Dreaming about insects
Insect dreams are reported with a distinctive quality: the distress comes from number and from proximity to the body rather than from any individual creature. Infestation is the characteristic report.
Also searched as: bugs, bees, wasps, ants, swarm, infestation
Insects behave differently in dream reports from every other animal in this category, because the unit is not the animal.
What people describe is quantity: a surface covered, something coming out of a wall, a swarm arriving, insects on or under the skin. The individual insect is almost never the subject, and dreamers rarely identify a species with confidence.
The second distinctive feature is the body. Insect dreams involve contact with the dreamer's own skin far more often than dreams of larger animals, and that proximity accounts for most of the reported disgust.
Common associations
- Number and loss of control, which is what a swarm is.
- Contamination and disgust, a response that behaves differently from fear.
- Small persistent problems, an intuitive reading that dreamers reach for readily and that nothing supports.
- The body's surface, in the on-the-skin reports.
Positive readings
Bees specifically are reported more warmly than other insects, with associations of industry and order, and dreamers sometimes describe a hive calmly.
Ordinary insects in an outdoor setting are unremarkable and largely unreported for that reason.
Difficult readings
Infestation is the distressing report: walls, floors, food, a body. Dreamers describe disgust rather than fear, and the two produce different waking states.
Insects on or under the skin are the most distressing version. Where this occurs alongside a real sensation, it is worth being aware that persistent crawling sensations have medical explanations worth investigating rather than interpreting.
Psychological perspectives
Disgust is a distinct emotional system from fear, with its own physiology and its own function around contamination and disease, and insect dreams are one of the clearer places where dream research meets it.
The threat-simulation account fits less well here than for predators, because the response being rehearsed is avoidance of contamination rather than escape from a hunter.
Cultural and historical
Locusts and swarms carry heavy weight in the biblical material as instruments of devastation, which is where much of the Western dread of the swarm image comes from.
The bee is treated exceptionally across a range of traditions, with associations of industry, order and messages, and is frequently exempted from the general reading of insects.
Classical manuals treat different insects entirely separately, which is more careful than the modern habit of a single "bugs" entry.
What the sleep science says
Disgust and fear are distinct systems, and insect dreams engage the former, which is consistent with what dreamers describe.
No evidence associates insect dreams with small problems, money, or any of the other standard dictionary readings.
Your own context
- How many? The number is usually the dream.
- Were they on you?
- Was it disgust or fear? These are different and the distinction is useful.
- Bees specifically? Those reports read differently.
If this recurs
Recurring infestation dreams tend to arrive during periods of overwhelm and to feature the dreamer's own home.
Where they involve sensation on the skin and recur, that is worth mentioning to a doctor rather than tracking, since persistent formication has physical causes.
Emotions often reported
- disgust
- unease
- panic
- helplessness
- urgency
- fear
Specific insects dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
Where it happened
What state it was in
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- How many, and where?
- Were they touching me?
- Was the feeling disgust or fear?
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.The Reinterpretation of Dreams: An Evolutionary Hypothesis of the Function of DreamingPeer-reviewed research
Antti Revonsuo (2000) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Cited for: The threat-simulation hypothesis. That the over-representation of threatening content in dreams may be functional rather than incidental.
- 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.The dream narratives of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament (Genesis 20, 28, 37 and 40 to 41; Daniel 2, 4 and 7; Matthew 1 to 2 and 27; Acts 10 and 16)Religious or philosophical text
Various, compiled
Cited for: What the biblical texts themselves record about dreams: that they are treated as a channel of divine communication, that interpretation is presented as a gift rather than a technique, and which specific dreams and readings appear. Cited for what the text says, never as evidence about dreaming.
- 4.The Content Analysis of DreamsAcademic book
Calvin Hall and Robert Van de Castle (1966) · Appleton-Century-Crofts
Cited for: The standard coding system for dream content, and the normative frequencies that later studies are compared against. The reason claims like "aggression is more common in dreams than friendliness" can be stated numerically at all.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of insects 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
- PlaceChildhood homeThe most reported dream setting there is. It usually appears altered (extra rooms, wrong layout, doors that were not there) and the alterations are more informative than the house.
- EmotionHelplessnessHelplessness is one of the most reported dream feelings, and it has an unusually strong physiological contributor: during REM sleep the body genuinely cannot act, and dreams frequently build a story around that.
- SymbolSpiderSpiders join snakes as the animals most over-represented in dreams relative to real encounters. Reports split hard between the creature and the web, and the web is the more interesting half.
- AnimalRatRats produce disgust rather than fear, which puts them in a small group with insects and separates them from every predator in this file. The reports centre on number, on the domestic setting, and on the animal being where it should not be.
- AnimalFlyFlies are reported for sound as much as for sight, which is rare: the buzzing is described unprompted and is frequently the only auditory content in the dream.
- AnimalWormWorms produce disgust rather than fear, and the reports divide by location: in the ground, which is mild, and in or on the body, which is among the more distressing images in the database.
If you have this one often
A dream that frightens you and keeps coming back is its own subject. The nightmares section covers what is known about why they recur, the one rewriting technique with real evidence behind it, and when a nightmare stops being a dream problem and becomes something a clinician should hear about.
Records that mention insects
These pages link to insects, 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.