Dreams belong to a very subtle dimension of our reality.
Having a dream about dead people or any other oniric elaboration you could have, integrates a lot of archetypal and symbolic content.
When analyzed from the psychological or more skeptical side, these dreams are based on memories, emotions and unconscious impulses, depending on the point of view. However, when it comes to getting an esoteric interpretation, such dreams (visitation dreams) are open doors to higher dimensions of consciousness, previous lives, akashic memories, and psychic abilities.
Today, as a psychologist, I will explain and share here the main interpretations from both the psychological and spiritual sides about dreaming of hugging a deceased person. so keep reading
Psychological Interpretation:
The feeling..
One of the first causes you could consider if you had a dream of someone deceased, is that you miss that person. That is clearly an option.
However, as ‘missing’ someone could have several subconscious backgrounds, Nevertheless, the details about the feelings you experience during the dream and during the hug, are very much important.
- Joy: If you experienced joy while hugging the person (in the dream), it can be interpreted as happiness for the relieve of that person, especially if s/he was suffering from some illness or having a toxic life. Nevertheless, if this joy is somehow related to a hidden resentment or hate, then that ‘joy’ feeling could mean a contemptuous reaction to cover it.
- Sadness: Just as joy… sadness when hugging a deceased person in a dream may have it’s ‘Yins’ and ‘Yangs’. On one side, during the grieving process or even before someone’s death, this kind of dream could be more frequent due to the feeling of longing or fear. On the other side, hidden resentments can ‘make’ you feel sadness, to hide deeper & more complex feelings that include anger and abandonment.
Dreaming of hugging your dead Father or dead Mother:
Especially when both or any of them have passed away a long time ago, dreaming with them hugging you could have specific backgrounds. These would apply also for other older relatives differentiated by the genre.
- Father and male relatives: the father always means abundance, financial health, and security about who you are and where are you going to. Having fears about these aspects of your life would push your subconscious to make dreams about receiving hugs from him or any other significant male relative.
- Mother and female relatives: As mother represents love, dreaming of hugging a deceased mother could be closely related to disturbed social, familiar, or conjugal aspects in your life. Also to feeling unprotected and insecure. Lack of food or good nourishment in the physical and emotional life could be another cause.
Dreaming about Hugging a Stranger – Someone you don’t (or barely) know:
The most usual case is to dream about a loved person, or at least someone you knew. Nevertheless, what happens when that person who died is unknown or you have barely seen him/her in your life, or even worse, when you didn’t even know that individual?
Here more complex elements about the subconscious world come into play.
It’s important in this kind of dreams to pay attention to every small detail possible. It doesn’t matter how weird, normal or insignificant they could look like, they could be hiding the memory about someone else (alive or dead), or maybe just the circumstance(s) where you met that person.
Take a look at:
- The gestures of that person or if he looks like someone you know.
- Whatever s/he wears. Something as basic as the glasses could be decisive.
- The place where that dream happens.
- Whatever s/he says.
Who takes the initiative of the hug?
Dreaming about someone hugging you is sometimes perceived as intrusive, meaning that there’s a discomfort about that (kind of) individual. In other cases, depending on the person you’ve dreamed about, it’s just a message of the subconscious asking for love or protection.
Nevertheless, dreaming of this frequently clearly would mean a lot of fear during the relationship with that person, maybe because you were dependent not just on the physical or caregiving dimensions, but for hiding emotional shadows with or about that person.
Generally, If you’re the one who steps forward to give the hug, it could be the need of love. But in the above case, it could be to give love too. Or to get something else from that person.
Spiritual interpretations:
Mediumism and communication with dead people
It’s important to mention this interpretation just after the psychological conceptions, as the idea of getting in contact with deceased people is the first one that comes to mind when feeling nostalgic for someone or just because of trying to get a quick answer about the unexplainable.
Nevertheless, the two mediums I’ve known so far said that most of these people, when trying to get in contact with the living ones, mostly say that they’re doing fine there and that they like to be remembered with some belongings or photo of them.
Sometimes they give even explicit suggestions or help for some problems, with the hug as an extra ailment. Even though this could be interpreted as the subconscious, giving you an answer the conscious didn’t dare to show, adding a hug includes more emotional issues to the oniric elaboration.
The same applies when it’s someone you don’t know. Mediums often find people who want to deliver messages even for a person they don’t know yet. It’s not common but can happen.
Poltergeists, Dementors and noisy spirits
The kind of deceased people and the intrusion they do during the dreams also depends on the energy of the dreamer. If s/he doesn’t keep a spiritual life, living from very dense vibes but still has medium abilities, s/he will naturally attract more noisy spirits with hugs or doing any other actions loaded with dark messages or stealing your energy.
Am I about to die?
This is another common occurrence people have when dreaming of hugging dead people like if their turn to hug death was about to come.
Nevertheless, this idea is -obviously- promoted first due to the instinctive fear rather than the certainty or any proven evidence.
Past lives and people you met after you dreamed of them:
It’s possible to hug or meet something in a dream that you haven’t ever met and later know that is dead and still feel love or attachment to them. Another situation is hugging someone deceased, that later ‘reincarnates’ in someone new, and finding an undeniable association with a person you just meet for the first time after the dream.
As a psychologist, I have to admit that there are dreams, which are unexplainable. Thus no matter how deep you look after subconscious traces to find a psychological answer to that dream, you won’t find it. In fact, some dreams can be just a product of synchronicity and those (forgotten) abilities of our higher self to travel through space-time.
Many esoteric practices teach that the essence of time isn’t linear but cyclic or coiled, with tunnels or shortcuts to some peak moments in our future, and also in previous lives. There are phenomena that we won’t fully understand -at least during this life-, and the dreamworld is naturally one of those mysteries… so far.
Manuel Alejandro Patiño is a Psychologist and a certified Kundalini Yoga Instructor with academic studies about psychoneuroimmunology, lifestyle & preventive medicine, and the usage of meditation and yoga as complementary therapeutic resources. He completed his psychology degree at Universidad Arturo Michelena, Venezuela and later worked as a clinical psychologist at Universitary Hospital 'Dr. Angel Larralde'. Manuel loves writing and had more than 200 articles written for different blogs and websites relating to psychology, spirituality and internal health. (He’s) a passionate about ancient origins of mankind, as well as the study of space-time, archetypes and symbolism within art through history and in the daily life of patients and people.