Dreaming about hiding something
Distinct 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.
Also searched as: concealing something, burying something, hiding an object, putting something somewhere safe
Insufficiency is the first failure. Dreamers describe moving a thing repeatedly, each place being inadequate, and never settling.
Forgetting is the second and frequently arrives in the same dream: the object is hidden and its location is immediately lost, which is the unearned-certainty machinery running backwards.
What is being hidden is often unidentifiable, and dreamers report knowing it must be concealed without knowing what it is or why.
That combination, a compulsion with no object and no reason, is the same structure the guilt and forgetting entries describe.
Common associations
- No hiding place is sufficient.
- Immediate forgetting, of where it went.
- An object that cannot be named.
- A reason that is never supplied.
Positive readings
Little directly. The recognition is useful: a compulsion with no stated object is a generated feeling, not an instruction.
Difficult readings
The reports carry a low anxious pressure and are wearing rather than frightening.
Where the object is identifiable and connects to something real, the dream is following that.
Psychological perspectives
Two findings meet. The unresolving task supplies the endless relocation, and the generated-feeling pattern supplies the compulsion without a reason.
The forgetting is the more interesting half, because it shows the same absence of storage the writing, counting and building entries describe: a location put down in a dream is not held.
So the object is not lost. It was never anywhere.
Cultural and historical
Burying and concealing appear in interpretive traditions, usually read as something withheld or unacknowledged.
That reading requires the dream to have a subject in mind, and these reports characteristically do not have one, which is a point against it.
What the sleep science says
Reasonably supported: dream emotion and compulsion can be generated without content.
Reasonably supported: dream content is not stored, so locations do not persist.
Not established: any meaning in what is hidden.
Your own context
- What were you hiding?
- Did you know why?
- Did you find a place?
- Could you have found it again?
If this recurs
Log whether the object was ever named. Across a month most dreamers find it never is, which is the same finding the forgetting entry reports.
Emotions often reported
- urgency
- anxiety
- guilt
- frustration
- dread
- confusion
Specific hiding something 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.
- What was I hiding?
- Did I know why?
- Could I have found it again?
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.Oneirocritica (The Interpretation of Dreams)Historical dream record
Artemidorus of Daldis (200)
Cited for: The earliest surviving systematic dream dictionary, and evidence that dream interpretation has been organised by symbol and by the dreamer's circumstances for at least eighteen centuries.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of hiding something 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
- ActionHidingHiding dreams are the quiet half of the chase family. Reports centre on the effort of staying still and silent, and on the specific dread of being found rather than caught.
- ActionSearchingSearching dreams almost never resolve. That is not a symbol (dreams are structurally poor at completing a search) but what is being looked for, and for whom, is worth recording.
- 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.
- EmotionGuiltThe clearest case in the database of an emotion arriving before its cause. Dreamers routinely report overwhelming guilt with no offence attached, and the offence is missing because there never was one.
- 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.
- ActionA secretDreamers 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.
Records that mention hiding something
These pages link to hiding something, either as something reported in the same dream or as a related subject. This page does not point back at all of them, so the list is assembled rather than chosen.