Thread: So every few dreams is about my teeth... Is it a sign?

*Moved to Dream Interpretation*

Originally Posted by Pinkey209

As far as I can remember, I've had numerous dreams about my teeth. In the past 2 weeks I've had about 10. They are always bad. My teeth are chipped, loose, or they just fall out. Recently I was popping in retainers. The whole dream isnt about my teeth it's just a quick and small portion of the whole dream. Any Idea what this could mean?

Phrases like "getting your teeth into something", "chewing something over", "having all your back teeth" come to mind. Do you have problems with any of these? Of course, if you don't have " all your back teeth" you might have difficulty recognising that you do have a problem with one or more of these. So getting your teeth into a book would be like getting absorbed in it. Getting your teeth into a topic could mean getting to grips with it. Chewing things over can be hell. I used to have a friend who had terrible difficulty with "chewing things over" such that he could never let issues go. They festered and festered until they eventually erupted into anger. The modern disease of attention deficit disorder encompasses an inability to "get your teeth into something" as well as an inability to "chew things over".

I knew someone who had a recurring dream that she was chewing a wad of chewing gum and could never swallow it. Chewing gum is, of course, not meant to be swallowerd, it is indigestable. Perhaps the teeth dreams point to something you cannot "swallow" which brings phrases like "swallowing one's pride" to mind. When someone makes an unjust accusation, then that can be difficult to "swallow".

There's the idea that bad teeth might mean that you have been taught that something is bad and that has resulted in you being unable to "get your teeth into things" etc. Yopu may have been taught that kindness is a virtue under all circumstances and that you must always say something nice or say nothing at all. This can be very inhibiting and can result in being unable to get to grips with things because one feels critical, but then feels one is doing something wrong in criticising.

Actually, I suspect that the other parts of you dreams may provide further clues as to the issue concerning you.

If you wish you could give me a whole dream and I'll see what I can make of it.

Wow I never looked at it like that. Thats awesome. And I still am hard at work on getting my lucid dreams so when I do maybe then you could help me out? Seems like as hard as I try i can never get them! Thanks for ur response by the way!

I too have dreams like this!! wow!

like, maybe one tooth is loose, and i get scared, cause how can i loose an adult tooth? and it falls out, and i try to put it back and another one falls, and every time i close my mouth, or open it, tooth by tooth falls out until i have maybe two left and end up waking up..

also, with these dreams, i end up pulling something out my throught.. like a long string like thing, what i thought was maybe tissue of cancer in my dream, and kept pulling and pulling like a scarf trick by a clown..and all this blood and everything is coming up with it..

ever had anything like that too?

Here are a few additional ideas about the image of teeth in dreams that might also be helpful.

For example, over the centuries, the rows of teeth have been seen by people as the “battlements” protecting the inner soul, and this idea crops up in dreams. If the teeth are in bad condition, falling out etc., it could point for instance to some misguided attitude or way of looking at things that is putting the person’s overall outlook and behaviour at risk in some way.

Also, the image of teeth loosening and falling out often relates to anxiety dreams. Maybe a person recently experienced an upsetting incident, but might not have seen how it affected them and the dream is trying to point out that any unacknowledged anxiety could take hold too much if not dealt with in some way.

Additionally, teeth can sometimes symbolize aggressiveness. Eventually becoming rotten, falling out etc. could therefore point to a certain aggressiveness being the specific type of “misguided attitude” mentioned above, but a person could be very unconscious of the fact that he or she even experienced having aggressive feelings towards others, so the dream makes it plain in the image of teeth falling out etc.

In addition, in times past when the image of losing one’s teeth appeared in a dream, the automatic and mostly superstitious assumption was that it was connected in some way with physical death although in reality, it normally represents a danger to overall psychological health.

The idea of death being attached to the image of losing one’s teeth in a dream could have arisen from the fact that in the past, older people often would have lost all of their teeth and this would make it hard for them to consume adequate nourishment, contributing significantly to illness and death. Scurvy also caused the teeth to fall out and death usually followed soon after. As Pantodragon said, the inability to effectively “chew over”, swallow and digest various psychological issues can lead to serious problems in the long run.

Svance22’s dream about pulling out a long cancerous string touches on the same idea, that is, some usual way of thinking and acting is, or could potentially become, “deadly” if not worked at consciously “in the open” and not left “buried inside” too often.

As always, gathering spontaneous memories, thoughts and feelings about a given image in a dream can be a starting point in finding at least a basic clue about its meaning.

If a generally good interpretation is hit upon by the person, then a recurring dream should stop or at least happen much less often, especially if any appropriate changes the person makes are kept up over time.

I hope these added ideas can be helpful in some way.

Originally Posted by svance22

I too have dreams like this!! wow!

like, maybe one tooth is loose, and i get scared, cause how can i loose an adult tooth? and it falls out, and i try to put it back and another one falls, and every time i close my mouth, or open it, tooth by tooth falls out until i have maybe two left and end up waking up..

also, with these dreams, i end up pulling something out my throught.. like a long string like thing, what i thought was maybe tissue of cancer in my dream, and kept pulling and pulling like a scarf trick by a clown..and all this blood and everything is coming up with it..

ever had anything like that too?

