Dreaming about
fighting

Most of us are startled by our own fighting dreams, because we'd never throw a punch in waking life, and that gap is usually the first clue. Dreaming about fighting tends to come when there's a conflict you're keeping in (anger at someone you love, a disagreement you swallowed at work, two things you want that pull in opposite directions). The dream lets out what the day kept polite.

Who you fought, and how the fight went, decide the rest. A shouting match with your mother isn't the same dream as a brawl with a stranger in the street. And winning, losing or finding your punches have no strength each say something different about where you stand. The reading starts with those details and with whatever has been getting under your skin lately.

What dreaming about fighting means

Fights in dreams are physical, but the readings mostly aren't. They tend to fall into one of four groups, and many dreams mix two of them. So if more than one reading below fits, that's normal.

Anger you haven't expressed

The simplest reading is often the right one. Have you been biting your tongue with a partner, a parent or a boss? Then the dream gives the anger the outlet it didn't get, and you wake up having said (or done) everything you wouldn't. It's not a wish to hurt that person, but it is a sign the feeling needs some kind of outlet, whether that's a real conversation or simply admitting to yourself how cross you are.

A fight with yourself

Sometimes the opponent is a stand-in for a part of you. Do you want to stay in the job and also leave it, or love someone and resent them at once? Inner conflicts like these often show up as a fight with someone you can't quite place, and the dream can be read as two sides of you finally having it out.

Standing up for yourself

Fighting can also be good news. If you've spent years avoiding conflict, a dream where you finally hit back is often a sign of growing confidence, a self that's ready to defend its ground. People going through a breakup, a difficult boss or a family dispute often notice these dreams turn up just before they say what they think.

Feeling under attack

When you didn't start the fight, the dream may be about pressure you feel from outside, criticism, competition or a situation that feels hostile. One theory of dreaming says attacks and fights in dreams are the brain rehearsing threats, a kind of night-time training for danger.^[1] It's a theory, but it matches how often these dreams follow stressful days.

Dreaming about fighting people you know

This is the most searched version, and it's usually about the relationship itself. Fighting a friend, a sibling or a colleague tends to mirror a tension you haven't voiced, even a small one (a comment that stung, a favour that wasn't returned). But if you were fighting someone you get on well with, the dream may be borrowing their face for a conflict that belongs somewhere else. Who else in your life do they remind you of?

Dreaming about fighting with your partner or family

Rows with a partner, a parent or a child are among the most common fighting dreams, and among the most upsetting to wake from. They rarely predict a real argument. More often they bring up an old pattern (the parent who never listened, the partner who always has the last word) that something recent has stirred up again. The dream replays it with more volume than you'd allow yourself awake, which is partly why it feels so raw in the morning.

Dreaming about fighting a stranger

When you don't know your opponent, the fight is often with a side of yourself. Jung would call it the shadow (more on that below), the traits you dislike and push away, which in dreams often turn up as a stranger of your own sex. Ask what this person was like, aggressive or sly or smug, and whether that's a quality you'd hate to see in yourself.

Dreaming about fighting and winning

Winning a fight usually feels good on waking, and it often matches a real gain in confidence. You've dealt with a difficult person, got through a hard month, or made a decision you'd been avoiding, and the dream marks it. This is also the version people search with "spiritual" in mind, and most traditions read it the same way, as overcoming something, a temptation or a fear or an old wound.

Dreaming about fighting and your punches having no power

Many people know this one, where you swing as hard as you can and your fist lands like a pillow, or your arms move as if through water. Part of it is physical, since during dreaming sleep your muscles are mostly switched off and the dream seems to pick up on it. But it often shows up when you feel powerless in a real situation, putting in effort that doesn't seem to land, and that's the part worth looking at.

Dreaming about being attacked and fighting back

Being attacked is frightening, but fighting back changes the dream. It suggests you're not willing to be pushed around, even if you feel cornered. These dreams often arrive when you're finally ready to deal with someone who has been taking advantage of you. If you lost, think about where you feel outnumbered. If you held your own, the dream is on your side.

Dreaming about fighting a demon

Fighting a demon or an evil presence is one of the more intense versions. It's usually about something that feels bigger than an ordinary problem, like an addiction, a depression, a guilt you can't put down, or a fear that has grown too large. In religious terms it's spiritual warfare, and many believers read winning such a fight as a sign of strength. Psychologically, the demon is often the problem at its most frightening, and fighting it at all is a good sign.

Dreaming about watching people fight

Watching others fight puts you on the sidelines of a conflict, and it often comes up when people around you are at odds (parents arguing, colleagues falling out, friends taking sides) and you feel caught between them. If you wanted to step in and couldn't, ask what's stopping you in waking life, and if you felt relieved to be out of it, that's worth noticing too.

Dreaming about fighting according to Jung and Freud

Fighting dreams get less attention from the classic writers than you'd expect, but both Jung and Freud left ideas that fit them.

Jung: the opponent as the shadow

Jung's idea of the shadow fits fight dreams closely. He described it as the part of the personality we refuse to own, a figure that tends to come into dreams as a stranger or an enemy of the dreamer's own sex.^[2] Fighting it is the natural first reaction. Read through that idea, the useful question is less who won than what the opponent was showing you about yourself.

Freud: the anger that needs a disguise

Freud's rule for dreams in general fits fight dreams. A dream, in his reading, is a disguised wish, and anger at someone you're supposed to love or obey (a parent, a partner, a boss you can't afford to cross) is exactly the kind of wish that needs a disguise.^[3] He also began with the day before the dream, so the row you swallowed at dinner is the likeliest source of the punches. If your opponent had a knife or a dagger, his symbol list has a sexual reading for that, since long sharp weapons were male symbols for him, and whether it fits your dream is for your own associations to say.

Other readings

Artemidorus, the Greek author of the most complete dream book to survive from the ancient world, sorted fights by who you fought.^[4] Fighting your own people was a bad sign and fighting outsiders a lesser one, and a fight with a superior meant being badly treated by that person. A sword stood for the dreamer's temper, and single combat for a lawsuit. Calvin Hall, the American psychologist who spent his career gathering and tallying dream reports, and his colleague Robert Van de Castle measured how common the theme is. In their sample of college students' dreams, gathered in the late 1940s and early 1950s, 45% contained at least one aggressive act.^[5] In those encounters the dreamer was the victim about half the time (48% in men's dreams, 57% in women's) and the aggressor under a third (31% and 28%), so being on the receiving end is more common than starting it.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of fighting in dreams

Two passages in the Bible sit behind most spiritual readings of fight dreams, one about a single night's wrestling and one about what the real struggle is.

Fighting in the Bible

The best known fight in the Bible is Jacob wrestling all night with a mysterious figure and refusing to let go "except thou bless me". He comes away limping, with a new name.^[6] And in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul says the real struggle is "not against flesh and blood",^[7] which is where much of the Christian talk of spiritual warfare, and of fighting demons in dreams, comes from.

Questions to ask about your fighting dream

Before settling on a reading, go back over the fight itself. These questions usually show what it was about.

• Who were you fighting, and did they remind you of anyone?
• Who started it, and why?
• Did you win, lose, or wake up mid-fight?
• Did your punches land, or did they have no strength?
• Who in your life have you been angry with, and not said so?

Oniri works through the same sort of questions with you before reading your dream. And if you're ever acting out fights in your sleep, hitting or kicking for real, see a doctor about it.