What Does Dreaming About Your Throat Mean?

Psychologically, the throat is the passage of the voice — where speech and sound come through — so it most often centers on voice, expression, and communication: your ability to speak, express yourself, and be heard, and the free passage (or blocking) of your words and your 'voice.' The throat is the channel through which what's inside finds expression.

This carries several charges. As voice and expression, the throat touches your capacity to speak up, express yourself, and let your voice through. As blocked expression, a sore, blocked, tight, or constricted throat — being unable to speak, words 'stuck' in your throat, a lump in the throat, or a 'choked' feeling — usually mirrors trouble expressing yourself, words you can't get out, feelings choked back, or being silenced. As 'swallowing,' the throat (which swallows) touches 'swallowing' your words, feelings, or pride — holding things down rather than expressing them, or something 'hard to swallow.' As vulnerability, the throat is delicate and exposed (the jugular), touching vulnerability, feeling exposed, or being at someone's mercy. Whether the throat is clear and open, sore or blocked, choked or constricted, or has a 'lump' usually mirrors your voice and self-expression, blocked or 'choked' expression, the swallowing of words or feelings, and vulnerability.

A Freudian reading would attend to the throat as the passage of voice and of swallowing — the channel through which expression passes and through which things are swallowed down, evoking the giving of voice, the constriction that chokes it, and the swallowing-down of what is not expressed. The throat can embody the passage of expression and its constriction, and the swallowing-down of words and feelings held back.

Its openness or its constriction carries the charge of expression and of suppression. What the throat evokes — the free passage of voice, the constriction of the choked, the swallowing-down of the unspoken — tends to point at the dreamer's relationship to expression and suppression: the voice that finds passage or is choked, and the words and feelings swallowed down rather than given voice, held in the constricted passage of the throat.

Scripture gives voice and the throat weight — the throat from which praise and speech come ('my mouth shall praise thee'), the warning of throats used for deceit ('their throat is an open sepulchre'), and the parched throat that cries ('my throat is dried'). The throat touches this theme of the voice — its use for good or ill, its crying out, and its parching or constriction.

A throat dream, read this way, can touch voice, expression, what one speaks, or a voice choked or crying. A biblical sensibility might weigh the throat as the passage of one's voice — for praise and truth, or for deceit — reading a constricted or choked throat as expression blocked or held back, and inviting the freeing of one's voice toward truth, praise, and honest expression, that the throat be a clear passage for good words rather than choked, deceitful, or parched.

In Islamic sensibility the throat, as the passage of voice and speech, touches the responsibility of speech (guarding the tongue, speaking good or staying silent) and the voice raised in remembrance and supplication; the throat also touches vulnerability and the swallowing-down of what one holds. The throat evokes the passage of speech and its guarding, the voice in remembrance, and vulnerability.

A throat dream, in this frame, might point to voice and expression, blocked or 'choked' expression, the swallowing of words or feelings, or vulnerability. Held with humility, it can invite reflection on the use of one's voice (for good, truthful speech and the remembrance of God), the freeing of expression that is blocked or held back where it should be voiced, and an awareness of the vulnerability and responsibility the throat — the passage of one's voice — represents.

In a Hindu frame the throat is the seat of the vishuddha chakra — the center of communication, expression, voice, and truth — and is honored through the image of Shiva Nilakantha (the blue-throated), who held the world's poison in his throat to protect creation. The throat evokes the center of expression and truth (vishuddha), the voice, and the bearing of the difficult.

A throat dream, in this frame, can point to voice and expression, blocked or 'choked' expression (a blocked throat center), the swallowing of words or feelings, or the bearing of something hard. The tradition's note attends to expression and the throat center: the vishuddha as the seat of truthful expression and voice, and Shiva's holding of the poison in his throat as an image of bearing difficulty without being poisoned — an invitation to clear, truthful expression (an open throat center), the freeing of a blocked voice, and the dignity of bearing what is hard with grace.