Most people would like to imagine themselves to be in control of their lives. They would like to see themselves on top of the world, or at least close to the top.
After all, being at the bottom can mean many bad things. It could mean you’re not in control or trapped in uncertainty, or you’re in the grips of frustration and seeming powerlessness.
No wonder when you have a dream of someone standing over you, a sense of concern comes over you.
Please keep in mind that there are all sorts of signs and symbols you can detect in the course of any dream. For a typical dream, this usually flows one right after the other.
But if you have a dream where the main motif or image involves someone standing over you, above you, or in some superior position, you might want to pay attention. There’s a reason why that image keeps coming back.
Maybe someone is standing directly over you, and then in the next image, someone is standing to the side. And after a few scenes play out in your dream or there are some dead spots, you see someone standing behind you but still at an elevated position.
Dreaming of these images is sure to throw people off. Granted that these dreams are not as traumatic as being chased by cannibals or dreaming of drowning or saving someone from drowning.
Still, these dreams may be telling you something that you need to understand. At the very least, paying attention to where people are standing when it comes to their relationships with you in your dreams can reveal certain important truths that you may have brushed over as you try to sleep on your bed.
A General Interpretation of Someone Standing Above You

In general, if you’re seeing someone standing at an elevated position in your dreams, it can indicate that someone has a better view of your situation than yourself. This should not scare you.
Often, when someone standing in a different position warns or makes you aware of things you cannot observe, they do so out of concern. Let’s put it this way, they are doing you a favor. You should not read too much into the fact that this may be another person.
While it may appear in your dream that it’s another person, in reality, when you sense that someone is standing at a different or higher position than you is trying to communicate with you, that someone is actually yourself. Put more specifically, it’s your subconscious.
The Basic Meaning of Someone Standing Over You

So the first basic meaning of a dream of someone standing over you is heightened consciousness. Now it may seem like a basic type of interpretation, and it is on a superficial level, but it goes deep.
First, you have become aware of your need to control the level of your self-awareness. This is a very important message because we get caught up in tunnel vision.
We have all sorts of duties and responsibilities, and we dive deep into them. That’s all well and good. That’s part of being a responsible person.
But you cannot be just a typical person caught in the day-to-day businesses of your life. You have to be more proactive in other areas of your life.
Otherwise, you would see different dimensions of it out of control, and before you know it, the only part of you that is aware of what’s going on is your subconscious.
The truth is you’ve become blind to other important issues involving your family, career, finances, and even your physical health. Again, this is all a part of developing tunnel vision.
When you are trying to sleep or just woken up from your sleep, and the last image on your mind is that of someone standing close and over you, your subconscious is trying to reach out to you.
Use whatever sense of emotional urgency you get when you remember that image to be more aware of what is going on in your life.
What kind of comments do you say about people? What kind of comments do you have about yourself? What kind of conclusions do you have about your life so far? What kind of comments do family members tell you?
It may turn out that behind these comments and all the side talk, there is a reality that you’ve become blind to.
A Little Self-Deception Can Go A Long Way In Ruining Your Life

Your subconscious is very powerful. Think of it as an all-seeing eye that you are usually blind to.
In other words, on a day-to-day basis, your waking mind is picking up a lot of signals from the universe. These are the things that you see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. But just like some mysterious account, a lot of your conscious “currency” is sucked up to this account.
In fact, in many cases, just like with an automatic savings account, you don’t even see many of these realities because you are focused on something different.
Your mind automatically goes to a hidden page or a hidden account, and you’re not aware of it.
Worse yet, you see something play out in front of you based on how you’d like things to happen, like living in such a way that you only pick up things that you want to be true, and everything else goes into this mysterious, unseen mental and emotional account.
This is the worst way to live your life because you’re setting yourself up for a big crash.
You are preparing the way for a massive letdown in the end when reality catches up to you. You feel that you have the world under your control, but it turns out that is the furthest thing from reality that’s happening.
The Mystery of Hidden Danger