I have everything you just described. Thats pretty crazy! Mostly what happens is my teeth are chipped away, like there are triangle shaped gaps with no teeth. I too get scared and nervous and it wakes me up a lot of the time. I always notice it by using my tongue and coming across it. (In my dreams of course)

Athanor, that last post relates a lot more. Very interesting

Originally Posted by Pinkey209

I have everything you just described. Thats pretty crazy! Mostly what happens is my teeth are chipped away, like there are triangle shaped gaps with no teeth. I too get scared and nervous and it wakes me up a lot of the time. I always notice it by using my tongue and coming across it. (In my dreams of course)

You say your dreams frighten you. Fear is the glue that makes nightmares stick. Get rid of the fear, and the nightmare will go. This applies to a lot of things that cause fear: bad thoughts/situations etc. So, if the dream is a bother, work on getting rid of the fear. You can do this by simply telling youself that there is nothing wrong, that the dream is not important, that there is nothing to worry about etc. Also, when you feel fear, recite this mantra "I don't care".

Originally Posted by Pinkey209

I have everything you just described. Thats pretty crazy! Mostly what happens is my teeth are chipped away, like there are triangle shaped gaps with no teeth. I too get scared and nervous and it wakes me up a lot of the time. I always notice it by using my tongue and coming across it. (In my dreams of course)

You say your dreams frighten you. Fear is the glue that makes nightmares stick. Get rid of the fear, and the nightmare will go. This applies to a lot of things that cause fear: bad thoughts/situations etc. So, if the dream is a bother, work on getting rid of the fear. You can do this by simply telling youself that there is nothing wrong, that the dream is not important, that there is nothing to worry about etc. Also, when you feel fear, recite this mantra "I don't care".

Also, dreams speak specifically to the dreamer. So it is important to consider what YOU associate with teeth, what sayings YOU are familiar with that contain references to teeth, what experiences YOU have had with teeth. So, for example, that ancient cultures viewed teeth as "the "battlements” protecting the inner soul" is irrelevant to the interpretation of your dream if you did not already know this about ancient cultures. So, when considering your dream and all the possible associations that have been suggested concerning teeth, the first thing you can do is weed out all the stuff that is new to you and leave only ideas and sayings that YOU were already familiar with. But I would stress the importance of personal experience --- dreams often use one's own personal experience to communicate meaning. So I would suggest you go over and even write down your real life experiences of teeth.

Originally Posted by Pinkey209

Wow I never looked at it like that. Thats awesome. And I still am hard at work on getting my lucid dreams so when I do maybe then you could help me out? Seems like as hard as I try i can never get them! Thanks for ur response by the way!

Help you with lucid dreams? In my book that is like asking me to assist you to commit suicide. You should NEVER think of trying to control your dreams. They are speaking to you, telling you things that would do you immeasurable good to know. I mean, you surely don't try to control what other people say to you, and especially you don't try to control what your doctor says to you --- you let him speak freely because you want him to tell you what's wrong with you, you want him to help you. That's the way it is with dreams: they are offering you better help than a doctor could. But if you try and control them, you stop them from speaking freely and telling you what you need to know. I would also add this: dreams are a natural psychological phenomenon, a part of the natural operation of the mind. It's like trying to tamper with any machine, say a car: you decide for some reason that you want to control the exhaust so you stuff something up the exhaust pipe. Well, the rersult could be your own death through asphyxiation, but also something is liable to go wrong with the engine because you ahev interrupted its normal working. So no, I will not help you with your lucid dreams.

Hi pantodragon,

Of course you’re right about the importance of the dreamer’s own associations and I have mentioned this in some of my own posts as well.

You might be interested though in looking at the approach which uses “amplification” to further explore a dream.

Extensive research over the years has shown that various parallels and comparisons to a dream image as found in traditional myths, legends, folk tales, art, sculpture etc. can be very helpful in clarifying its meaning.

The logic behind this is that these stories etc. have the same source as dreams, that is, the psyche itself, and the latter says what it wants to say using metaphors and analogies which also appear in the outer expressions mentioned.

The actual mechanism by which a given individual has a dream image which is parallel to an outer one in myth etc. (which as you say they may never have come across) is of course not fully understood, only that such images do arise spontaneously, although from the deeper, collective part of the psyche as opposed to the personal layer.

If you’d like to explore this approach in detail, a recent book on the subject called “The Dream and its Amplification” edited by Erel Shalit and Nancy Swift Furlotti is very interesting.

I cant remember exactly what happened in my dreams involving my teeth chipping, but i get what your saying.. i used to have dreams about my teeth once every two months at least.. but i havent had a dream like that in about a year or so.. i never connected it with anything, i only just recently got into dream interpretation and lucid dreaming, its crazy how so many people have experienced similar dreams to mine.. they're not as unique as i thought they were..

Originally Posted by pantodragon

You say your dreams frighten you. Fear is the glue that makes nightmares stick. Get rid of the fear, and the nightmare will go. This applies to a lot of things that cause fear: bad thoughts/situations etc. So, if the dream is a bother, work on getting rid of the fear. You can do this by simply telling yourself that there is nothing wrong, that the dream is not important, that there is nothing to worry about etc. Also, when you feel fear, recite this mantra "I don't care".

I get this alot..where i will have an anxiety attack in my dream, feeling that i am in another dimension or something, not realizing its just a dream my mind made up.. i feel like its a real place, and my anxiety is that i will be stuck in this world, and not be able to return to "reality"..

Originally Posted by svance22

I get this alot..where i will have an anxiety attack in my dream, feeling that i am in another dimension or something, not realizing its just a dream my mind made up.. i feel like its a real place, and my anxiety is that i will be stuck in this world, and not be able to return to "reality"..

I second this. I am never scared in my dreams. I love them. My 1st Lucid Dream was one of the happiest days of my life. But when I have dreams of my teeth being loose or chipped, they are always SO vivid and SO spot on to my real life. Thats what freaks me out sometimes and makes me wake up to check.