What Does Dreaming About Ice Mean?

Psychologically, ice is frozen water — and since water is emotion, ice most often touches frozen emotions: feelings that are suppressed, numbed, frozen over, or locked away rather than flowing. Ice can mirror an emotionally cold, numb, or frozen state — feelings put 'on ice,' a heart or situation frozen, or emotion held rigidly in check rather than felt and expressed.

This carries several charges. As frozen or numbed emotion, ice touches feelings frozen over, suppressed, or numbed — emotion locked in a cold, rigid state rather than flowing. As coldness, ice touches emotional coldness, distance, or 'frostiness' — a cold heart, a cold relationship, or a chilly, distant atmosphere (yours or another's). As being stuck or stalled, frozen ice touches a frozen, stalled, or 'on ice' situation — things frozen in place, not moving. As 'thin ice,' ice touches a precarious, risky position — being 'on thin ice,' in danger of falling through, a fragile or risky situation. As slipperiness, ice touches losing your footing, instability, or a slippery, treacherous situation. And melting ice touches thawing — feelings or a frozen situation freeing up, warming, and beginning to flow again. Whether the ice is frozen solid, thin and cracking, slippery, or melting usually mirrors frozen or numbed emotions, coldness and distance, a stuck or stalled situation, a precarious 'thin ice' position, and the thawing of what's been frozen.

A Freudian reading would attend to ice as feeling frozen and held rigid — water, the element of emotion, locked into a cold, hard, immobile state, evoking the freezing-over of feeling, emotional numbing, and the rigidity of the suppressed. Ice can embody the freezing and numbing of emotion, the cold rigidity of what is held frozen rather than flowing, and the suppression of feeling into a hard, cold state.

Its frozenness and its possible melting carry the charge of suppressed feeling and of its potential thaw. What ice evokes — the cold of frozen feeling, the rigidity of the frozen-over, the thaw of melting — tends to point at the dreamer's relationship to frozen emotion: the feeling suppressed and numbed into a cold, rigid state, the coldness and distance it brings, and the possibility of thawing, of frozen feeling beginning to flow and be felt again.

Scripture's cold and ice appear among the wonders of creation and as images of a chilled state — 'he casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold?' (the awe of the frozen), and the sobering image of love grown cold ('because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold'). Ice touches this theme of the cold — both the wonder of creation's frost and the chilling of love and the heart.

An ice dream, read this way, can touch coldness, a frozen heart, or a chilled state. A biblical sensibility might weigh ice between the awe of creation's frost ('who can stand before his cold?') and the sobering image of love grown cold — reading the dream as a possible prompt to attend to a coldness in the heart or in love, to guard against love 'waxing cold,' and to seek the warmth that thaws a frozen heart, letting frozen feeling and love be warmed and flow again.

In Islamic sensibility ice and cold are among the signs and wonders of God's creation (the water, the cold, the varied states of the elements all His), and ice as frozen water touches the recognizable theme of a frozen or hardened state of the heart — the heart that can grow cold or hard, and the warming and softening of it through remembrance and faith. Ice evokes creation's cold, and the frozen or hardened heart to be warmed.

An ice dream, in this frame, might point to coldness, frozen feeling, a stuck state, or a precarious position. Held with humility, it can invite reflection on any coldness or hardness in the heart (the heart that can grow cold or hard being a concern in the tradition), and the warming and softening of it through faith, remembrance, and good — an invitation to thaw a frozen or hardened heart, letting warmth, feeling, and softness return through turning toward God and the good.

In a Hindu frame ice — frozen water — touches the theme of the frozen and the flowing: emotion or energy frozen and held rigid versus flowing freely, and the cold, inert, stuck state (a kind of frozen tamas, inertia) versus the warmth of life and flow. Ice evokes frozen emotion and energy, the inert and stuck, and the contrast with warm flow.

An ice dream, in this frame, can point to frozen emotions, coldness, a stuck or inert state, or a precarious position — and, in melting, the thawing and freeing of what's been frozen. The tradition's note attends to the frozen and the flowing: ice as an image of emotion or energy frozen and stuck (inert, cold) versus the warmth and flow of life — an invitation to thaw what's been frozen within (frozen feeling, stuck energy), letting warmth and flow return, and to move from the cold and inert toward the living and flowing.