Dreams of hands are more related to insects than dreams in general. They are less related to unnamed people, less related to strangers, and less related to peers.

Dreams of hands are much more related to pain than dreams in general. They are less related to sadness.

Hand dreams are less related to home, less related to human-made places, and less related to transportation.

Dreams of hands are more related to health events than dreams in general. They are less related to disasters and less related to death.

Hand dreams are more related to lucid dreams and much more related to sleep paralysis than dreams in general. They are less related to recurring dreams, less related to vivid dreams, and less related to sad dreams.

Dreams of hands are more related to smelling, more related to taste, and much more related to touch than dreams in general.

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

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. 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