If you’ve ever had dreams about death, you’re not alone: dreams about death of yourself or a loved one, or interaction with death and mortality in some form, are among the most commonly reported dreams. As human beings, we are very aware of our own mortality; even if our conscious minds prefer not to dwell on it, we may dream about death at times of stress or change in our lives. Death dreams often confront us with feelings of pain, fear or grief (either at a loved one’s passing or our own). While it may be challenging to analyze your dreams about death, confronting these feelings and the meaning behind them can help you come to a deeper understanding about the end of this life and how we can relate to it as mortal beings.

Dreams of death that involve your own personal demise – for example, dreaming about your own funeral – can be a wake up call that reminds you of what is really important to you. Many people describe feeling a sense of loss rather than fear at their dream passing, as they think of all the things they still wanted to do and the connections they were going to lose with family and friends. Dreams about death of yourself can reinforce your waking sense of what you really want to say, do and give others before you pass on. If you feel like chores and obligations have been taking up all of your time, dreaming of your own death can shock your perspective back to what’s really important to you.

If you have a dream about a deceased loved one, it can be a way of saying goodbye as part of grieving that person. Many cultures believe that we communicate with the dead in our dreams: they may offer us lessons, advice, or simply reassurance that their spirit continues on after death. If you meet a deceased loved one in a dream, they may appear either peaceful or upset; if they seem angry or distraught, this can be an indication that you have some unresolved feelings to work out about their death. Some people have dreams in which they’re following a friend or loved one who goes through a door or crosses a river where the dreamer can’t follow. Many dream interpreters think that these dreams are symbolic of the afterlife and offer the dreamer reassurance that their loved one is in a better place.

Dreams about death can also indicate a change in the circumstances of your waking life: they may mark the transition from childhood to puberty, adolescence to maturity, or from maturity to old age, as each old stage of your life symbolically ends. You may also have dreams about death if you’re coming to the end of a long-term living situation, relationship, or project. Your subconscious may express the loss of this defining aspect of your life in a dream about death. These dreams don’t always have to be negative: sometimes you might be relieved to see someone die in a dream. Dreams about killing someone close to you, especially a parent, aren’t uncommon in children and adolescents.  It’s important to always examine the feelings attached to your dreams without casting judgement on yourself. Consider what the person who died in your dream may represent: are they holding you back from something you want to do or change in your life? If you’re a teenager, you might be trying to distance yourself from your parents’ influence and form your own beliefs as an adult. Maybe the person represents a situation that you’ve outgrown, or a habit or attitude of your own that you want to change.

Conversely, dreams about death can be distressing without directly involving yourself or anyone you know: you might find a dead body in your dream, or dream about a person or animal dying young. Some dream interpreters suggest these dreams symbolize parts of yourself— your personality, talents and aspirations— that you feel you’ve been forced to suppress by your upbringing or current circumstances. Let’s say you want to be an artist, but your parents told you repeatedly as you were growing up that it was impossible to make a living at art. As an adult you took a lucrative but uninteresting job and gave up practicing your art. A dream about something dying young could be an expression of your unhappiness at abandoning your creative life because you fear you won’t be able to succeed at it. The dream could be a signal for you to reevaluate your priorities and make room for what really makes you happy.

Sometimes unresolved issues in our waking lives show up to haunt us in a dream— literally! If you have a dream in which you are haunted by a malevolent spirit, ghost or revenant, it could be a stand-in for the feelings, memories and regrets that you haven’t resolved in your waking life. Consider the feeling the spirit in your dream evokes: is it guilt, fear, anger? The emotional tone of a haunting dream can show you what it represents from your past that you must resolve in the present. Realize that the haunting spirit is a construct of your thoughts and feelings: many of us have been socialized to push away so-called “bad feelings”; in doing so we deny ourselves the ability to feel in important ways. Our subsconscious can throw back anger and fear at us in a haunting dream which forces us to find safe ways to deal with these emotions.

Ultimately, dreams about death contain messages about life. They can show us what’s not working in our lives, situations we need to lay to rest, or parts of ourselves and our aspirations that we’ve neglected and need to breathe life into. Dreams about death encourage us to value and make the most of our lives and those of our loved ones before we pass on.