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What are hand dreams about?

This symbol is identified by words like hold hands, right hand, finger nail, etc.

Hands in dreams is a relatively common dream symbol, occuring in about 4.4% of dreams. That's about 1 out of every 25 dreams.

What are the major highlights of hand dreams?

Hands is a normal dream symbol. Having hands in a dream changes the dream in the same way as most other dream symbols.

What are the symbols that help define hands?

The symbol of hands in dreams is highly related to fingers.

How does the dream symbol of hands affect the different aspects of a dream?

Explore different elements related to dreams of hands

Who is in hands dreams?

Overall, dreams with hands are less related to characters in dreams. Specifically, dreams of hands are more related to insects than dreams in general. They are less related to different roles, less related to distant people, and less related to close people.

Animals

the same as usual

Insects

more than usual

Different roles

less than usual

Fantastic beings

the same as usual

Distant people

less than usual

Close people

less than usual

Family

less than usual

Romantic partners

the same as usual
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What are the emotions in hands dreams?

Overall, dreams with hands are aren't really related to emotions in dreams. Specifically, dreams of hands are much more related to pain than dreams in general. They are less related to fun.

Happiness

the same as usual

Sadness

the same as usual

Grief and sorrow

the same as usual

Embarrassment

the same as usual

Confusion

the same as usual

Fear

the same as usual

Pain

much more than usual

Hatred

the same as usual

Fun

less than usual

Love

the same as usual
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Who is in hands dreams?

Overall, dreams with hands are less related to places in dreams. Specifically, dreams of hands are less related to home, less related to human places, and less related to transportation.

Home

less than usual

Work

the same as usual

Human places

less than usual

Transportation

less than usual

Natural places

less than usual

Magical places

less than usual
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What happens in hands dreams?

Overall, dreams with hands are aren't really related to events in dreams. Specifically, dreams of hands are less related to disasters.

Aggressive interactions

the same as usual

Friendly interactions

the same as usual

Sex

the same as usual

Disasters

less than usual
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How do hands in dreams related to other dream phenomenon?

Overall, dreams with hands are aren't really related to dream events in dreams. Specifically, dreams of hands are more related to lucid dreams, more related to sleep paralysis, and more related to sleeping than dreams in general. They are less related to recurring nightmares.

Lucid dreams

more than usual

Nightmares

the same as usual

Recurring dreams

the same as usual

Recurring nightmares

less than usual

Sleep paralysis

more than usual

Sleeping

more than usual

Waking life

the same as usual
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How do hands in dreams related the senses?

Overall, dreams with hands are aren't really related to senses in dreams. Specifically, dreams of hands are more related to smelling, more related to taste, and much more related to touch than dreams in general.

Hearing

the same as usual

Smelling

more than usual

Taste

more than usual

Vision

the same as usual

Touch

much more than usual
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How can you make sense of hands in dreams?

Hand dreams are relatively common. Among other things hand dreams are normally interconnect.

Do you think this is true for your dream of hands? How might your dream of hands be different?

All dreams have meaning

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.

Look for the differences

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

Return to the feelings

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 hands in dreams. See how you feel about hands now, in your waking life.

What are possible meanings for dreams of hands?

The symbolism of hands is often connected with what they do. Hands are used to take action. They carry out your decisions and thoughts. They hold and grasp. Now start with those ideas and consider the possibilities for symbolism and ways it can connect with you and your life.

Hands in a dream to show taking action, or need for it. When you can’t take an action, you can dream about something wrong with your hands. For example, a young woman dreams that she’s forced by a bad man to cut off her own hand. Blood flies everywhere and she screams in terror at what she’s done. She then seeks out her father and begs him to help, and he tells her everything will be all right and he’ll take care of it.

The dream illustrates the young woman’s inability to make decisions, leaving them to her father to make. Cutting off her hand is symbolism for inability to make her own decisions. She “hands over” that power to her father, and a point has come in her life when she needs to take it back.

Holding something in a dream can symbolize the hold you have on yourself, as in the phrase, “Get a hold of yourself, man!” It can symbolize the emotional or psychological hold you have on someone or that the person has on you.

