The opposite night I dreamt my skin was encrusted in thick scaly scabs. Not the conventional kind, more just like the ‘greyscale’ that plagued Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones. Within the dream, I picked away at them and dark pigmentation marks appeared underneath, everlasting. “No amount of SkinCeuticals Retinol 1.0% was going to shift that lot,” my dream-self thought (which made me realise I’ve been writing about beauty for far too long). In real life, I’ve recently broken out in mild rosacea since hitting my 30s and while I’ve been looking into ways to cope with it (the above retinol and Willowberry Nutrient Boost Day Cream are topping the charts to this point), the fear of it getting worse could have possibly seeped into my subconscious, hence the dream. 

We frequently describe bad skin as annoying, pesky, and a nuisance but few people fail to say how it may haunt our dreams. There’s something revolting about things that affect and infect our skin, on a level of intimacy that’s spine-chilling – bringing about sudden drastic transformation and the emotions of repulsion that include it, type of like when Jeff Goldblum slowly morphs right into a grotesque insect in The Fly. Or the weird, mutant “baby” in David Lynch’s freaky film Eraserhead gets sick and tiny gruesome nodules appear over its screaming face.

Seems I’m not alone in my nightly epidermal horror show. Katie experienced the identical recurring dream about her skin throughout her teens, when she was coping with breakouts on the time. “I can be viewing my very own face, however it would look more like a mask, a floating head on a black background. The face would scrunch up really small and be super old looking and wrinkly, after which it might stretch out and be super smooth and excellent. It might just try this over and once again, type of like a face version of an accordion. It was pretty horrific actually!”

A fast search on Quora and Reddit brings up other stories. One user wrote, “In my dreams my severe pimples comes back after I have a look at my reflection, what does this mean?” One other commented: “I had a dream that I used to be looking in a mirror, examining a patch of skin on my brow that in the true world I even have been having a break out. Once I stepped back from the mirror, I realised that in my reflection I had an enormous, pitted rash down either side of my face, the longer I looked, the more parts of my body looked as if it would have this horrible rash.”

Plenty of us hold a morbid fascination with things that affect the skin, probably more so than some other body part – perhaps since it’s so immediate and insidious, not least since the skin itself is a fascinatingly complex organ. I remember as a teen being transfixed by its ability to supply these tiny yellow globe-like pustules on my nose and chin. When my younger sister was a young person, she developed a crater of a blackhead on her nose and I (being the great older sibling that I used to be) offered to squeeze it for her, transfixed by the crumpled mess that emerged from that tiny black dot.

The truth is, it’s becoming extremely common to be interested in what happens ‘under the skin’ and why videos like Dr Pimple Popper’s are essentially slasher movies for the twenty first century – you ought to look away but stay transfixed. All of us cringed in season seven of Game of Thrones at when Samwell Tarly attempts to treat Jorah’s aforementioned greyscale and proceeds to choose it off his body with a scalpel (props to the GoT sound effects team for ramping up the ick factor). So, it’s no wonder ghoulish skin can present itself in anxiety dreams, being up there with being unwittingly naked in front of our colleagues or having our teeth fall out. 

“I can be viewing my very own face, however it would look more like a mask, a floating head on a black background. The face would scrunch up really small and be super old looking and wrinkly, after which it might stretch out and be super smooth and excellent. It might just try this over and once again, type of like a face version of an accordion. It was pretty horrific actually!” – Katie 

Even individuals who cope with skin conditions on a day by day basis aren’t proof against them. Take it from cosmetic doctor Sophie Shotter who runs the Illuminate Skin Clinic. “I had a weird one where I used to be principally draining abscesses on my skin, it happened not long after I needed to treat an abscess at work. I used to be squeezing pus out of bits of myself. I used to be a bit grossed out, despite the fact that I do that lots in my day job. It did make me get up but I wasn’t panicked,” she says. 

There are numerous interpretations and meanings attributed to skin online. Sigmund Freud thought dreams were just elements of ourselves we didn’t wish to consciously acknowledge, e.g. forbidden desires, unwanted feelings of vulnerability, which the contents of our dream are symbols of. “The dream is the (disguised) fulfilment of a (suppressed, repressed) wish,” he wrote in The Interpretation of Dreams.

With this in mind, it makes our skin dreams all of the more interesting. “The skin is the body’s boundary,” notes Dr Shotter. “And from the reading I’ve done about dreams, individuals who dream about skin a whole lot of the time could have issues concerning their very own boundaries – whether physical, emotional or otherwise,” she says. “All of it depends whether you’re taking dreams literally or think they’ve hidden meanings. There are such a lot of possibilities for what things might mean if it’s a dream interpretation. Was my abscess dream solely brought on by the real-life abscess I used to be treating that day, or me needing to eliminate something toxic from my life?” 

With others, the link with waking reality could be more literal, as in chef Priscilla Casey’s case whose lower than positive experiences together with her skin have spilled over into her dreaming life. “This dream has haunted me quite a few times where my face becomes increasingly hot to the purpose of maximum discomfort,” she explains. “It recurs when I even have a giant event coming up, as I actually battle with atopic dermatitis and rosacea – each of which I even have had since childhood.”

Last 12 months, the British Skin Foundation reported that nine in ten dermatologists agree that not enough importance is placed on the psychological effects resulting from skin conditions. So, are skin anxiety dreams like Priscilla’s anything to fret about? In accordance with professor of clinical psychology and British Skin Foundation spokesperson Andrew Thompson, they’re not a right away cause for concern.

“I wouldn’t worry concerning the fact you might be dreaming, but when you are continually waking up in the course of the night and remembering what those dreams were about, then it could possibly be linked to a more serious mental health issue,” he says. “Given 10 per cent of individuals with skin conditions have significant levels of tension and depression, it’s common. If a patient got here to me with this sort of scenario, I wouldn’t ask concerning the content of the dream and take a look at to interpret the meaning of it. I’m more fascinated by the person interpretation of the dream, i.e. what does it mean to you?”

“Given 10 per cent of individuals with skin conditions have significant levels of tension and depression, it’s common. I’m more fascinated by the person interpretation of the dream, i.e. what does it mean to you?” – Andrew Thompson, professor of clinical pyschology and British Skin Foundation spokesperson

He advises to hunt help in case your dreams – and related skin conditions – are literally affecting the standard of sleep you’re getting. “Sleep could be resulting from skin specific issues resembling pain, itch, discomfort, and/or any related low or anxious moods,” he says. “It’s likely that longstanding sleep disturbance will negatively affect your health so it’s value going to see someone for advice if there are persistent problems with any aspect of sleep.”

“Bedtime leisure rituals could be really useful on this regard,” he continues. “It doesn’t must be anything drastic, just having a shower allowing time if you may have a skin condition that involves using bath emollients, doing something that’s going to take you away from the stresses of the day and the stresses of your skin.”

While I wouldn’t say my dreams are linked to any serious anxiety condition, I’m definitely going to be more wary if Jorah’s greyscale comes back to haunt me. But within the meantime I’d just skip my ritual of tidying the skincare products on my bathroom shelf just before I am going to bed, lest they arrive back to haunt me Freddie Kruger-style once I close my eyes… Nice dreams everyone!