Dreams About Cutting Hair – Types and Meanings
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Dream interpretation is an imperfect art. While many people may share certain dream themes, they’ll mean different things to various people. When it comes to dreams about cutting hair, the meanings are wide and diverse – but the general meaning is that there is a need for change in your life.
What Do Dreams About Cutting Hair Mean?
Hair is an important aspect of a person’s appearance, identity, and personality. Because of this, it tends to represent our image or how we wish to be seen by others. Haircut dreams are different to hair fall dreams, which have negative meanings about death, loss, and insecurity. Haircut dreams are about change and a desire to reinvent yourself.
When you have a dream about cutting hair, especially if it’s recurring, it could mean any one of the following:
- You have a deep need for change in your life. The cutting of your hair symbolizes cutting something out you no longer need.
- It’s a symbol of shedding off old, worn-out ideas to make way for new perspectives and opportunities.
- If you recently broke up from a friendship or relationship, a dream about cutting hair equates to a need to cut your past ties so you can move forward in life.
- Such a dream can also indicate a need for creativity and self-expression – after all, hairstyles are a great way to express your personality.
- You may be having a desire to break away from conformity or the expectations of others.
- This dream could signify a sense of freedom from emotional ties that were negative or debilitating in some way.
- If, in your dream, you gave a haircut, you may have anger or guilt regarding the person whose hair you were cutting.
- Depending on how the haircut went in the dream, it could mirror your inner desire for control, cleanliness and/or orderliness.
- This dream could be a simple reflection of how getting a haircut has weighed on your mind lately.
Spiritual Connotations of Haircut Dreams
Since these experiences can be so highly individual, it’s important to first evaluate what hair means to you. Many people tend to make a spiritual or religious connection to hair, as in the biblical story of Samson and Delilah. In this tale, Delilah cut the source of Samson’s power, his hair, which weakened him and turned him into a prisoner.
In this context, a dream about haircutting may symbolize a loss of power or a sense of connection with what you consider to be spiritual. This may have a special significance if there was betrayal in the dream.
The concept of a loss of power isn’t just a Judeo-Christian reference. The Masai warriors of Africa have a deep-seated fear that if they cut their hair, it has negative consequences against their supernatural abilities. Having such a dream among that culture would be a spiritual sign of doom and dismay.
Personal Feelings about Hair
Some people have a more personal attachment with their hair. They perceive it as an important aspect to the face they show to the world. So, for instance, if a woman has long, flowing locks in reality but has a nightmare of having it cut, it may very well translate to some sort of fear around losing beauty.
According to Satya Doyle Byock, a professional psychotherapist and director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Therapy in Portland, Oregon, dreams of cutting hair can signify something quite profound. This is especially true for those who hold their hair in high regard.
However, some people don’t like their hair and when they dream of getting a haircut, it’s a relief. This could very well be a reflection of how you feel your hair is a burden to you and you wish for something different – thereby aligning with the idea that you’re desiring a change for the better.
Haircuts Symbolizing Thoughts and Ideas
Haircuts can symbolize change as well as thoughts and ideas. Because your hair is connected to your head, it could be your subconscious finding a roundabout way of depicting how to get rid of old thoughts and beliefs to make way for new ones.
This assessment also aligns with the views of other expert dream analysts like Lauri Lowenberg, who says that in the case of having long, luxurious hair, it reflects how you quite possibly have an abundance of ideas or have massive amounts of thought in waking consciousness.
Lowenberg also mentions other potential details of the dream that can affect its interpretation. For instance, having tangled hair could signify confusion. Getting it cut could be a literal mirror for cutting away chaos. Or a haircut after having objects lodged in it could mean that there are many unnecessary things cluttering your mind. It’s a way for your unconscious to unburden itself.
Who Did the Cutting and Who Received the Cut?
Who did the cutting and who received the haircut? These are important elements to consider. If you were cutting the hair, who did you give the haircut to? Was it a friend, family member, a stranger or a wild animal?
Then you also have to evaluate how you felt about the person whose hair you were cutting. Were you cautious or sloppy? Did the person not like the finished product? Also, how did you feel about the dream upon waking? Were you laughing, sad, horrified or disturbed?
For instance, if you were cutting your friend’s hair and kept making mistakes, this may reflect how you treat this person in real life. This will have particular significance if they didn’t like the haircut in the end. However, if they loved it and you thought it was awful, it could represent their forgiving nature.
Watching a Haircut
Then there’s always those dream scenarios where you watch a haircut. And this may have an entirely different interpretation altogether. There are many modes of philosophy in this regard. It could mean that you’re allowing other people to do your thinking for you. Other theories suggest you skirt responsibility or you’re procrastinating an important decision.
And yet, there are some who say that watching a haircut could signify some sort of loss of control or you burden others to solve your problems, thereby skirting responsibility.
What Did My Dream Mean?
It’s not possible to get through every dream scenario in one article – and that’s because there are endless options. Cutting hair is also quite a common dream scenario. If you check Quora, you will come across hundreds of questions posed by users, asking for help in decoding the meaning of a haircutting dream.
Just take a look at some of these questions and you’ll see what we mean:
- What does it mean to dream that my kids are cutting and shaving their hair off?
- My brother cut my girlfriend’s hair in my dream. What does that mean?
- What does a dream of my boyfriend cutting his hair mean? I dreamt that he cut his long waist length dreadlocks off, and I was upset about it. But then a few minutes later I looked at him again and his hair was back to normal.
- A lady I don’t know forcefully cut my hair in my dream and I was sad. What does it mean?
- What does it mean when you dream about a coworker cutting your hair?
- I had a dream that a man cut a piece of my wife’s hair. What does that mean?
- I dreamed my husband cut my oldest son’s long hair. I got very upset in my dream.
The answers to these questions are as diverse as they are intuitive and entertaining. And this is because much of dream interpretation is subjective.
The details, such as who did the cutting, what object they used, the quality of the haircut, the quality of the hair, the location, the feelings involved, the color of the hair, all these impact the meaning of the dream.
To identify what the dream may have meant, it’s important to remember as much of the dream as you can. Try to analyze your feelings about each of these elements, and how you could be feeling about them subconsciously.
In Brief
It’s difficult to pinpoint just exactly what a dream about cutting hair means. One way or another, however, it will relate to ideas, thoughts, concepts or a sense of loss in regards to power. But such a dream will often come down to what the dreamer believes about hair.
For those who hold a personal attachment, a dream of cutting hair could signify some sort of guilt or shame. But if you were doing the cutting, the details and events that you recall in the dream will be significant. When a theme is so highly individual such as one like a haircut, it takes personal reflection to understand what it means.
