Flood Dream Meaning

Dreaming of a flood usually means the pressure built up inside you is now more than you can handle. The word flood first brings up pictures of disaster, but in dreams water almost always stands for emotion, and a flood is that emotion breaking its banks. Pain you have kept pressed down for a long time will no longer stay behind the dam. This dream tends to return when you are worn out from carrying too many responsibilities at once. Much of the meaning depends on the details: how the flood came, what the water looked like and where you were.

• Floodwater entering your home

  In dreams your home is your safe place, so water getting in means outside pressure has now reached your family life. Either worries from work are making the mood at home heavy, or some tension within the family can no longer be hidden.

• Floodwater rising slowly

  Slowly rising water means the problem is not new. Something you have avoided for a long time, such as a growing debt or an old quarrel that was never settled, has reached the point where you can no longer step around it.

• A sudden flood

  A flash flood is the image of a shock you were not ready for, like news of a loved one's illness or sudden uncertainty about your job. If something like this happened recently, the dream is your mind trying to absorb that shock.

• Muddy or clear floodwater

  Muddy water shows you are under pressure but are not clear, even to yourself, about what feels so heavy. If the water is clear, your feelings are intense, yet you know their cause, and so you also know where to start.

• Being swept away by a flood

  Being carried off by the current means you feel the course of your life is no longer in your hands. Other people's decisions or the weight of circumstances are pushing you in a direction you never wanted to go.

• Drowning in floodwater

  The feeling of sinking under the water shows you are losing your hold on your emotions, with no room left even to catch your breath. This is a clear sign of exhaustion, and some responsibilities need to be set down now.

• Escaping a flood by climbing to high ground

  Climbing onto a roof or up a tree to stay out of the water's reach means that however heavy the pressure gets, you are finding ways to protect yourself. If you only just made it up at the last moment, you are getting through, but you are doing everything at the very edge of your limits.

• Watching a flood from a distance

  Seeing a flood from a high place or from far away means you see the problem clearly but are not yet trapped inside it, so you still hold some control over the situation. If the flood is in the next village or at someone else's house, your worry is mainly about the suffering of someone close to you.

• Saving someone from a flood

  Pulling a drowning person out means that in waking life you are also someone's support through a hard time, and who that person was shows whom you worry about most. Still, notice whether pulling others out is draining your own strength.

• Floodwater going down

  Watching the water recede means you are slowly coming out of the hardest stretch, though repairing the damage the flood left behind takes time. In Bengal the silt a flood leaves on the fields makes the next harvest richer, and in the same way something breaking down is not the end. It is a chance to start again.

If the dream keeps coming back, ask yourself what in your life has moved beyond what you can manage right now. Admitting to yourself what you have been holding down, and asking someone for help where you need it, is the most useful step after this dream. Dreams are more vivid during pregnancy anyway, and a flood dream at that time usually reflects ordinary worries about giving birth. It is not a bad omen.