11 Things Your Spider Dreams Could Be Telling You, According To A Dream Expert

Our personal dream worlds are a mysterious place only we have access to—but there do seem to be some common dream themes lots of us experience. Dreams about snakes or teeth falling out are commonly reported, as are spider dreams.

Dreams can offer us a peek into our subconscious, so, what could these creepy-crawly ones be telling you? To find out, we asked professional dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg. Here's what she had to say.

According to Loewenberg, spiders in dreams archetypically represent "some sort of deceit or web of lies surrounding you." But specifics matter, so variations in your spider dream can offer different clues about what the dream is telling you:

The most common reaction to seeing a spider in a dream is fear, or at the very least, feeling creeped out. This reaction likely represents something in your real life. "When you wake from that dream," Loewenberg says, "you need to ask yourself what or who is causing you the same kind of fear the spider did in the dream. What situation brings up that same fear, disgust, or distaste?"

To dream of being bit by a spider, according to Loewenberg, means you may be feeling like some situation or person has figuratively bit you. "In particular, biting in a dream often means you felt criticized," she notes, or could represent someone you think has been deceitful. "A spider in a dream can sometimes represent a narcissist in your real life," she adds.

If you're consistently dreaming about a spider or spiders, Loewenberg says that means you're ignoring red flags. There's some situation or person in your life that's not sitting well with you, and it will keep coming up until you address it.

"You want to pay really close attention to where the spider is on your body," Loewenberg says. Where it is will directly relate to certain emotions or areas of your life. So if it's on your hand or bites your hand, for example, she says to ask yourself, What person or what situation right now is very difficult for me to handle?

If the spider bites you in the throat or around your neck, there's a connection there to your voice, she notes. "Your subconscious is bringing that area of your body to your attention because you need to use your voice to properly deal with the situation," she says.

And if the spider bites you on the back, Loewenberg says that's your subconscious telling you that situation or person causing you distress needs to be put behind you.

Nothing is a coincidence in dreams, according to Loewenberg. So, a black widow in your dreams would represent a woman in your life who you may feel has been deceptive or untrustworthy.

"The bigger the spider is, the bigger of an issue it is in real life," Loewenberg notes. A tarantula is the biggest of them all, of course. And not only that, but they're hairy. You want to think about what situation or person in your real life has put you in a "hairy situation" she says.

Loewenberg says the most common spider dream people ask her about is one in which they're lying in bed and a spider is descending just over their head from the ceiling. If you've had this dream, she says the spider represents "something that's keeping you up at night, hanging over your head—and it likely has to do with some sort of lie or deceit in your life that's bothering you."

Sometimes we're not the only one present in the dream scene, so what if someone else is with you? Loewenberg suggests thinking about what happened between you and that person the day before that might have you concerned, if you just saw them in real life. Oftentimes, though, another person can actually represent ourselves in the dream, offering us a third-person perspective to something we're dealing with.

And lastly, Loewenberg says spider dreams could also signify that you're feeling trapped. If the spider is spinning a web, your subconscious is "trying to warn you about a situation or relationship that could trap you," she adds.

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First and foremost, any time you're dealing with a bothersome dream, it's important to interpret the meaning. The above interpretations are more common examples, but Loewenberg says we always want to apply our own personal associations to the content of our dreams.

For example, a client of hers who was having spider dreams had the personal association of viewing spiders as home invaders. This translated to a real-life issue she had with a friend, who she felt was invasive and intruding on her life.

The emotions you experience, as well as your thought process in the dream are important, too. "What do you remember thinking when you saw the spider? That will directly correlate to something in your real life that's currently an issue," Loewenberg notes.

Starting a dream journal and making sure you're getting adequate REM sleep are two other ways to make your dreams become more clear to you. Once you've decoded the message you think the dream was trying to show you, you can begin taking action in your real life to work on it.

We share many common dream themes, but how we interpret them is unique to us. With any dream, the most important factor is how you felt in the dream itself, and identifying where in your life those same emotions are coming up. If a dream is bothering you repeatedly, that's all the more reason to get curious about what it could be telling you—so you can start to work through it once your alarm goes off.

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