The character you hold in a dream can symbolize something about yourself, and the harder you hold onto it, the more it is needed or wanted personally. For example, holding tightly to a child can symbolize holding onto your inner child or a childlike trait or quality. See: Embracing

A mother dreams that she discovers that her hand is missing when she reaches out to hold her daughter’s hand. It symbolizes lack of personal connection. They recently reunited after a long time apart and they aren’t connecting as mother and daughter like they used to.

The possibilities for symbolism expand further when you consider what else hands are used for: stealing, hitting, pinching, stroking, petting, aiming, throwing, playing, playing with yourself.

Hold can mean “hold on,” as in wait, or a hold on reality. For example, dreaming about a troubled relative barely holding onto a high ledge can symbolize the perception that the person is barely hanging on in the personal sense.

Grasping with hands can symbolize your grasp of a situation, idea, or problem.

When you are led or guided, you can be led by the hand. In that sense, a dog biting your hand and leading you somewhere can symbolize a friend’s guidance, or there’s a direction you want to go in your life and the dog symbolizes your inner guidance. See: Guiding

A hard bite on the hand can mean you have been putting off taking an action or making a decision, and time has run out. This use of the symbolism is commonly acted out with a snakebite on the hand.

A disembodied hand can symbolize inability to understand an action or grasp something. As in, you can’t understand why you’re being audited, or why your child stole from a relative, or why you slapped your spouse. Notice how all these actions are in some way associated with hands.

Many figures of speech involve hands. You can lend a hand, or give a hand. One hand might not know what the other is doing. Some people are “handy.”

Visual puns and wordplays can be created with imagery and actions involving hands. For example, cuff links that chain the hands together could symbolize handcuffs. Making the hand motion for jerking off can symbolize wasting time or being “jerked around.”

Hands are sensitive, and physical sensitivity in a dream can be used to symbolize personal sensitivity. See: Fingers

Hands are used to give and receive money, and itchy hands have long been associated with receiving money. See: Money

And to be clear, hands appear in potentially any dream with human or humanoid characters in it, but the symbolism generally only applies when something about hands sticks out as important or draws attention to itself.

See also: Body parts, Climbing, Fingers, Fists, Guiding, Masturbation, Strangling, Thieves

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.

Examples of dreams of hands

Read some real dream reports of hand dreams.. These real life dream reports come from the moderated dream sharing communities of Reddit including r/Dreams, r/Nightmares, r/DreamInterpretation, or r/thisdreamihad. Please note that some of these may contain graphic, sexual, or violent images and text. Use the source link for each dream to view and join the discussion of each one.

My dead friend told me what happens when you die in a dream

My freshman year of college I had a dream that my friend who had died in a car accident earlier that year approached me at night, I was in a dark house, and there were people around him moving in studders. He looked at me through a stained yellow window, and I asked him "
what happens when we die?" and he told me, "whatever you believe." After that dream I had another where an aztec man broke through my childhood room glass window and started shedding blue nails from his fingers, until he was just a pile of nails. Like the information my friend gave me was sacred or something.

Cool concept though. If you believe in heaven, you'll go to your brain's idea of heaven. Reincarnation, you'll live the life of some other animal/person. Hell, you'll live in your brain's idea of hell. Nothing, you'll live nothing. Maybe there is something to that, with the chemicals released in your brain when you die, and the few weeks it takes for that electrical activity to completely dissipate in your brain after dying. Maybe when we die, we're at least alloted a brief respite living in whatever colorful fantasy we imagined we might pass on to when we were living, before the electricity shuts off like a light switch and we do too. That dream always stuck with me.

My freshman year of college I had a dream that my friend who had died in a car accident earlier that year approached me at night, I was in a dark house, and...

Source | Show dream

What exactly does this dream mean?

It was a room. Empty. Black, bit with white lines. As if you colored the lineart of the walls white. There were no lights but there was a faint glow, just enough for me to clearly see. There was...something in the corner of the room. Crying, muttering to itself, drawing on the walls with what I thought was a red marker. But as I inched closer, I realized its fingertips were cut off. And it was drawing with its blood. The blood was bright, not like normal blood. It was like, neon red. Very strange.

