Mirror dreams are wild! You have a dream. You see a mirror. You see yourself, but it might not be you. What does it mean? Why?

We don’t know much about mirror dreams. Dream scientists use a thing called the “Typical Dream Questionnaire” to study dreams. It has about 55 dream topics like flying, being naked, and teeth falling out. But mirror dreams are simply not there. So we actually don’t know much about mirror dreams.

What are mirror dreams like?

People can seem themselves in a mirror, but sometimes the reflection is distorted or strange. 

Here is on example from reddit:

I’ve seen myself in a dream mirror before, and both times I looked like a weird insect-mermaid hybrid.

Here is another example:

I was in a bed with a big mirror right next to it. When I looked in the mirror, I had the face of a girl I knew. It was still me, but it was like a bad photoshop. It freaked me out.

I looked away and back several times. Nothing changed. Then suddenly, I looked normal in the mirror. Or so I thought. 

My face started to change. An evil look came over my reflection. My eyes rolled back and I saw only the whites of my eyes. Then the reflection started to smile this creepy smile. 

They can even be scary like this dream

I was at my grandma’s house, lying on the couch, when I felt something in my mouth. I went to the bathroom to spit it out. I saw myself into the mirror and I noticed that I had some plastic coming out of my mouth. I started pulling it out, but it was very long and it was from deep into my throat. I looked like a clown pulling a long tissue out of a pocket.

Mirror dreams are showing your “reflection”, but it might not be you or the way you usually think of yourself. 

Or strange like this dream:

I was lucid dreaming last night, but only partially able to control things. I decided I wanted to change the way I looked, so I stood in front of a mirror and was morphing my nose in to different shapes.. though annoyingly none of them were what I wanted. Anyway, while I was still looking in the mirror, I started getting spots on my face. I leaned in and squeezed one and a huge plant sapling came out of it and was hanging out if my face (it’s making me sick just thinking about it) the other spots were the same, either saplings or roots. I was still lucid dreaming at this point so I tried really hard to focus on them going away but they didn’t and more kept coming. I eventually decided to wake myself up.

How common are mirror dreams?

We estimate that mirror dreams are not super common, but they aren’t rare. About 2% of posts to dream subreddits mention mirrors and 1% of representative dreams collected from surveys mention mirrors. For context, these are about twice as common as zombie dreams, but half as common as flying dreams. 

What do dreams about mirrors mean?

There are a number of different sites that talk about the meaning of mirror dreams. This site breaks down different meanings if depending upon the type of mirror and what you saw within the mirror. This site will list specific meanings of different things within the mirror.

I personally think mirror dreams could be particularly revealing of how you think about yourself. When you look in a mirror during a dream, you get to see a representation of yourself in the dreamworld. This is pretty amazing.

So what do you think they mean? Why do you think we have them?

Learn more about mirror dreams

One of the best ways to learn more about mirror dreams is simply to learn more about your own dreams.

@dreamwellbewell The meaning of mirror dreams #dream #dreamtok #dreaminterpretation ♬ original sound – dreamwellbewell – DreamWell