When you sense that someone is standing over you or someone standing close is looking over you, this is a great symbol for hidden danger.
Now, what this signifies is that you allowed it to go hidden. It’s not they are completely hidden from you like there’s some camouflage like in an iguana dream. No. They’re hidden because you don’t even bother to look. It’s like you have this account in your mind that you chose to forget about.
I hope you understand that there is a big difference between having an account and then willfully forgetting it and overlooking that account. These are two different things.
But you feel that your life has to go a certain way, and certain things have to be true. And the more you hang onto these, the more you fall into that internal dialogue of comments from others and yourself.
You can no longer tell which is which.
It’s as if you got caught up in a certain page of the book of your life, and you can’t find the courage and strength to turn the page. You’d like to stay there.
You may even delude yourself into thinking that it’s some exercise in personal control.
Perhaps that’s the case, but there’s also an undeniable dimension of fear. Believe it or not, and this is quite uncomfortable, you may have let fear get the better of you because you’re focused on how you’d like things to be.
Maybe this involves issues with your family, self-worth, self-image, or finances. But you cannot let your fear regarding a relationship, for example, blind you to how things are in the outside world.
The world turns on its own axis; it turns based on its own rules, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
You’re getting a sense of powerlessness and frustration because you refuse to accept this reality.
You are trapped in a self-deluded cycle, and your subconscious is using this powerful image of someone standing nearby from a superior vantage point to draw your attention.
It’s as if your non-conscious mind is using this symbol to wake you up on many different levels.
See the Conflict Within You

What if I told you that you are a combination of many different people, some of whom are dead?
That’s probably enough to freak you out because most people don’t feel good about that. They don’t feel good about having multiple people “live” within them.
But I’m not talking about multiple personalities, or am I trying to wake you up to the possibility of multiple lives or spiritual essences. I’m talking to you about who you were.
You see, when you cope with any situation, you create a person that deals with that situation. This is how you grow.
We create different people in different stages of our life. In many cases, we are different people to different crowds. You create a mask or a role.
Just as you are different when you are in one relationship, you will respond, support, participate in a different kind of relationship.
You Are In Control of Your Identity

You probably would have different feelings or emotions depending on who you’re with and what you’re doing. These are the different people occupying you. They are united by a shared story, which is your identity.
Now, what if I told you that you are more in control of this identity than you give yourself credit for? This is where many freak out because they believe some force prevents them from fully controlling who they can be, where they can go, how high they can aim, and the kind of dreams they can have.
They try to explain their present frustrations, but they always come up short. The reality is you have more control over who you wish to be, and the secret is repetition.
As an ancient Greek philosopher once said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” You can talk a good game about honesty, but if people see you lying all the time, whatever identity you’re trying to convince other people of is not going to wash.
In that sense, your subconscious is doing the same to you, and the initial step is awareness.
Who are you? And if you cannot come up with a good answer or symbol, that’s okay because someone standing near you is directing your attention to a set of facts that you can use to permit yourself to know yourself better eventually.
A Symbol of Wasted Resources

Believe it or not, one common interpretation of a dream involving someone standing over you indicates wasted resources.
Of course, the most common resource that most people can immediately name is money. Pay close attention to what money really means. Money is not the green, black, and white pieces of paper in your pocket, nor is it the numbers that appear on the screen when you access your online bank account.
Ultimately, money is value. The reason people give you money is you bring value to their lives first.
For example, you will give me money if I sell you a goat. I will then use that money to buy pizza. The person who sold me the pizza would then use the money I paid him to buy a blender from somebody, and on and on it goes. The transfer that happened has less to do with the actual medium of exchange, and I’m talking about the tangible pieces of cash or coins.
Instead, it’s the value that was passed on.
When you have a dream of someone standing over you, it can indicate that your subconscious is telling you that there is a value bottleneck in your life.
This isn’t very clear because it can take many forms. It can be quite strange.
Maybe the reason you feel you’re not having much of an impact in your life in terms of doing what you love, feeling fulfilled, and fully living up to your fullest potential regardless of whether you get paid or not may have something to do with how you define value.
Your Definition of Value

You may be the type of person who absolutely has no problem playing video games for endless hours. You may be perfectly content sitting in front of a box, watching images, and enjoying yourself watching movies and TV shows. But don’t think that they are essentially low-value just because you do these things.
Instead, what gives any activity value is you. Where does the activity value lead to? What do you get out of it? What does it build in you?
Does it build hard skills or reveal a talent that can lead to something else? Or does it remain a feeling, and you’re perfectly okay with that?
What makes this difficult is that nobody can come in, even that person standing over you, and tell you that you’re wasting your time and all you’re doing is low-value activity. You’re the one who has to make that call.
When your subconscious shows you these images and fills you with matching emotions, use that sense of urgency to clarify what kind of value you truly want to pursue.
Parents As Teachers of Value

