What It Means When You Dream You Can't Find A Bathroom

You're at a friend's party, and you're in need of the bathroom. What you assumed would be an easy enough venture soon causes you to sweat with anxiety. Your stomach is churning, and you're afraid you're going to relieve yourself right there in front of everyone if you don't find a restroom soon. All the doors you open lead to rooms that are not a bathroom, and your endless harried sprints down long hallways always end in disappointment and panic. When you eventually do find a bathroom, there's a line in front of it that looks never-ending. 

Does this dream sound familiar to you? One of the most common dreams people have are about bathrooms. In fact, they are even more common among women and people in their 20s and 30s (via Auntyflo).

But do dreams specifically about not being able to find a bathroom mean anything in particular? Dream expert Lauri Loewenberg thinks they do. "The subconscious speaks to us symbolically because our brain is working differently when we sleep," she shared with Bustle. This is what it means when you can't find a toilet in your dreams.

Have you ever held back how you really feel about someone or something in your life? Are you trying to suppress negative thoughts in your waking life so much that it's become an unhealthy pattern? A dream about not being able to find a bathroom can signal a lifelong pattern or recent development in your emotional life (via Bustle).

Our dreams can reveal things about our health, and this dream, in particular, is your subconscious, alerting you of the need to share your real feelings with people, per ThePleasantDream. Dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg shared with Bustle that "the toilet represents your ability to relieve yourself — to flush away — negativity, frustration, that which you no longer need." You could be keeping your thoughts and emotions bottled because of a lack of confidence or a fear of rejection as well, reports Alo Dreams.

Perhaps you've finally managed to locate a toilet in your dream, but it's clogged or unusable for some reason. A clogged toilet could be telling you about something or someone in your life that's arousing feelings of fear or bitterness. If the toilet is overflowing, this could indicate that you're spending too much time in your waking life taking on the emotional burdens of those around you while dismissing your own, according to What Dream Means.

If your dream about not being able to use a bathroom is plagued by a fear of people seeing you while you relieve yourself, this might indicate you're worried about what people think of you, according to Bustle. A lack of privacy in your dream could also suggest a lack of privacy in your real life, reports Alo Dreams. It may be time for some boundaries.

If you can't find a place to relieve yourself, this might be a sign of certain uneasiness in your life, says What Dream Means. Perhaps it's time to move past your comfort zone and your presumed embarrassment to accomplish your goals. According to ThePleasantDream, if the restroom in your dream is deplorable, your subconscious mind might be telling you to take note of some mounting repulsive feelings towards something or someone.

If you manage to relieve yourself in your dream, it could be reflective of anger or negativity you're relinquishing from your life, according to psychologist Dr. Nancy Irwin (via Bustle). Irwin explains, "Your mind's job is to make sense of your world. If it spoke to you in mundane terms, like 'release your anger,' you may not get the message." A dream related to the bathroom might be just the push you need.