What are emaciation dreams about?

You can gain insight from thinking about any dream, no matter how strange. Only you, as the dreamer, have final say on what your dream may or may not mean. Each dream is unique.

The DreamWell dictionary provides information on how each dream symbol appears in dreams in general. Finding how experience emaciation in dreams can be a key to understanding its meaning.

Our emotions in dreams can help us understand its meaning. Pay attention to how you felt in the dream. Pay attention to how you feel about emaciation in dreams. See how you feel about emaciation now, in your waking life.

Emaciation in a dream can symbolize wasting away. In dreams, physically wasting away connects with a wasted life, wasted opportunity, or the gradual wearing away of spirit brought about by depression, abuse, grief, worry, listlessness, boredom, confinement, and a variety of other conditions and circumstances. It can show that more vitality and substance are needed.

Consider the obvious. You might need to eat more or eat better. You don’t get enough nutrition. Or you have body-image issues.

It can symbolize that you need to be fed something non-material: ideas, enthusiasm, energy, spirit, emotion, knowledge.

For example, an artist who uses nature walks to feed her inspiration dreams about her body wasting away like someone starving. The dream follows after a period of being cooped up in an apartment. Her artistic side is starving for inspiration.

It can mean thin on substance or character, or starving for attention.

In simplest terms, emaciated means “not much there.” It can symbolize a thin argument, thin on ideas, or thin in the wallet or bank account.

Dreaming that you are anorexic can show that you lack self-esteem, because a common association is that people with anorexia lack self-esteem.

It can symbolize frugality. In a general sense, anorexia means “too restrictive.” The symbolism can be spun out to connect with situations such as not studying enough to get a good grade on a test, or practicing enough at something to improve.

A young mother dreams that her children are anorexic, reflecting her feelings that she doesn’t give them enough attention.

In the Old Testament, Genesis 41, Joseph is called to interpret Pharaoh’s dream about seeing seven fat cows rise up out of the Nile. Then seven emaciated cows rise out of the Nile and eat the fat ones. In a dream that follows, Pharaoh sees seven plump heads of grain on a single stalk. Then seven thin heads of grain sprout and consume the fat heads. Joseph interprets the imagery as meaning that seven years of good harvest will be followed by seven years of bad harvest, and advises Pharaoh to save his resources from the good harvests in preparation for the seven lean years to follow. And indeed, according to the story, that’s what transpired.

See also: Cages, Eating, Food

This interpretation is from ""The Dream Interpretation Dictionary: Symbols, Signs, and Meanings" and is provided by J.M. DeBord aka "RadOwl". He is the author of several acclaimed books about dreaming, the host of The Dreams That Shape Us podcast, and is a moderator of r/Dreams, one of the largest dream sharing communities on the internet.