Dreaming about
sharks

One film did more for the fear of sharks than any shark ever has. After Jaws came out in 1975, a whole generation learned to watch the water for a fin, and Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel, spent his later years speaking up for sharks. Real attacks are very rare. But in dreams, sharks stand for something nearly everyone recognizes: a fear that lives under the surface, a ruthless person or situation, or the feeling of being in water far deeper than you can handle.

How you met the shark decides most of the reading. A fin cutting through calm water is a threat you can see coming, an attack from below is one that caught you off guard, and swimming calmly beside a shark is something else again. The water matters too, because clear and murky water are not the same dream, and neither is the open sea compared with a swimming pool.

What dreaming about sharks means

Sharks are older than the dinosaurs, and they have senses we don't. They pick up tiny traces of blood, they feel the weak electric field of a fish hidden in the sand, and many of them have to keep swimming to keep water moving over their gills. And they lose and replace teeth all their lives, thousands of them. Most of what sharks mean in dreams comes straight from those facts.

A fear under the surface

The worst thing about a shark is that you usually can't see it until it's close. A shark dream is often about a fear you sense but can't locate, like a vague sense that something at work is wrong, or a worry about your health or your relationship that you haven't put into words. Where were you in the water, near the shore or far out? The further out you were, the more exposed you probably feel.

A ruthless person

English already uses the word for people. A loan shark lends at crushing interest, a card shark plays for your money, and in business "sharks" are the ones who move in on anyone weak. If the shark in your dream circled you patiently, or seemed to sense the moment you were most tired, look for someone in your life who works the same way. It might be a colleague, an ex, or a landlord who notices when you're struggling.

Out of your depth

Some shark dreams are less about the shark than about the water. Starting somewhere unfamiliar, or a relationship that's moving faster than you'd like, can feel like swimming in deep water where anything could be underneath. The shark is the fear that comes with being out of your depth, and the dream often fades once you've found your footing.

A drive that never stops

Some sharks never stop moving, and a shark dream can be about a restless drive, yours or someone else's. Ambition that won't let you rest and a schedule with no gaps can take this form. And it fits someone you know who can never sit still (everyone has one). If you felt like the shark rather than its prey, ask what you're hunting so hard, and what it's costing you.

Dreaming about a shark attack

A shark attack is the most searched shark dream, and it usually means the hidden fear has struck. The thing you sensed under the surface has arrived as bad news, a sudden conflict or a loss. One theory of dreaming suggests predator attacks like this are the brain running drills, rehearsing danger so you're quicker to respond when you're awake.^[1] What happened next is worth noting. If you got to shore, even hurt, the dream is often about getting through something, while being dragged under points to feeling overwhelmed, close to dreams of drowning.

Dreaming about swimming with sharks

Swimming calmly among sharks is one of the most interesting shark dreams, because it's dangerous and nobody gets hurt. "Swimming with sharks" means working among ruthless people, and there's a 1990s film by that name about an assistant and his tyrant of a boss. So this dream often appears when you're holding your own in a tough place, a competitive office or a family with sharp edges. If you felt calm, you're probably managing it better than you think. But if you felt you were pretending to be calm, ask how long you can keep it up.

Dreaming about sharks in clear water

Seeing a shark through clear water is a strange kind of relief, since you know exactly where it is. This dream is often about a danger you can now see plainly, after a long time of only sensing it, like a diagnosis, a confession or the truth about someone. Clear water also lets you see how big the shark really is, and people sometimes wake from this dream realizing the problem is smaller than they'd feared. Murky water reverses all of that, with the fear growing because you can't see.

Dreaming about sharks circling you

A fin circling you is the moment before an attack, and the dream is mostly about waiting. You know something is coming, a review at work, a test result or a confrontation, and you can only watch it go round. Sharks circle to check out what they might eat, so the dream can also be about being sized up. Who in your life seems to be looking for a weak spot? And sometimes the honest answer is your own inner critic, going round and round the same mistake.

Dreaming about a shark in a swimming pool

A shark in a swimming pool is danger where there should be none, in a place with edges, clear water and a lifeguard chair, and it usually points to a threat inside a setting that's supposed to be safe, like your home, your family or a friendship. But a pool is small and you can see the sides, so the dream also holds a way out. You can climb out, and so can whoever's in there with you.

Dreaming about a shark out of water

A shark stranded on the sand is power with nowhere to go. It may be about a bully or a boss who has lost their hold, someone who used to frighten you and now just looks helpless. But it can also be you, feeling completely out of your element in a new place or role, a fish out of water with teeth. Your feeling decides which, pity, relief or a strange kind of recognition.

Dreaming about a dead shark

A dead shark usually means a threat is over. Someone who intimidated you has lost their grip, a fear has passed, or a hard season has ended. If you killed it, the dream is about having stood up to something you thought you couldn't. And if the dead shark still frightened you, the fear may have outlived the danger, which happens more often than people admit.

Dreaming about sharks according to Jung and Freud

Water is where both men had the most to say, and the two paragraphs below carry their ideas over to the shark.

Jung: what lives in the deep water

Jung named water as the most common symbol of the unconscious.^[2] By that logic the sea is the unconscious and a shark is something large that lives down in it, a fear, a drive or a person you've never looked at in daylight. It gives the clear-water and murky-water dreams above a second reading too, since clear water is a part of you that you can finally see into and murk is the part you can't see yet.

Freud: a fish with teeth

Freud listed the fish among the dream's pictures of the genitals, alongside snails, cats and mice, and called the snake the most important male symbol.^[3] A shark is a fish with teeth, so following his list a bite would be about sex and the fear of it, a desire that comes with danger attached. That stretches his list from fish to sharks, and it fits best when the shark stood for a person you feel drawn to and wary of. Otherwise he'd turn to day residue, his name for the scraps of yesterday that dreams reuse, so ask what you watched, swam or read, because a film about a fin can explain the fin before anything deeper does.

Other readings

Ernest Hartmann, a psychiatrist at Tufts who left Vienna as a child, reported that people shaken by a trauma often dream of a huge wave that carries them off. He read the wave as a picture of how they felt, terrified and overwhelmed, and not as a replay of what happened.^[4] He wrote about waves, not sharks, but the idea carries over to the out-of-your-depth dream: a shark in deep water may be a feeling given a body, which makes "what was I feeling?" a better question than "what is this animal?"

Questions to ask about your shark dream

Since sharks are all about what's hidden and what's coming, these questions focus on visibility and distance.

• Where were you, in the sea, a lake, a pool, or a boat?
• Could you see the shark clearly, or only a fin or a shadow?
• Did it circle, chase, attack, or swim calmly by?
• Who in your life seems to sense when you're weakest?
• Where do you feel out of your depth right now?

When you tell Oniri about a shark dream, it asks things like this first, so a fin far off and a bite at your ankle aren't given the same meaning.