Parents are the most common trap most people have when it comes to the value of life and time or choosing to see the world as they want to see instead of how it really operates. Avoid this common trap.
But then again, parents are symbolic because even though they are real people you can touch, hug, talk to, they are also stand in as symbols for collective experience.
When your mom tells you not to put your hand on the stove, she’s not doing it only out of love; she is passing collective wisdom. You don’t want to find out first-hand because there’s no need to, but people do it anyway.
So you have to look at the proper role of familial guidance. And as a child becoming an adult, you have to know where to draw the line.
Sometimes, people fall in love with the ashes of tradition in any family. They’ve gone beyond respecting the fire and put too much emphasis on the forms, customs, and rules and don’t bother to understand why they took the form they did.
As an adult finding your path in this world, you have to know why these rules exist and apply the principles to your life without being stuck in the form.
This is how you move on. This is how you show respect to those who’ve come before while at the same time living your life to the fullest in the here and now. It’s important how this impacts the many relationships you will have in your life. It can be with another person, a stranger, a family member, and someone from the future or the past.
Permeating all of this is the concept of value.
Live Your Life Based On What You Value

If you’re just living your life based on what other people say value is, chances are you’re going to be leaving a lot of money on the table. Chances you may be living your life for somebody else’s validation.
You are barking up the wrong tree. People find themselves in this situation all the time, and they respond in a wide range of ways, but at the same time, they realize all that energy and investment is gone.
So, ask yourself how do you define value.
Ask what value you get out of doing something on a day-to-day basis and what value you put into it. How does it set you up for who you want to be? Sadly, these are questions that only you can answer. Your family cannot answer them. Traditions can only take you so far.
When you have this dream of standing over you, it can involve your conceptions of traditions because most people view traditions, customs, institutions, rules, and establishments as something “over them.”
But are they really? Ultimately, the only person that can truly stand over you is you. Guard Your Resources Carefully.
Overcoming Family Issues

Family issues can be very tough because the people that can hurt us the most are the ones who get closest to us. And your family members are the ones closest to you.
Even if your parents abandoned you or you come from a tradition of abuse, you cannot help but be affected because your physical vulnerability stems from the proximity made possible by being born in that family.
That’s how important it is. It cuts through you on many different levels because it’s a physical reality, an emotional state, a coping mechanism, and a developmental process.
That’s how deep, profound and significant family is. Then you dream of someone standing in a superior position over you, which can indicate issues, feelings, tendencies, insights, and intuitions about your family life.
Family Is Your Identity

On the surface, there might be nothing wrong with your family. You may have a father who’s there physically, provides for the family, protects everybody, and cares enough to want to know where they are.
Your family may be complete with a mother who’s nurturing, doesn’t need to be told that you’re feeling sad because she can read you like the back of her hand and is always there for you with a warm hug and a reassuring word.
You have a helpful brother who’s figured out a few things in life because he’s lived a few years ahead of you. He is there with a game plan, so you don’t have to fall and skin your knee when he’s already done it for you.
Your young sister is also there for you to have an object of concern. Someone to protect; someone you can celebrate life with; someone you can be proud of.
But all these are just abstractions. They need real, warm, living bodies to occupy. But even if they don’t have physical manifestations in your life, that doesn’t make them any less real because they occupy you.
Your mind has evolved to fit into these shapes or long for these different situations. And regardless of whether you have siblings, it’s part of your mental and emotional package. When you refuse even to be aware of these elements of your psyche, problems arise.
You start telling yourself convenient fiction about how you don’t need anybody, how you raised yourself, or your family is against you or don’t understand you.
But what you’re doing is being spiritually lazy because there is the simplicity behind the seeming complexity and chaos. If you think about it hard, given the thousands of generations that humanity has existed in this rock called earth, how many variations and family relationships can there be?
Just how complicated can one individual ego get when it comes to possible permutations and combinations of interpersonal relationships?
Their number is, believe it or not, quite low and manageable. What makes it impossible and seemingly confusing to your subconscious is when you refuse even to try. You tell yourself that people don’t understand you, and you leave it at that.
When you do that, you are giving up on yourself. It’s not your father who’s screwed up. It’s not an issue of your mother’s shortcomings. It’s you who gave up.
This is not one of those fundamental life elements that you can phone in.
Life is meant to be lived, and our identity is a big part of that. How do you define your identity? Start with your family relationships; everything radiates from that. Interestingly, there is a very strong spiritual component to this that I will discuss in the section below.
Someone Standing Over You Can Indicate Your Perceptions of the Divine

