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Help – I’m Falling!

“I am flying in an airplane to go skydiving. It’s over a desert with lots of plateaus. I jump and feel the air flowing over me. It’s great. I look down and see a small mesa. The desert is all red dirt and stuff, and I hit down. POW. All black. Then I’m back up in the airplane, and do it over and over. It’s fun!!”

—Aric, 14

Falling in a dream is not usually as much fun as it was for this dreamer. Kids describe the terror of a rapid descent, the rush of wind as their body plummets, often through dark nothingness. Most hurl themselves awake in order to prevent collision with the ground. Some actually strike the floor by their bed as they startle awake. In addition to actual falls from bed, many people experience a falling sensation as they fall asleep.

Dreams of falling are one of the most common nightmares. Out of 100 kids surveyed, 63 percent said they had dreamed about falling. Although many kids said they had this nightmare more often when they were little, the number of older kids reporting the dream was almost exactly the same as the adults who had falling dreams (64 percent).

If you haven’t already dreamed about falling, you probably will at some point. Such dreams are most likely to occur when you feel insecure or that you don’t have enough emotional support.

Falling with Fear

The meaning of your dream of falling depends partly on how it ends up. Do you wrench yourself awake to avoid painful contact with the ground? Do you hit the ground and get hurt? Do you land safely without pain? Do you enjoy the impact? Do you transform the dream into carefree soaring?

When you are unable to change the dream fall, you have lost your solid footing for the time being. You feel helpless about some life change.


To fall with fear in a dream is to feel insecure.

You might feel at risk when starting school, changing to a new school, coping with a divorce in your family, or adjusting to a new sibling. Many younger kids describe dreams of frightening falls when something goes wrong in their waking life.

These dreams of falling continue as kids get older. A girl dreamed she was walking up a very steep wooded hillside when she started falling down the hill. She tried to grab trees to stop her tumble but couldn’t hold on. “I kept falling and fell into the water that was forty feet deep and the edge was at a ninety-degree angle so I could not climb out. I ended up drowning in the dream and have been afraid of water ever since.” This girl not only lost her foothold, but also became overwhelmed and felt unable to extricate herself. Her dream fear carried over to the waking world

If you have such a dream when something changes for the worse in your life, don’t be alarmed. It’s a normal reaction. Use the dream to alert yourself to how you feel at the moment. Find ways to restore your balance.

The Cliff Edge

Your dream about falling will often start from a high place. In fact, most dreamers start a falling dream from the edge of a cliff. This dream setting warns you that you feel on the brink of danger in some waking-life situation. Cliffs are a risky place to be.

Other dreams of falling begin at the edge of a roof, in an airplane, or on a tall building, a ladder, a staircase, a railing, a bridge, a roller coaster, or a Ferris wheel – all high places from which a fall could be deadly. However, some dreamers use these same locations from which to launch glorious dream flights.

If you dream about falling from any of these high places, take special care. Your dream is alerting you to the presence of danger in some waking situation. Don’t slip into it; deal with it instead. Get help, talk with friends and relatives, get support. Get your feet back on the ground.

The Black Pit

You might dream of falling through black space, as lots of kids do. Plummeting down a black elevator shaft, or plunging through an endless pit, dreamers describe a dark nothingness around them that is nearly as frightening as the fall:

Usually the darkness in such dreams refers to a temporary black mood, or not being able to see your way clearly out of a situation in which you feel helpless. As you begin to cope with whatever your problem is in waking life, light will return to your dreams as well as your waking hours.

Hitting Rock Bottom

Most falling dreams do not involve a fall to the floor. But one of my earliest dreams as a child was of riding in a small airplane when suddenly it loses power and spirals to earth with a great crash. I actually fell out of bed with this one. Many children tell me similar dreams that accompany a fall from bed:

It happens less often as you get older, but some older kids report dreams that go with a fall from bed:

You might feel extremely frightened if you strike the ground in a falling dream. Maybe you’ve heard the folk saying that if you hit the ground in a dream you will die. It’s not true. Lots of people survive the impact with dream earth.

Soft Landings

Dreams of falling aren’t always scary. Maybe Aric’s dream of having great fun hurling himself to earth let him experience the positive that can accompany the sensation of falling. Most kids who dream about falling don’t realize it can be a pleasant dream, the start of an adventure.

If you have scary dreams of falling, remind yourself while you are awake that you can make a soft landing. In a dream, you can tell yourself to “fall gently and land gently” during the fall. Strange as it seems, this technique can change your dream. The trick is, of course, to remember it while you’re dreaming. If you’ve fallen out of bed, this reminder won’t cushion your floor, but it can make a big difference in recurrent bad dreams about falling.

A woman who was tortured by nightmares about driving over a cliff in a car changed her dream by telling herself, “Dr. Garfield says I don’t have to crash.” That night she had the same nightmare. As she fell, she reminded herself that she didn’t have to let it happen. For the first time, she guided her car through the air and landed safely at the bottom of the cliff.

Some kids discover this soft landing technique for themselves. A girl dreamed she fell out of a building, but was unhurt because she landed on an old mattress. An eight-year-old girl dreamed of falling through a gutter where she found diamonds and other precious jewels at the bottom. Sometimes a life change that seems negative can lead to discovering something of value.

Changing Falling into Flying

Here are some questions to ask yourself after a dream about falling:

  1. What situation have I “fallen into” lately that needs attention?

  2. Who or what is making me feel “let down” recently?

  3. What can I do about it? (There’s always something positive to try.)

  4. How can I restore my sense of balance and “lift myself” up again?

Surprisingly, one of the things you can do is become more aware in your dreams.

You can help yourself during a falling dream by transforming falling into flying. Some dreamers discover this ability for themselves; others learn it. By turning passive falling into active dream flying, you change more than your dream. You change your waking mood.

Eleven-year-old James dreamed “I am running and am trying to get somewhere. I trip over a stick and fall over a cliff, going down and down and I am almost about to hit the rocks. And I think … and I lift my body up and start flying. I’m over the house I just left. Birds start following me and talking and imitating me. I don’t understand them but they fly forward and I follow them. A couple of eagles come and we are all flying and doing tricks and that. An airplane comes and I’m about to hit it so I wake up.” Although the end of his dream included the danger of collision with the airplane, the boy succeeded in pulling out of a nasty fall in order to fly. And he didn’t find that flying was scary: “No, I just did it. I was free, like a bird.”

Dreamers like Aric and James discover the power of dream flight, the pleasure that dream flying can bring. And so can you.