Dreaming about
being chased

Being chased is the most widely shared dream theme there is, ahead of falling, flying and failing exams, so if you've had one you're in very large company. Dreaming about being chased usually means you're running from something in your waking life. It might be a problem you keep putting off, a feeling you'd rather not have, or a person you don't want to face. And the dream turns that avoidance into the oldest picture we have of it (something at your back, and your legs doing all they can).

What makes one chase dream different from the next is the detail. What was behind you, an animal, a stranger, someone you know or something you never saw? Did you run, hide, fight or turn around? Those answers, along with what's been weighing on you lately, decide the reading far more than the chase itself.

Why chase dreams are so common

In one survey of more than a thousand students, about four in five said they had dreamed of being chased, the top spot on a long list of typical dreams.^[1] The ranking held up in a German sample a few years later.^[2] Why would so many of us share the same nightmare? One theory says it's practice, with the dreaming brain running threat drills at night so we react faster when something really goes wrong.^[3] It's a theory, not a settled fact, but it fits how physical these dreams feel.

What dreaming about being chased means

Whatever the reason we have them, the content of a chase dream is personal, and two people can be chased by the same bear for completely different reasons. Most chase dreams still come down to one of these readings.

Something you're avoiding

This is the main reading, and the one to check first. A chase dream tends to show up when there's something you know you should deal with and aren't, like a bill or a conversation, a health check or a deadline that keeps moving closer. The pursuer gains on you in the dream for the same reason the problem gains on you during the day, because running doesn't make it go away.

A feeling catching up with you

Sometimes what's chasing you isn't a task but an emotion, anger you haven't expressed or grief you've kept busy to avoid. If the pursuer had no face or you never saw it, that's often a sign the dream is about something inside you and not a person. Chase dreams of this kind often get worse in periods when you're very busy, since busyness is one of the best ways to outrun a feeling.

A person or a pressure in your life

When you recognize the pursuer, look first at that relationship. A boss chasing you down a corridor, an ex who keeps appearing round the corner, or a parent you can't shake off usually point to pressure from that person, real or felt. It doesn't mean they wish you harm, but it often means their expectations take up more room in your head than you'd like.

Dreaming about being chased and not being able to run

This is the version many people find worst, where your legs are heavy, the ground is sticky, or you're running in slow motion while the pursuer strolls closer. It tends to come when you feel stuck, aware of the problem but without the energy or the means to get away from it. There's also a physical side. During dreaming sleep your body is held still, and some of that heaviness may simply be the dream noticing it.

Dreaming about being chased by a bear

Bears are the most searched pursuer, and they bring a particular kind of threat, huge and powerful and impossible to outrun. A bear chasing you often lines up with something overwhelming and close to home, like a parent's temper, a protective instinct, or your own anger. Bears are also mothers who defend their cubs ferociously, so if someone in your life is fiercely protective of you, the dream may be about how smothering that can feel.

Dreaming about being chased by a dog

A dog is usually a friend, which makes being chased by one unsettling in its own way. It can point to a loyalty that has turned on you, a friend who's become critical, or a promise that keeps nipping at your heels. If the dog was your own, the dream may be about a responsibility you've been neglecting, and if it was a pack, look for many small demands closing in at once.

Dreaming about being chased by a lion

Lions stand for power and pride, so a lion behind you often has to do with authority, someone powerful you feel threatened by, or your own ambition chasing you harder than you'd like. Have you been told to "step up" lately, or are you afraid of someone's judgment? Both fit the image, and in some dreams the lion is also your own strength, which you're running from because using it would change things.

Dreaming about being chased by a killer

Being hunted by a killer or a serial killer is frightening, but it isn't a premonition and it doesn't mean you're in danger. The killer is an extreme picture of something that feels as if it could end a part of your life, like a job, a relationship or the way you see yourself. But it's also one of the classic forms of what Jung called the shadow (more on that below), so ask what this person has that you've refused in yourself.

