Being left behind, whether while you’re in danger or just generally in life, is always a horrible feeling. Being left behind in a dream can often feel similar but, more importantly, it can also serve as a major hint about what’s going on in your inner self, in your life, and what you might want to change or work on in the future.
So, let’s take a look at the common dream about someone leaving you behind and its 12 most likely explanations.
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The dream about someone leaving you behind and what it means
Like all other dreams, the dream about someone leaving you behind has numerous different interpretations and explanations, some of which can be similar but others are nearly diametrically opposed to each other. So, figuring out which is the proper interpretation in your case is critical.
The way to decipher the dream of being left behind and whether it signals a fear of abandonment, difficulties saying goodbye, or anything else, is by looking into your waking life and figuring out which of the following 12 explanations is particularly current in your life right now.
1. You feel inadequate about something or in general
Our real life insecurities or feelings of guilt are prevalent reasons for a dream about someone leaving us behind. That’s because our subconscious minds look at our own insecurities, feel down about them, and interpret them as reason enough for us to just be left behind by those around us.
In essence, if you’ve been feeling inadequate, guilty, or with low self-esteem about something lately, a dream about someone leaving you behind is a hint that you don’t value yourself enough and you need to fix that.
2. You desperately want to belong
Another possible interpretation is that you don’t feel like you have anyone in your life to leave you behind in the first place anyway. In other words, you feel like you’ve already been left behind by life and society and you don’t have people to call your own right now.
Whether that’s the case or not is another issue – our subconscious minds don’t always interpret reality accurately. However, the dream itself is proof positive that you don’t feel all right in your life at the moment and you need to do something about it.
3. You are afraid someone close to you is going to betray you
Dreams of being abandoned can also be a sign that you fear an incoming betrayal from someone close to you. These might be false fears or they may be justified, we can’t know the true intentions of the people near us.
What we can figure out is just the subconscious content your dreams hint at such as your own sense of insecurity or your feeling that someone’s getting ready to cause you some serious damage with their betrayal.
4. You have betrayed someone and you’re afraid they’ll find out
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The opposite can also be true – you may be feeling remorse and frustration because of your own betrayal of someone close to you. In this case, your mind is likely manifesting a dream about someone leaving you behind because of the guilt you have – your mind is telling you that you feel like you should be abandoned because you’re not good for those around you.
5. You feel reliant on others
There’s also the possible explanation that your subconscious mind realizes you are being too reliant on others and that, should they leave you, you might have issues taking care of yourself. Such dreams can often come after misunderstandings with a close friend or a family member.
This can be seen as a sign of a lack of self-love or fear of exclusion but, in this case, it’s likely just the subconscious realization that you need to be at least a bit more independent in your waking life. This doesn’t mean you need to cut ties with those around you, of course – just that you should become better at looking after yourself.
6. You feel in danger
If you don’t feel safe you may also have a dream about someone leaving you behind. In this case, the dream isn’t so much an expression of insecurities or a clue about your dependency but might simply indicate that you don’t feel safe, period.
We, humans, are social animals. So, even when we’re relatively independent and are not particularly reliant on others, we still have the instinct to look for help or assistance when we don’t feel safe. So, a dream about someone leaving you behind may just be a clue that you feel in danger.
7. You have some major trust issues
Another very likely interpretation of this type of dream is that you don’t feel you can trust those around you to have your back. This may be because you’ve just had a quarrel with a close family member or friend, or you simply got the wrong interpretation of that person. It may also be that you don’t trust the supposed sincerity of their words.
Dreams of this sort are very likely when you’ve been made a promise you don’t fully trust. The dream doesn’t mean that you’re right not to trust that person, of course, just that you have some trust issues.
8. You feel lost
The fear of abandonment and the feeling of being lost are very similar and are often connected. If you have a dream about someone leaving you behind, this mind be indicating that you don’t feel comfortable with the current state of your life and you lack the peace of mind to feel comfortable and safe.
A big clue that this is what your dream meant is if the person abandoning you in your dream is someone you don’t know. This goes to show that the issue isn’t with your relationship with that particular person but with your relationship with the world and society around you.
9. You’ve recently left home
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A much less dramatic interpretation of a dream about someone leaving you behind is that you’ve simply recently left your childhood home behind yourself. This experience is one of the several most significant leaps we tend to make in life together with getting married, having a child, moving abroad, etc.
This experience usually goes hand in hand with a shaky financial situation, a new workplace and colleagues, a feeling that your efforts at building a life for yourself are inefficient, and a general loss of control. All those feelings are to be expected when leaving your childhood home as is a dream that you are being left behind.
10. You’ve just been through a breakup or you’re thinking of breaking up with your current partner
Similarly to the above, if you’ve recently gone through the end of your relationship, you may very well feel like you’ve been abandoned – so much so that you even have a dream of being left behind.
This is especially common if your partner broke up with you but it can also happen if you were the one initiating the breakup. That’s because you can still feel “left behind” out of jealousy, disappointment with your partner’s behavior, or something similar. It could even simply be that you’ve been feeling shut off from your partner’s feelings.
11. You’ve recently had to get out of your comfort zone in a major way
You don’t need to leave home or go through a breakup to get out of your comfort zone – putting an end to old habits, moving to a new apartment, getting a new job – there are lots of things we do in our waking lives that can make us feel like we’re on shaky ground and we may need (and not get) help from those around us to pull through.
12. You have unresolved issues with being left behind stemming from your childhood
Lastly, probably one of the most common reasons for such a dream is that you’ve just been abandoned (or felt abandoned) before and your subconscious mind continued to live through that trauma as you haven’t yet properly dealt with it. This underlying issue can easily be combined with any real-life scenario from the list above to make this dream not only more impactful but frequent too.
In conclusion – what does a dream about someone leaving you behind mean?
Dreams often offer some of the best insight into our subconscious mind, our current state of emotions, or real feelings, and even solutions for what we can do in our waking life to improve our situation. Just looking at the content of the dream and turning over a new chapter is difficult, however. Fortunately, few dreams’ meanings are as easily appear as a dream about someone leaving you behind.
There are still about a dozen possible interpretations, of course, such as a fear of betrayal, a fear of your own inability to progress in life, the insecurity that comes with cutting out a bad habit, the negative emotions of ending your current relationship with your boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse, and others.
Figuring out which of those meanings applies to you will take some introspection and digging for clues from your waking life but you should have no serious issues figuring things out with the several pointers we’ve listed above.
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