Dreaming about a secret
Dreamers report holding a secret of enormous importance and being unable to say what it is. The weight is generated and the content is not, which makes this one of the purest examples of the pattern this database keeps finding.
Also searched as: keeping a secret in a dream, being told something, i knew something i should not, a confidence
The unnameable secret is the characteristic report. The dreamer knows something significant, knows it must not be said, and cannot state it even to themselves.
Being told one is the second version and behaves like every message in this database: the telling happens and the content does not survive.
Being about to reveal it is common and does not resolve, which is the ordinary structure.
Somebody else knowing is a third and produces a specific exposure that belongs with the shame material.
Common associations
- Weight without content.
- A message that does not survive.
- Revelation deferred.
- Exposure, in the somebody-knows version.
Positive readings
The recognition is genuinely useful, because dreamers frequently wake convinced they knew something important and try to recover it.
There is nothing to recover, and knowing that saves the morning.
Difficult readings
The residue can be strong and dreamers describe an unsettled sense of having lost something.
That sense is manufactured and it is worth naming as such.
Psychological perspectives
Dreams generate significance separately from anything significant, which the laughing entry describes for humour and the anticipation entry for dread. A secret is that finding applied to importance itself.
So the feeling of holding something enormous is real, and there was never anything held.
That is one of the more useful things this database can tell somebody about their own dreams, and this entry is where it is stated most directly.
Cultural and historical
Secret knowledge received in dreams is a serious category in a number of traditions and is among the oldest kinds of dream account there is.
Mystery traditions with content that may not be disclosed are real and historical, and the archive records them without treating the modern reports as continuous with them.
What the sleep science says
Reasonably supported: dreams generate feelings of significance independently of content.
Well documented: dreams do not generate stable linguistic content.
Not established: any recoverable meaning.
Your own context
- Could you say what it was?
- Were you told, or did you know?
- Did you nearly say it?
- How important did it feel?
If this recurs
Log whether the content was ever available. Across a month it will not have been, and seeing that written repeatedly does more than any single explanation.
Emotions often reported
- urgency
- anticipation
- shame
- dread
- curiosity
- loneliness
Specific a secret dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
What happened
What state it was in
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- Could I say what it was?
- Was I told, or did I just know?
- How big did it feel?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
4 references. What these labels mean
- 1.Dreaming: A Conceptual Framework for Philosophy of Mind and Empirical ResearchAcademic book
Jennifer M. Windt (2015) · MIT Press
Cited for: A modern philosophical treatment of what dreams are, including the immersive-spatiotemporal-hallucination account and the status of dream reports as evidence.
- 2.The Scientific Study of Dreams: Neural Networks, Cognitive Development and Content AnalysisAcademic book
G. William Domhoff (2003) · American Psychological Association
Cited for: The continuity hypothesis (that dream content largely reflects waking concerns) and a sustained critique of symbolic dream interpretation as an evidential method.
- 3.Nightmares: A New Neurocognitive ModelPeer-reviewed research
Tore Nielsen and Ross Levin (2007) · Sleep Medicine Reviews
Cited for: A model of nightmare production combining affect load and affect distress, and the distinction between bad dreams and nightmares proper.
- 4.The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream InterpretationAcademic book
John C. Lamoreaux (2002) · State University of New York Press
Cited for: Scholarly treatment of how the Muslim dream-interpretation tradition formed, who its early figures were, and how the manuals attributed to them were assembled.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of a secret have gone for other people, in their own words. Nothing here is an interpretation of anyone else's dream. It is a record of what happened and what it was like.
Nothing here yet. Be the first to say how this has gone for you.
Related records
- SymbolBoxThe unopened box is the report. Dreamers describe knowing something is inside, frequently knowing what, and either not opening it or waking before they do.
- ActionHiding somethingDistinct from hiding yourself, which has its own entry. Concealing an object produces two failures in sequence: the hiding place is never good enough, and the dreamer cannot afterwards remember where it was.
- SymbolAn announcementA voice with authority saying something the dreamer cannot make out. It combines the two things dreams do worst with language: they cannot generate content, and they barely generate sound at all.
- ActionForgetting somethingA quiet, extremely common dream that is rarely written about: the certainty that something important has been forgotten, with no ability to say what. The not-knowing is the entire content.
- ActionA gameGames in dreams have rules the dreamer does not know and cannot ask about, and everybody else appears to know them. That structure is the clearest statement of something the first-day, examination and competition entries each describe in part.
- ActionBeing a child againDreamers regularly report being their childhood age with their adult mind, and accepting it entirely. The age is usually one where a great deal was encoded: the settings and the people come with it.