Dreaming about being chased by a snake

A snake on your trail is an odd image, since in the wild they'd much rather slide away from you. When your dream sends one after you, it often points to a worry that feels slippery and hard to pin down, or to someone you don't quite trust (the "snake in the grass" of the idiom). The full range of readings is on the page about snakes.

Dreaming about being chased and hiding

Hiding is a different strategy from running, and it says something about how you're handling the problem. You're keeping still and hoping it passes, which can be wise when the threat is temporary and exhausting when it isn't. Where did you hide? A cupboard or a childhood bedroom often shows where you go for safety. If the pursuer walked right past you, the dream may be telling you that what you fear is less observant, or less interested in you, than you think.

When the chase dream keeps coming back

Recurring chase dreams are common, and they usually mean the thing behind them hasn't changed. The dreams often shift once you act in waking life, with the pursuer getting slower, stopping, or turning into someone ordinary. But you can also work on the dream directly. Imagery rehearsal (the nightmare treatment where you rewrite the ending while awake and rehearse it) suits chase dreams well, and lucid dreamers often do the boldest thing possible, stopping to turn around and ask the pursuer what it wants. There's more on both in the guide on how to have fewer nightmares. And if chase nightmares come several times a week and leave you dreading sleep, see a doctor as well.

Dreaming about being chased according to Jung and Freud

The pursuer has been useful to everyone who studies dreams, because it puts a face on whatever you're avoiding.

Jung: the shadow that chases you

Jung's idea of the shadow fits chase dreams better than any other. The shadow is the side of yourself you've disowned, the traits you'd never admit to, and in dreams it often appears as a stranger, an intruder or a pursuer, often of your own sex.^[4] Seen this way, what chases you is part of you asking to be let back in. Jung held that the shadow has to be acknowledged, not outrun, and it tends to look less frightening once you turn to look at it.

Freud: the day before and the wish

Freud has no chase reading this page can point to, so this is his method applied to a chase, and said as such. He would start from the day before, from whom or what you had been avoiding yesterday, which he called day residue.^[10] And since he held that a dream disguises a wish, he would turn the question around: a chase has something trying to catch you, and it may also have a part of you that wants to be caught up with, to have the talk or the confrontation over. Which of the two the dream is about is a question only your own associations can answer, and he put those first.

Other readings

Antti Revonsuo, the Finnish cognitive neuroscientist who came up with that threat-drill idea, tested it with a colleague on 592 dream reports from Finnish students. Two in three reports held at least one threat, and being pursued by strangers or animals, which almost never happened to the students awake, was far from rare in their dreams.^[5] Ernest Hartmann, a Tufts psychiatrist who spent five decades on nightmares, saw the chase take over after a shock. A man who lost a friend in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing dreamed for months of being chased by gangsters, storm clouds and whirlwinds, and the violent dreams only began to ease about six months later.^[6] Hartmann read dreams like these as a picture of the feeling (terror, being overwhelmed) more than a replay of the event.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of being chased in dreams

Chase dreams in the Upanishads

The Upanishads, the philosophical texts that close the Vedas, already knew this dream well. The Brihadaranyaka names being chased by an elephant, being overpowered or falling into a pit as the classic frightening dreams, and treats them as the mind replaying, out of ignorance, the terrors it met while awake.^[7] In the Chandogya Upanishad, the god Indra uses the same picture to argue that the dreaming self can't be the true self, since in dreams it seems people are chasing and killing him, and he weeps.^[8]

The wicked flee in Proverbs

A biblical proverb puts the pursuer inside you as well: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion".^[9] Guilt can do the chasing on its own, and the proverb's answer is to stand your ground.

Questions to ask about your chase dream

Every chase dream has the same outline, but the details are yours alone, and they're what turn it into something useful. Start with these.

• What or who was chasing you, and did you ever see its face?
• Where were you, and where were you trying to get to?
• Did you run, hide, fight back or turn around?
• What happened when it caught you, or when you woke up?
• What have you been putting off or avoiding in the last few weeks?

Oniri asks you about these details before it reads your dream, because a bear in the woods and a stranger in a car park are rarely running after the same thing.