What Does It Mean When You Dream About Aliens?
Artie Wu — Fifteen years guiding inner work, 100,000+ people
The Short Answer
A dream about aliens is not a warning, and it's not about anything from outer space. In the language of dreams, an alien is a part of you — but a part you've never seen up close, a part that feels so foreign, so unlike the person you think you are, that when it finally shows up it arrives looking like a creature from another planet. So the dream isn't predicting anything. It's introducing you, carefully, to something inside yourself that you've held at arm's length for a very long time.
What Aliens Actually Mean in Your Dream
Start with the plain fact of the word. Alien means foreign — the thing that doesn't belong, the thing that comes from somewhere else, the thing you can't place. And here's the private feeling this dream sits on, the one most people never say out loud: there's a part of you that you've quietly decided is not you. Something you long for and can't name, something you crave and keep at a distance in the same breath. You treat it as foreign — even though, in your deepest heart, you're aching for reunion with it.
That's what the alien is. It's the piece of yourself you've never had good examples of, so it feels strange, even a little unreal — the way a whole way of being can feel foreign to you simply because you've almost never seen it lived out in front of you. It's not that it isn't yours. It's that it's been so far away, for so long, that when it comes back it doesn't look like family. It looks like a visitor.
Now — the little green alien with the burning eyes, the one you run screaming from. In the dreams I've read, this is one of the most misunderstood figures there is. He looks terrifying. In the dream you know that if you get down to his level and look him in the eyes, the fire from his eyes will burn you and you'll die. So of course you run. But here is the thing that changes everything: this figure is not an agent of your death in the literal sense. He's an agent of transformation. The "death" he offers is the death of an old version of you — the ending of a way of living that has quietly stopped fitting.
And notice how he actually behaves. He isn't chasing you with a weapon. He's more like the old knife-sharpener walking down the street calling out, I'm here to sharpen your knives, if you want. He's saying: I'm here to transform you, if you want. The offer is conditional. It waits for your yes. The terror you feel isn't because he's violent — it's because you sense how completely this meeting would change you, and part of you isn't ready to let the old you go.
So an alien in your dream is that foreign-feeling inner element standing at the edge of your life, offering you something enormous and holding still until you're willing to look it in the eye.
Context Changes Everything
A small alien — three feet tall, something you'd have to crouch down to meet. This one's key is in the height. The transformation only happens if you get down to his level and see eye to eye. The dream is showing you that meeting this part of yourself requires humility — lowering yourself, not conquering anything. What you're scared of isn't the creature. It's what you'd have to give up to look it in the eyes.
An alien with laser eyes, fire, or a burning gaze. Fire in a dream is transformation — the old form burned away so a new one can come. The burning eyes aren't a threat of harm; they're the intensity of a change you can feel coming and haven't yet agreed to. Ask where in your life something is quietly asking to be transformed.
Being treated as an alien, or treating someone else as alien. Sometimes you're the foreign one — the immigrant child in a world where the people back home think you've gone completely nuts, standing on the boundary line between two worlds and belonging fully to neither. That loneliness is real, and the dream is naming it, not blaming you for it. It's showing you the gap you're straddling.
Aliens beaming down into an empty landscape — a scrubbed, museum-quiet place with no people. This is a picture of a part of your inner life that's been emptied out and tidied over, where something that used to live there has been pushed away until only tourists and tour guides remain. The dream is pointing to what got cleared out, and asking you to remember it was ever there.
An alien you long for, desire, or crave even as it frightens you. This is the tender one. It means the foreign part is something you want back — reunion, not invasion. The craving under the fear is the truest signal in the whole dream.
A recurring alien dream. This is the most important tell of all. A dream that keeps coming back is an email being resent, again and again, because the earlier ones never got opened. The repetition isn't a punishment. It means the message matters, and the sender hasn't given up on you reading it.
What to Do With This Dream
Here's the move most people miss: the alien isn't a monster from somewhere else. It's a part of you — a figure you can actually sit down and talk to. Instead of reading it like a line in a symbol dictionary, you turn toward it and interview it. Yes, even the one with the burning eyes. Especially that one.
So try this. Bring the alien back to mind, and instead of running, you stop and you ask it, plainly: Who are you? Where have you come from — why do you feel so foreign to me? You looked like you wanted to change me. What is it you want to transform, and into what? What would I have to let end for that to happen? And what have you been trying to tell me all the times I ran?
Then — and this is the whole thing — you get quiet, you get down to its level, and you let it answer. Not what you'd guess it would say. What it actually says. This is a meeting, not a fight. Nothing here needs to be beaten or driven off. It needs to be looked in the eye.
So the one question to sit with: What part of yourself have you decided is foreign — the thing you both long for and keep at a distance — and what would you have to let go of to finally meet its eyes?
"It feels like talking to a real person, and it's so fun." — K.S.
What else happened in this dream about aliens?
About the Author
Artie Wu is the founder of Preside Meditation and Ariadne. With degrees from Harvard and Stanford, he has spent fifteen years guiding over 100,000 people through inner work — dream interpretation, shadow work, parts work, and somatic healing.
He has been featured in the Gaia.com feature film Transcendence 2, and on Fox, CBS, and CNN.
Related Dream Symbols: fire, being chased, eyes, being kidnapped, ghost