Too often, life gets so busy that we move from one task to another without fully comprehending what happened before. This lack of self-awareness can lead to feelings of constipation, according to Jungian psychotherapist, Satya Doyle Byock (via The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies). “Each day, the emotions, experiences, memories, relationships, stimuli, information, and conversations in our lives cannot all be fully digested because we don’t have the time, or we get interrupted, or we’re at work and on deadline,” she explained.
Byock thinks dreams related to excrement have to do with one’s “psychic digestive system” — how we consume stuff, metabolize it, and then discard it via waste. “When life throws us things that are requiring more of our attention, poop dreams often show up. The dreams are pointing to the need to digest something, to fully take something in, or they can point out problems with the processing,” she writes.
Dreams about wanting to poop can also mean that you’re stuck in one developmental stage that needs to be completed before you can get to the next, per a 2011 study published in Counselling Psychology Quarterly.