I don't exactly remember what it was drawing but it was drawing the same symbol over and over again. It was whimpering to itself. My brain automatically went "Help it, it's hurt" So I put a hand on its shoulder. It didn't even jump or get startled. It just stopped everything. It lowered its hand from the wall and slowly turned its head to face me. It had strange features. It was tall, skinny. But it still had like, basic human anatomy. It had a nose, lips, a chest, muscle definition (of whatever muscle it had) It was just a completely black skinny human, but with crazy eyes that were completely white. And they were...scribbly. Like if you took a white pen and angrily scribbled a circle on black paper.

It stared at me for a second, before saying in a raspy, pained voice. " You're like my art in a lot of ways." It moved closer to me. I smiled slightly, " How so?" Its hand curled around my neck, but not choking me, as it leaned into my ear and whispered, " You were created. You have blood. And..." It leaned in with its hands still around my neck, its lips almost brushing against mine, " I can rip you up whenever I wish."

With that last word, it dug its fingers into my neck. Literally. Its fingers went through my neck, piercing the flesh. I choked a little bit. Then like a movie, it cut to a different scene. Back to it drawing on the walls. Then it cut again to it curled into a ball, sobbing, whimpering, muttering. Then I woke up with the horniness of a thousand 13-year-old boys. Which was hella confusing. So like, what the fuck?

It was a room. Empty. Black, bit with white lines. As if you colored the lineart of the walls white. There were no lights but there was a faint glow, just...

Source | Show dream

Vivid dream of snake biting me

Several nights ago I had a dream where a black snake came out of nowhere and bit me on the palm of my palm. I then woke up. Definitely the most bizzare and symbolic dream I've ever had. I've done some research and gotten mixed interpretations. Anyone have any thoughts? Thanks.

Several nights ago I had a dream where a black snake came out of nowhere and bit me on the palm of my palm. I then woke up. Definitely the most bizzare and...

Source | Show dream

Ok so super weird, never even thought about something like this

Ok, backstories for what I gathered it this dream it was weirdly vivid, this dream takes place in a world where there are humans and neko’s, but humans are racist towards the neko’s, anyways it start with me in a park bent over looking at the flowers, this dream was really vivid, the color of the flowers were blue and yellow they were mixed I think, but I got up and turned around I see a neko in a cloak I think, it was either a cloak or a Japanese outfit, she touched my chest with two fingers and my entire body was encased with ice, then a split second later the neko was gone and the ice shattered like glass, but she was behind me, I was about get up and then my neck started to feel extremely cold, then I think I was knocked out, but when I woke up I got up and headed home, but I saw people giving me weird looks and whispering to each other, i never made it home though, this whole bit is a bit of a blur but I remember I got it a fight, I crossed a little bridge then after that everything was clear again and I was at a friends house, he didn’t know who I was and I was super confused, I told him it was me, and he squinted his eyes and said “Logan?”, I said yeah and he said,”you do notice you have ears and a tail, right?”at first I thought he was joking, until I looked behind me and saw that I had a tail, I looked in a mirror and saw cat ears, I told him I couldn’t go back to my normal job, he agreed with me

Ok, backstories for what I gathered it this dream it was weirdly vivid, this dream takes place in a world where there are humans and neko’s, but humans are...

Source | Show dream

Had a dream about a woman I’ve never met but feel in love with and can’t stop thinking about

I (29F) usually don’t dream much, but last night I had the most vivid dream that I can’t stop thinking about. I was at a small house party, and I walked into a room and a woman was sitting on the couch. We made eye contact, and she immediately challenged me, something like “I bet you can’t...” but I can’t remember what she said. I sat down next to her, I could smell her, see every detail of her summer dress. We were sitting on one of those big leather chesterfields that sticks to your thighs when it’s hot out. We talked for hours and every time someone would look at us we felt obligated to “straighten up” and look platonic even though we were clearly flirting. At one point I think I put my finger in her mouth, just to see what would happen. I remember us exploring each other in very unconventional ways. Eventually we were asked to go outside to do something for the party, take a group photo or something, and I lost her. She was nowhere to be found. She was very similar looking to me, but had a bit of a kinder face and smaller frame.
What does this mean? Why am I so obsessed with her, even when I’m awake, but I can’t identify her?

I (29F) usually don’t dream much, but last night I had the most vivid dream that I can’t stop thinking about. I was at a small house party, and I walked into a...

Source | Show dream
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