Which details have stayed with you since?

• Were you fighting, hiding, fleeing or watching?
• Who was the enemy, and who was on your side?
• Where did the war happen: far away, in your town, in your home?
• Have you been following a real war in the news?
• What conflict in your life feels like it's turned into a war?

Oniri asks about your part in the fighting and who was with you before it reads the dream, so the war it talks about is the one you've been in.