Dreams of Falling

When asked, both men and women usually list falling as one of their most frequent dreams. The falling may occur during the dream while walking down a street or sidewalk. One small step and suddenly you are falling, not quickly hitting the ground, but rather falling as if you are freefalling through the air. Falling dreams most frequently occur during the first stage of sleep and you may notice your arms or legs involuntarily jerk or twitch, which usually wakes you. There is an old wives tale that if you hit the ground before you awake, you will die. This is not true, although most people wake up before dreaming they hit the ground.

Losing Control

Normally when you dream you are falling, it is because you feel like you have lost control, either of your life or a situation. It can caused by something as devastating as losing your job or something as small as losing your keys. During the day, we tend to keep our emotions and thoughts tightly wrapped. You may be so used to wearing many hats during the day – mother, father, employee, employer, teacher, student – that you don’t take time to consider things that are really bothering you. But, at night when asleep, all of our unconscious thoughts and fears are usually set free.

Life Stressors

There may be stages in your life when you are accustomed to dealing with a great deal of stress. Take a mother for example. She usually has to be able to multitask during the day, changing the baby, preparing food, cleaning house, washing dishes, feeding the baby. But, if something out of the ordinary happens, say, she has another child or a parent or sibling comes to live with her, that one event may be enough to literally push her over the edge. She may have dreams of falling because that one added thing in her already busy life now makes her feel like she is losing control of the situation. Losing your footing in a dream may also happen to people who are able to juggle many things during the day. They feel that they cannot lose control during the day, but are so overwhelmed with what they are doing that they may lose control while dreaming and dream of falling.

Make Time to Relax

If you have too many things to do during the day and simply cannot reduce your schedule, but cannot shake the dreams of falling, consider spreading your workload. Ask a spouse or child to take on some of your household responsibilities to help ease your load. Ask a family member or friend to baby sit for a few hours while you catch your breath. If you find yourself working 60 hours a week, check your budget to see if you can financially afford to cut back to 40 or 50 hours a week. We all tend to try to be superhuman today, but your dreams of falling are a reminder that while you think you are handing everything just fine during the waking hours, your unconscious knows that you are overloaded with stress.

While you may have reoccurring dreams that you are falling, you may find that it will happen intermittently. You may have the dream several nights in a row, but once you have solved the problem bothering you, it may not occur again for months or even years – whenever a new episode arises that causes you to feel anxious or stressed.

As with most dreams, we have the falling dream when we are feeling anxious or worried about something. Most people usually just ignore the dream and it eventually goes away as you work through the tension. But, if it is really bothering you, examine your life and try to rid yourself of some of the duties you have to lessen the pressure you feel to perform.