Dreaming about your heart pounding
Why does my heart race in dreams?
Because it genuinely is. This is the body part most likely to be reporting something real rather than symbolising anything.
Heart rate rises during REM sleep and rises further during nightmares. A dream about a pounding heart is frequently a dream about a pounding heart, built around a sensation that is actually occurring.
Dreamers describe awareness of the beat with nothing else happening: hearing it, feeling it, being unable to ignore it. The absence of any event is the giveaway. The dream has a sensation and no story to attach it to, so it presents the sensation on its own.
Where somebody has real palpitations, chest pain or breathlessness awake, that is a matter for a doctor and it does not become less so because a dream was involved.
Where this reads well
One of the clearest examples in the database of a dream built directly from the body, and it is satisfying to recognise.
Where it is harder
It wakes people, and waking with a hammering chest is frightening enough that some report avoiding sleep afterwards.
Worth asking yourself
Was anything happening in the dream? Did it wake me? Do I get this awake as well?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
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