Dreaming About Using the Toilet

One of the most common dreams you can have is having to use the toilet.  You either have to go and can't find a bathroom anywhere, go in public or plumbing suddenly shows up in a dream.  If you're like me, you will have dreams where toilets appear everywhere -- substituting for bus seats, couches, beds, in the middle of a stage with a whole audience watching -- you know what I mean.  (And if you don't, just pretend you do.)

I've also dreamt about finding a toilet -- but the toilet is broken or will not flush.  The author of Dream On It: Unlock Your Dreams, Change Your Life (Macmillan), Lauri Quinn Loewenberg, explains that dreaming about overflowing or backed up toilets means that your "emotional plumbing is backed up."

She is, of course, wrong.

There is no heavy subconscious meaning to dreaming about this -- it means that you have to go to the bathroom.  As soon as you wake up, what do you have to do?  Go to the bathroom!  Your bladder sends not-so-subtle messages to your dreaming brain that you gotta go.  You wake up and stagger to the toilet (if you're lucky to get that far.)  Sometimes your body speaks to you through your dreams.

Can you actually wet the bed if you dream about using the toilet?  Yes -- but this is rare.  For example, my Mom told me that once (when she had a bladder infection) she dreamed of using the toilet -- and woke up to discover that she had peed the bed.  My Dad was none too amused. They divorced about 25 years later, but that's not the point.  The point is that the dreaming mind is a strange thing, but dreaming about having to use a toilet is normal.

Image of 1913 toilet by Anagoria for Wikimedia Commons.