Dreaming about somebody who knows you
A person the dreamer does not recognise, who clearly knows them, and the dreamer goes along with it. The social awkwardness of not being able to admit it is the reported content, which is a very specific thing for a dream to produce.
Also searched as: a stranger who knew me, they knew my name, someone i should recognise, being expected
The characteristic report is bluffing. The dreamer is greeted by name, does not know the person, and continues the conversation rather than saying so.
That is unusually socially sophisticated for a dream and dreamers frequently remark on it: the reduced evaluation that lets a house be the wrong shape apparently does not stop them managing an awkward moment.
Being expected somewhere is a related version, where arrangements have been made that the dreamer knows nothing about.
The person is frequently described as almost recognisable, which puts these reports next to the face and composite material.
Common associations
- Being known without knowing.
- Bluffing, which is oddly competent.
- Arrangements you were not party to.
- Almost recognisable, in the face reports.
Positive readings
Little in the dream. The observation about social competence is genuinely interesting and is worth noticing in yourself.
It is also a clean dream sign: being greeted by a stranger who knows you is checkable.
Difficult readings
Mild social discomfort rather than distress, and it is one of the more relatable dreams in the database.
Where it recurs alongside real difficulty recognising people, that is worth mentioning to a doctor rather than to a journal.
Psychological perspectives
The dream supplies the other person's knowledge of the dreamer in the same way it supplies everything else about them: as an attribute, not as a history.
What is interesting is the dreamer's response. Social reasoning appears to survive better in dreams than spatial or logical reasoning does, which fits the wider observation that dreams are unusually rich in social content and unusually poor at physics.
That asymmetry is a real finding and this entry is a good illustration of it.
Cultural and historical
Being recognised by somebody unknown is a recurring structure in religious and folk narrative, frequently with the stranger turning out to be significant.
That is available as a reading and the entry notes it without adopting it.
What the sleep science says
Reasonably supported: dreams are rich in social content and comparatively poor at physical and logical consistency.
Reasonably supported: dream characters are supplied with attributes rather than histories.
Not established: any meaning in who the person is.
Your own context
- Did you admit you did not know them?
- Did they use your name?
- Was the face nearly familiar?
- Had arrangements been made?
If this recurs
Log with the stranger and face reports. The near-recognition is usually the thread.
Emotions often reported
- embarrassment
- confusion
- unease
- curiosity
- surprise
- detachment
Specific somebody who knows you dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
What happened
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- Did I admit I did not know them?
- Did they use my name?
- Was the face nearly familiar?
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 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.
- 2.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.
- 3.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.
- 4.Gender Differences in Dream Recall: A Meta-AnalysisPeer-reviewed research
Michael Schredl and Iris Reinhard (2008) · Journal of Sleep Research
Cited for: Dream-recall frequency as a measurable, individually stable trait, and the factors that move it.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of somebody who knows you 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
- SymbolFaceFaces are the most attended thing in dream content and the least stable. A face that changes, that will not resolve, or that belongs to the wrong person is among the most reported and most unsettling experiences there is.
- PersonStrangerUnknown figures make up a large share of dream characters. Most are scenery. The ones worth a note are the ones the dreamer felt something specific about, without being told anything.
- PersonSomebody who was two peopleAlmost every dreamer has had one and almost every dreamer assumes it is peculiar to them. A person who is unmistakably two people at once, or who is one person wearing another's face, is common and follows directly from how dream characters are made.
- EventFirst dayThe dream of not knowing the rules. Dreamers describe being somewhere everybody else understands and they do not, and it recurs decades after any real first day.
- PersonA colleagueThe purest demonstration of the availability finding in the database. People report dreaming about colleagues they barely think about, and are troubled by it, and the explanation is simply that they see them constantly.
- PersonA soldierFor most dreamers a soldier is a costume: a figure carrying authority and threat with no personal experience behind it. For people who have served or lived through conflict it is not, and those reports belong with the trauma material rather than here.
Records that mention somebody who knows you
These pages link to somebody who knows you, 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.