Dreaming about being in the wrong body
Being somebody else, and knowing it, and continuing. It completes the identity argument: dreams assert who you are with as little regard for the evidence as they assert who anybody else is.
Also searched as: i was someone else, a different body, i was a man, i was older, not my hands
The reports describe a body that is not the dreamer's, occupied without difficulty. Age, size, sex and ability all vary from the dreamer's own, and none of it raises an objection at the time.
Hands are the commonest way it is noticed, which fits: hands are what the reality-check literature says to look at, and they are what a dreamer looks at first.
A minority report being a specific other person, which moves those reports towards the composite and mimic material.
Being unable to use the body is a separate matter and is the ordinary motor finding rather than an identity report.
Common associations
- Self-identity asserted, as everything else is.
- Hands, as the point of noticing.
- No objection, until waking.
- Being somebody specific, in the minority.
Positive readings
A strong dream sign, and one of the few that involves checking yourself rather than the world.
The reassurance matters too: this is common, it is ordinary, and it says nothing about the dreamer.
Difficult readings
Waking disorientation, occasionally strong.
Where a dreamer has a difficult relationship with their own body, these dreams can carry that, and the dream is following it rather than commenting.
Psychological perspectives
The database has documented dreams asserting identity for other people, for places, and for relationships. This is the same assertion turned inward, and it is arguably the strongest form: the one identity a dreamer might be expected to verify is the one they are inside, and they do not.
That completes the argument. Identity is a property the dream supplies, not a conclusion it reaches, and it applies to the dreamer as much as to anybody in the dream.
The hands detail connects this to the reality-check material directly.
Cultural and historical
Transformation and exchange of bodies are old and widespread narrative structures and appear in a great many traditions.
Soul travel and being elsewhere in another form are serious beliefs held seriously in several, and the watching-yourself entry makes the same point: the archive records and does not adjudicate.
What the sleep science says
Reasonably supported: identity in dreams is asserted rather than derived, including the dreamer's own.
Well documented: hands as an effective reality check.
Not established: any meaning in whose body it was.
Your own context
- Whose body was it?
- How did you notice?
- Did you look at your hands?
- Did it bother you at the time?
If this recurs
Log with the watching-yourself and composite reports. It is the identity group and it is now complete.
Emotions often reported
- confusion
- curiosity
- detachment
- unease
- wonder
- surprise
Specific being in the wrong body dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- Whose body was it?
- How did I notice?
- Did I look at my hands?
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.Lucid Dreaming Verified by Volitional Communication During REM SleepPeer-reviewed research
Stephen LaBerge, Lynne Nagel, William Dement and Vincent Zarcone (1980) · Perceptual and Motor Skills
Cited for: The eye-signalling experiments that established lucid dreaming as a verifiable state rather than a self-report.
- 3.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.
- 4.Lucid Dreaming: A State of Consciousness with Features of Both Waking and Non-Lucid DreamingPeer-reviewed research
Ursula Voss, Romain Holzmann, Inka Tuin and J. Allan Hobson (2009) · Sleep
Cited for: EEG evidence that lucid REM sleep is a distinct state, with frontal activity in higher frequency bands than non-lucid REM.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of being in the wrong body 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
- SymbolHandsHands are the single most useful thing in a dream to look at, because they are the most unreliable thing dreams render. Extra fingers, missing fingers and hands that change on a second look are the classic reality check.
- SymbolThings changing sizeA specific and well-described experience: the dreamer or the room changes size, or proportions stop making sense. It has a name outside dream research and a documented association with migraine and with the edges of sleep.
- 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.
- ActionWatching yourselfDreams relocate the point of view far more readily than waking imagination does, and dreamers report watching themselves without finding it strange at the time. It is common, ordinary, and not the same thing as an out-of-body experience.
- 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.
- 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.