What Do Dreams About Being Chased Mean?

You are out of breath, huffing and puffing your way through deserted streets or stairs, being pursued by someone or something.

What Happens Next
You wake up feeling exhausted and worried about what you just experienced.

While it isn't uncommon to dream of being chased, it is something that you need to personally analyze in order to find the solution. There's a question worth pondering about - in your waking life, do you face difficult circumstances or do you run away from them?

While this question may seem rather irrelevant, the fact is that your actions in the real waking life are reflected in the dreams that you have at night. The chase or dreams about being chased is a common theme, and often stems from suppressed feelings of anxiety in the waking life.

Most often, the scenario of the pursuit is that of being attacked by a person, animal, or a strange being. It is the unknown that makes you want to flee from the situation and seek shelter in the pursuit. The only means to find a meaning in this chase is to know who is it that is chasing you, and how often does the dream recur.

Dreams of being chased simply means that your consciousness is making you aware of a situation or person you are avoiding in the real life. Here, 'who' is important. In most cases, the person who is being chased sees the potential threat in the form of an animal, an individual, or an object.

• Are you feeling guilty about something?
• Are you avoiding confronting a particular aspect or behavior of that person in particular?
• What is it that you are avoiding in your real life?

• Are you constantly being belittled by your seniors or the people around you?
• Do you feel entrapped or anxious either at work or at the home frontier?
• What is it that is hindering your peace - is it insecurity, anxiety, or simply fear?

Psychologists believe that a person who constantly feels his/her life is a rut, and is unable to voice his/her innermost desires, are at the receiving end of such dreams. Whatever is it that has the most impact on the waking life manifests itself as a dominant aspect in the unconscious mind.

The fears that paralyze you during the day, be it confronting an individual or family member for that matter, or a stressful situation that you are in, have a major impact on your unconscious mind, and hence, manifest themselves in full vigor at night.

Knowing the attacker helps in analyzing the situation. Do you see monstrous beings, or simply see people you have never come across in your real life? In most situations, being chased by something that is monstrous is suggestive of the personal fears and failures that are unacceptable in real life.

Seeing a masked attacker is akin to running away from your own guilty consciousness. It suggests you are hiding something from others. Here, it's your own consciousness that is chasing you. The masked individual or monster simply becomes a medium for your guilty conscious to reveal itself.

Dreaming about these creatures as hideous and monstrous beings chasing you down the alley could suggest a recent encounter. Here, it could simply mean that your mind is working a way out of the fear. Recollect your dream - where is it that you are being chased? Is it your workplace, school, or your home?

These little things matter when it comes to determining the reason you are being chased. In such cases, you can put the blame on expectations or your inability to fulfill demands made by people around you. Ask yourself, what is it about this person chasing you that you are avoiding?

Are you running away from committing yourself, or are you indebted to this person in someway or the other. The chase, in such cases, shows your vulnerability to the relation with the person.

Looking to find the meaning of your dream? Look into the minute details of the dream. Recall the distance between you and your pursuer. It will help throw light on your situation. Just in case the pursuer is on your heels, it means that your mind is perpetually occupied with the issue.

It is indicative that the problem is indeed a major concern, and is not going to go away anytime soon. You would better take heed and face the situation at the earliest, to stop the dream from recurring. If the pursuer is far away, and is not making any quick advances on you, then it means that you are able to distance yourself from the problem.

In other words, you are successfully letting go something that had been previously hounding you. In most circumstances, the entire action is carried out in slow motion, giving you a clearer picture. This also means that your mind is taking time to formulate a way out of the unpleasant situation.

Sometimes, these dreams are interestingly irrelevant, and stem up from your fear of the real. Imagine being chased by a dinosaur and believing it to come true in real life, even though you are aware dinosaurs are as extinct as the word itself. I must say, the mind is surely a powerful machine, it's you who decides how to control it.

While it is true that dreaming about being chased is a sign of vulnerability, it can also be taken as a sign of not wanting to fight for what is supposedly right. It would help if you make a note of such dreams and the frequency of the occurrences, to assess your situation.

The only advice worth giving at this juncture is to confront the situation that seems as a threat. It would be good to remember, fear is not what incapacitates, but the lack of taking the right decision at the right moment, that makes us falter.