Dreaming about
crying

Crying is one of the few things a dream can make you do for real. Plenty of us have woken up with wet cheeks or a sob still in their throat, unsure for a moment whether it was the dream or the day that made them cry. Dreaming about crying usually means a feeling you've been holding back is getting out at last. It might be grief or stress, frustration, or a relief you haven't had a quiet moment to feel while awake.

What you were crying about, and who was there, shape the reading. Crying alone in a locked room is a different dream from crying on someone's shoulder, and tears of joy at a wedding aren't the same as tears you couldn't stop at a funeral. Your own week matters too, because a crying dream almost always has something real behind it.

What dreaming about crying means

Most dreams turn a feeling into a picture (a chase for fear, a flood for overwhelm). A crying dream is unusual because it often skips the picture and goes straight to the feeling, which is why it can be so intense. The readings below are the ones that come up most often.

Release

The commonest reading of a crying dream is also the simplest one. You've been busy, brave or simply too tired to feel something, and at night, with nothing else to do, it comes out. Many sleep researchers think dreaming is part of how we work through our emotions, and people who've had a hard month often report crying dreams that leave them oddly lighter in the morning. If that's how you woke, the dream may already have done its job.

Grief you haven't had time for

Crying dreams are very common after a loss, whether that's a death, a breakup, a move, or the end of a friendship or a job. They often come weeks or months later, when life has gone back to normal on the outside and you've stopped giving yourself permission to be sad. The dream catches up on what the busy days left out.

Stress and overload

Not all crying dreams are about sadness, and some come from sheer overload, too much work and too little sleep, or caring for someone with no break. In these dreams you often cry about something small (a lost key, a missed bus), and why would a lost key make you sob? Because the small thing is the last straw. Ask yourself what the real load is, and whether any of it can be put down.

Feeling unheard

When nobody in the dream noticed you crying, or someone told you to stop, the reading shifts. Dreams like this often turn up when you feel your feelings don't count somewhere in your life, at home or at work or with a friend who never asks. And they can be a nudge to say something you've been keeping to yourself.

Dreaming about crying and waking up crying

This is the most searched crying dream, and the one that worries people most. It happens because the emotions in a dream are real even when the story isn't. So the body responds as it would to a real loss, with tears, a tight throat and a racing heart. It's usually a sign of release, not of something wrong, and it's especially common in grief or in the middle of a stressful period. But if you're waking up crying most nights, or feel low most days, talk to a doctor, since that can be part of depression, which is very treatable.

Dreaming about crying but no tears coming out

Wanting to cry and not being able to is a common and frustrating version. You feel the sobs but nothing comes, or you're crying with your face but feel nothing inside. It often mirrors waking life, a feeling you know is there but can't reach, or a situation where you've had to hold it together for everyone else. And these dreams sometimes come right before the feeling finally breaks through.

Dreaming about someone else crying

Seeing a loved one in tears (a parent, a partner, a friend) usually reflects worry about them, or a sense that they're struggling and not telling you. It can also be about your own feelings seen from outside, as if you can only look at your sadness when it's on someone else's face. If it was someone who rarely cries in real life, think about what you've noticed in them lately. And if it was a stranger, ask what they were crying about, since their reason may be yours.

Dreaming about a baby crying

A crying baby is one of the most common versions, and it's the one parents of young children have almost every night for a while. For everyone else, a crying baby tends to stand for something new and needy in your life, a project or a relationship or a responsibility that demands attention. If you couldn't find the baby or comfort it, look at what feels neglected, which may be part of yourself.

Dreaming about crying uncontrollably

Sobbing so hard you can't breathe, or crying for what feels like the whole dream, is usually about a feeling that's much bigger than you've admitted. Something has been building, and the dream lets it out all at once. These dreams are exhausting but often followed by relief, and if this is the first time you've cried about something in months, the dream is doing a useful job.

Dreaming about crying with happiness

Tears of joy in a dream (at a wedding, a reunion, a long-awaited piece of good news) are about relief and gratitude. They often come when something difficult has finally worked out, or when you're longing for it to. If the happy event was something you're still waiting for in waking life, the dream may be showing you how much you want it.

Dreaming about crying over someone who died

Crying in a dream for someone who has died is part of grief, and it often brings comfort as much as pain. Many people find they cry more freely in these dreams than they could at the funeral or in the weeks after. If the person was in the dream, comforting you or simply there, the dream may be helping you say goodbye in your own time.

Dreaming about crying according to Jung and Freud

Crying isn't a symbol either man took up, but what each thought a dream is for explains why these dreams come.

Jung: a counterweight to being fine

In Jung's view a dream makes up for whatever your waking attitude leaves lopsided,^[1] and a crying dream is a clear case, the counterweight to a long stretch of coping. The more completely you've held it together at work, at home and for everyone else, the more there is for the dream to balance. That gives a question to put to your own dream: who was crying, the version of you other people see, or the one they don't?

Freud: the story you cry about

Freud's first step was to look at the day before, since part of what a dream is made of comes from there,^[2] and a crying dream usually has an easy anchor in it (a goodbye, a film, a row, a message you read twice). Among the typical dreams almost everyone has, he listed the death of a loved one, and a good share of crying dreams sit inside that one. But in his method the story you cry about is only the surface, the manifest content, and the real subject may be a different loss. The lost key that makes you sob is a small case of exactly that.

Other readings

Artemidorus, a Greek writer of the 2nd century, spent years gathering dreams from the diviners of the marketplace and held that weeping and lamenting, over the dead or over anything else, pointed to joy and pleasure at some success. His reason was that the soul swings from one extreme to the other like the weather, so rejoicing could just as well mean grief.^[3]

The biblical and spiritual meaning of crying in dreams

Tears run through the old scriptures, and the sources lean the same way: crying is seen, and it passes.

Tears in the Psalms

Two lines are quoted especially often by people who wake up crying. One promises that "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning".^[4] Another asks God to put the psalmist's tears "into thy bottle", as if each one is kept and counted.^[5] Both treat crying as something seen, and as something that passes.

Weeping in the Agni Purana

The Agni Purana, a Hindu text with a whole chapter on good and bad dreams, puts weeping on the good list (death and a burning house are on it too, so its lists run against the obvious).^[6]

Questions to ask about your crying dream

A crying dream is mostly a feeling, so the questions are mostly about the feeling. Start with these.

• What were you crying about in the dream, and did it make sense?
• Was anyone there, and did they comfort you, ignore you or tell you to stop?
• Did you wake up with real tears?
• How did you feel afterwards, lighter or heavier?
• What have you been too busy or too strong to feel lately?

Oniri asks you about this before it reads your dream, because the same tears can mean grief for one person and relief for another.