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Why People Dream About Their Teeth Falling Out
It’s a common dream theme and not just for teeth-obsessed Americans
It happens all the time.
I’m eating and all of a sudden something doesn’t feel right. While I’m chewing, a tooth falls out. Sometimes, even a few teeth are gone. I run to the nearest mirror, and when I see my reflection, I’m horrified by the semi-toothless version of myself staring back at me. And then I wake up.
Every time I have this dream, my heart races and I have to run my tongue along the surfaces of my teeth, top and bottom, making sure they’re all there. Only after I confirm my teeth are intact can I fall back asleep.
I’m not the only one having these unpleasant dental dreams. In fact, it’s a relatively common dream theme and not just for teeth-obsessed Americans. For example, a 2008 study conducted in China found that 49.4% of participants had experienced a teeth-falling-out dream, and a 2003 Canadian study found that 18.8% had experienced one.
A quick Google search for “What does it mean if I dream that my teeth are falling out?” will direct you to countless different interpretations and explanations of this “dream symbol.” According to one website, my teeth dreams can mean I’m insecure, I’m lying to people, I’m experiencing financial difficulty — the list goes on. One article tells me the dream could mean that someone in my family is sick, and another one implies that I talk too much or gossip too much. Even Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, tried to nail down the meaning. In his 1900 book, The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud infers that teeth falling out can be a symbol for masturbation, sexual repression, or castration. It seems the dream could mean anything.
The problem with finding symbolism in dreams
Making sense of dreams and what they say about our psyche is rarely as clear-cut as Google makes it seem.
“I think the sort of ‘dream dictionary’ idea, that a particular piece of content in a dream is always going to mean the same thing for anyone dreaming, it is not at all the case,” says Deirdre Barrett, author of The Committee of Sleep and professor at Harvard University. “I don’t think there are any…
