Dreaming about
insects

Most people don't fear insects so much as find them unbearable, and the reaction is about the crawl, the buzz and the sheer number of them more than any danger. That's why dreaming about insects is rarely about a threat. It's usually about something that's bugging you, a worry, a person or a small problem that has grown more irritating than its size would ever justify.

What kind of insects they were and where they turned up tells you most of what the dream means. Beetles in your bed, flies over your food and something crawling under your skin are three quite different dreams. How you felt, and what was nagging at you the week before, will decide which reading fits.

What dreaming about insects means

There are more kinds of insect than of any other animal, from butterflies to cockroaches, but in dreams they tend to share a few jobs. English even gives us the pun, because to bug someone is to annoy them, a bug is a fault in the system, and you catch a bug when you fall ill. Each of those meanings turns up at night.

Something that's bugging you

The most common reading is the obvious one, and it's usually right. A dream full of insects often follows a stretch of irritation, a colleague who won't stop talking, a noise in the flat upstairs, or a thought that keeps circling. Insects are small and you can't reason with them. And the dream shows that kind of annoyance exactly. If you're tired of the irritation, the dream usually is too.

What you're trying to keep out

Insects are one of the things people find most disgusting, along with rot and dirt. So a dream that leaves you feeling unclean is usually about something you want nothing to do with. It might be a person whose behavior repels you, a situation at work you think is rotten, or a part of yourself you're ashamed of. The disgust is the clue, more than the insect.

A fault in the system

Software has bugs, and so do plans, budgets and house moves. An insect dream during a big project or a move can be about the small things going wrong, the error you can't find, the detail that keeps breaking. Ask whether there's a problem in your life that's small but structural, the kind that won't go away until you fix it at the source.

Transformation

Not every insect dream is unpleasant, and some are about growth. Many insects change completely over their lives, the caterpillar into a moth or a butterfly, the grub into a beetle. A dream about an insect hatching or changing form can be about your own transformation, often an uncomfortable one. Franz Kafka's most famous story begins with a man waking from troubled dreams to find he has become a giant insect. If you turned into an insect in your dream, it may be about feeling unrecognisable, or treated as less than human, in your own home. For the hopeful side of that change, see dreaming about butterflies.

Dreaming about insects crawling on you

Insects on your skin are the version people remember most vividly, because the dream is so physical. It usually follows a stretch where something got under your skin, a remark, a conflict or an anxiety that won't settle. If you brushed them off and they came straight back, the problem probably hasn't gone away either.

Physical things can put insects on you in a dream, too. Was the room too hot? Was your skin dry, or the blanket scratchy? And if the crawling stays with you after you wake, or happens during the day too, mention it to a doctor.

Dreaming about insects coming out of your skin

This is one of the most unsettling insect dreams. Bugs coming out of a cut, a pore or your mouth tend to be about something inside you that wants out. That might be a feeling you've held back, a secret, or a resentment that has started to fester. It's not about your health, but it is often about something you've hidden for so long that it's started to feel like it's eating at you from the inside. Ask what you'd be relieved to finally say.

Dreaming about insects in your bed

Your bed is where you rest and where you're closest to a partner, so insects there make it personal. They can be worries that follow you to sleep, the thoughts that come at 2am, or small frictions in a relationship that make it harder to relax with someone. Bed bugs in particular, which bite while you sleep and are hard to see, can point to a problem you suspect but can't quite prove. If you were sleeping alone in the dream, the insects may be your own restlessness.

Dreaming about insects in your food or mouth

A fly in your soup, maggots in your bread, or a beetle crawling out of your mouth are all dreams about something spoiling what should be good. It can be a doubt that crept into a relationship, a detail that ruined a plan, or a comment that soured a family meal. Maggots in particular are about decay, something left too long. If you kept eating anyway, think about what you've been swallowing to keep the peace.

Dreaming about a swarm of insects

A swarm of insects is a dream about too much of everything at once. It often maps onto an overloaded stretch of life (messages, demands, worries) where things arrive faster than you can handle them. In the Bible, the plague of locusts covered the ground so thickly that the land went dark, and they left no green thing behind.^[1] If your swarm left the place stripped, the dream may be about something that's taken more from you than you expected. Swarms of bees and ants carry their own, slightly different meanings.

Dreaming about giant insects

A giant insect is a small problem that has grown out of proportion, or a fear you've let get bigger than it is. A beetle the size of a dog or a fly as big as your hand is your mind making the point that this thing, whatever it is, is taking up too much room. Did it attack, or just sit there being enormous? Did it follow you? An insect that only blocked your way is closer to a worry you keep walking around, while one that chased you is a worry you've been running from.

Dreaming about killing insects

Killing insects is usually a good dream, about finally dealing with the irritations. Squashing a fly, spraying a nest or stamping on a beetle can leave you satisfied, a sign you're ready to take care of things. But if more kept coming however many you killed, you may be dealing with symptoms rather than the cause. And if you felt guilty, it's worth asking whether you've been harsher with someone than they deserved.

Dreaming about insects according to Jung and Freud

Insects aren't central to either man's work, but a few of their ideas fit them well.

Jung: the shadow and the intruder

For Jung the shadow is whatever you refuse to see in yourself, and in dreams it often arrives as an intruder or a stranger.^[2] Insects in your bed or your kitchen are intruders in the most literal sense, and read through his idea the disgust becomes the clue. Ask whether the thing that repels you in the dream, or in the person it brings to mind, is a trait you've been refusing to see in yourself. That's our application of his idea, since Jung left nothing on insects.

Freud: insects as unwanted siblings

Freud's list of dream symbols includes vermin and other small creatures as stand-ins for children, and he added that they're often unwanted siblings.^[3] So in his reading, a house crawling with insects might go back to a childhood where you had to share attention with brothers and sisters. It's an odd idea at first, but it can fit dreams where the insects felt like intruders taking over your space. He would always have started with your own associations, though.

Other readings

Deirdre Barrett, a dream researcher at Harvard Medical School, noticed a big cluster of bug dreams when she began collecting dreams from the 2020 pandemic, with swarms of flying insects, armies of cockroaches and masses of wriggling worms. She had not seen them after 9/11. Her reading was that "I've got a bug" means being sick, and a crowd of small things that can hurt you together is a fair picture of virus particles.^[4]

The spiritual meaning of insects in dreams

One early Buddhist text gives an insect dream a place among the good signs.

Caterpillars in a Buddhist sutta

The Anguttara Nikaya, an early Buddhist discourse on the five great dreams of the Buddha, has an insect dream that is a good sign. The night before his awakening, the future Buddha dreamed of white caterpillars with black heads crawling up as far as his knees, and the text says it was fulfilled when many white-clothed lay followers took refuge in him.^[5] The discourse explains each dream after the fact, so it's an account of one man's dreams, not a method for reading yours.

Questions to ask about your insect dream

General readings only go so far, and your own details go further. These questions tend to settle it.

• What kind of insects were they, and how many?
• Were they on you, in you, in your home, or somewhere else?
• Did you feel disgust, fear, or just irritation?
• What's been bugging you lately, a person, a task or a thought?

When you give Oniri a dream, it first asks what's happening in your life, so the reading is built on what you know. If insect nightmares keep coming back and spoil your sleep, you can train yourself to have fewer nightmares.