Whether you’re an atheist, an agnostic, or a believer, it does not matter.
The truth is, no matter how you define it, there’s something bigger than us out there. It can be a collective consciousness or a repository or shared lived experiences, it doesn’t matter.
It is quite a stretch to believe one person can explain everything in this universe when they are restricted to the prison of maybe a hundred years on this planet. It insults the intelligence.
We are at the mercy of those who came before us. Think of yourself as a book that writes itself every day you wake up.
And think of this collective wisdom or consciousness or whatever label you want to put on it as a library. Or to put it into modern terms, it is the collective ledger stored on a universal blockchain.
And just as you can look at the Hubble space field and feel extremely small because of the billions of galaxies out there, each containing billions of solar systems, how much more will your book pale in comparison to all that came before, all that is happening now, and all that will come after.
I don’t say this to give you a profound sense of personal inferiority. I just want to give you a cosmological sense of perspective.
Ultimately, it’s not about you.
Your Existence Is Part of the Divine

When you sense that someone is standing over you, your subconscious reminds you that you are part of something bigger. Sure, you may feel small or insignificant, but that doesn’t destroy the connection.
You exist, and whether you like it or not, you count. But just because you seem to be just a speck in a sea of things compared to the things that were and the things to come, none of that takes away from the fact that you exist at least in this second.
It is worth acknowledging, embracing, and celebrating.
So the idea of deity, God, or collective intelligence or whatever you call it is a celebration of the fact that you are here.
Your subconscious may be showing you this dream image because you feel so alone. Perhaps you feel voiceless. Maybe a sense of hopelessness and despair is coming over you. I get that because we live in a world where depression, anxiety, and a sense of existential angst are too common.
Why? People have forgotten about the bigger questions.
Everybody’s caught up in figuring out what, where, and when. They cannot be bothered with the question of why.
But as you get older, you quickly realize that why is the only question worth asking because everything else flows from it. My former manager taught me if you can get your team to understand the why, doing what, reporting to who, using which, and going where all fall into place.
It’s absolutely correct.
If you get the sense emotionally and intellectually that someone is standing over you after you wake up from a dream, maybe it’s a message from your subconscious that you need to start thinking in more universal terms. Never deny the spark of the divine that we all share.
Dream Example #1

I have often heard that human dreams extend from whatever ruminated around our minds while we are awake. They said if you looked well enough, you would see parts of yourself in the dreams that you have.
This notion did not seem wrong until I had a disturbing dream. And with that, I cannot say that this general notion rings true for me.
Why I Might Not Subscribe to This Notion
If I had to describe myself in two words, I would go for happy and optimistic. My father once said that my happy nature and jovial mood were infectious that he nicknamed me Ray. He always said that I was his ray of sunshine.
So, considering my often-happy nature, I do not understand how I came about the dream that I had last Wednesday.
The day had started like every other day. My alarm woke me, and then I got ready for work. After work, I busied myself with a book on Philosophy while shoving my face with gummy bears and iced cream.
When night came, I snuggled against the duvet, my body longing for the day-due rest. Little did I know, however, that the night held out a gift for me.
As I slipped into peaceful oblivion, I started to feel relaxed. And then suddenly, the feeling of relaxation left me, and a strange feeling took over.
At first, I could not place a finger on it. All I knew was that I felt alert, and the hairs on my body stood on their ends.
Now the funny thing is that despite the feeling of alertness, I could not wake from sleep. It is like watching a movie on Netflix and wanting to exit the screen, but you find that the buttons on the remote are dormant.
I know I said it was funny that I could not wake, but not the amusing kind of funny. Shortly after, I sensed that I was not alone in the house, and dread overwhelmed me.
Do you know that signal your body gets when someone is staring at you at a party? Or when coming from behind you on a walkway? I got that exact feeling in my sleep, and I became so scared.
As if the dreadful feeling was not enough, I suddenly felt a human figure hover above me, staring at me as I slept. Even in my oblivion, there was something eerie about the presence of this person. It felt like all the light went off all at once.
It became so chilly that a shiver ran down my spine. The coldness did not seem to affect the figure though as it bent forward and brought its face closer.
My heart raced so hard against my chest that I feared the figure would hear it and tear it out.
This probably went on for some minutes, but it felt like hours of forced scrutiny. In one moment, this strange figure was examining me, and in the next moment, it vanished.
A sense of relief washed over me as I slipped back into a dreamless slumber.
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Dream interpretation and symbology have fascinated me ever since I read Freud’s classic, “The Interpretation of Dreams.” Ever since, I have explored Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Buddhist as well as Jungian psychological ideas about the meaning of dreams. Thanks for joining me in my exploration of the amazing intersection between our conscious waking world and the rich expanse of our subconscious-the home of our intuition, instincts, and hidden potential.