What Does It Mean to Dream of Broken Glass?

People often learn when they are children that they must handle glass carefully because it can break easily. Dreaming of broken glass may therefore be associated with feelings of failure that you did not do a good enough job handling something fragile.

Your broken glass dream might also, however, show that you have the resilience to get through whatever mess you are in.

Broken Glass Dream Symbolism

Fragility

A dream of seeing broken glass can symbolize that you are worried about someone or something in your life who seems fragile, as discussed in glass dream symbolism. This could refer to the physical fragility of things like fancy electronic equipment or to medical conditions like osteoporosis that make people more susceptible to breaking their bones.

More commonly, however, a dream that emphasizes fragility is about emotional fragility. You might feel that you have to tiptoe around someone else to avoid setting them off. Alternately, you might be the fragile one if you feel that you are incapable of handling any disruptions to your own rigid way of doing things and insist that the others around you capitulate.

If the glass in your dream is already broken, however, the big, bad thing that you were trying to avoid already happened. Your dream of broken glass may therefore symbolize that you feel crushed. That you have lived long enough to dream about it shows that you might have more resilience than you think, though.

Boundaries

Glass can serve as a boundary between one space and another, like when it is used in the windows of a car or a building. Dreaming of broken glass can therefore symbolize that you or someone in your life has overstepped an important boundary. One person might be invading another person’s space, physically or psychologically.

Destruction

To break glass is an act of destruction, whether or not it happened intentionally. Dreaming of broken glass can symbolize that something in your life has been destroyed. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on what was destroyed.

The phrase “glass ceiling” refers to invisible barriers that women face while pursuing advancement in their careers, as reported by the BBC. In this context, broken glass might be a positive dream symbol, as it would show that some obstacle has been removed from your path.

Common Broken Glass Dreams

Dream of broken eyeglasses

Dreaming of broken eyeglasses can symbolize that there is something wrong with your vision, either physically or metaphorically. Maybe there is something unpleasant in your life that you don’t want to see, so you choose on some level to remain in denial about it. You may be able to do so, but eventually it will come at the cost of distorting your vision about other things in your life as well.

Dream of broken glass window

If you dream that one of the windows of your house is broken, this could, like a dream of broken eyeglasses, symbolize a problem with your vision. As discussed further in house dream symbolism, your house can represent your body, and the windows are the house’s equivalent of eyes.

Dreaming of a broken window at your house, especially if it was broken by an aggressive act, could also symbolize that you feel like someone or something is violating your boundaries and invading your personal space.

If you dream of seeing a broken glass window while out and about, the broken windows theory in criminology could be relevant. This idea holds that, if small disruptions to order in a society, like a broken window, are tolerated instead of being fixed, the result will be greater and greater disruptions – more broken windows, if not worse.

Your dream of a broken window could similarly symbolize a situation where what looks to be a small disturbance at this point could grow into a much bigger problem if it is not addressed.

Dream of broken glass car window

Your car, like your house, can become so identified with you that it symbolizes your body and your identity. It is therefore possible that dreaming of your car’s window being broken could symbolize that you feel you have been invaded, much like dreaming of your house’s window being broken.

As noted in car dream symbolism, dreaming of damage to a car in general can symbolize suppressed anger or being on the wrong path in life. That is one way that a dream of a broken car window could be looked at, in the sense of an overall disturbance in the force.

Dream of walking on broken glass

If you dream of walking on broken glass, there’s a song for that. The Annie Lennox song “Walking on Broken Glass” is about emotional devastation after the breakup of a relationship, and your dream could have a similar meaning.

The walking on broken glass dream meaning could also be similar to that of the saying “walking on eggshells,” symbolizing a situation where you are trying very hard to avoid setting off someone in your life who is emotionally fragile.

As noted in shoe dream symbolism, interpretation of this dream might be affected by whether or not you were wearing shoes in the dream. If you had a dream of stepping on broken glass barefoot, this could symbolize that you feel that you lack protection in your life.

If you dream of stepping on broken glass with shoes heavy enough to protect you, if not crunch the glass further too, this could symbolize that you are resilient in a bad situation. It could also symbolize that maybe you are a little too protected from the consequences of your own hurtful actions.

Dream of a broken drinking glass

Dreaming of a broken drinking glass is addressed further in glass dream symbolism. Intentionally breaking a drinking glass is a common practice at Jewish weddings, so your dream could refer to that if this practice is part of your heritage.

If a drinking glass broke accidentally in your dream, this could symbolize that you are worried that you or someone else in your life could cause harm through carelessness.

Dream of a broken mirror

Superstitiously, breaking a mirror is supposed to result in seven years of bad luck. As reported by Illuminated Mirrors, this idea dates to the ancient Romans. A similar view in ancient Turkey was that a mirror reflected your soul, and that any damage to the reflection therefore damaged your soul.

A dream of a broken mirror could therefore symbolize that you feel like you are under a cloud of bad luck.

Your broken mirror dream could also symbolize that there is a discrepancy between the image you portray to the world and reality. Such a mirror dream might have a similar vibe to the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, where the protagonist does not appear to age, but a portrait of him does.

Dream of broken glass in mouth

If you dream of having broken glass in your mouth, it would be relevant to consider how the glass got in your mouth. One possibility would be a car accident, in which case the larger car accident dream symbolism such as conflict and chaos would be important.

People generally try to avoid bringing any part of their body into contact with broken glass because broken glass can cut and draw blood. If your dream of broken glass in your mouth involves blood, this could be associated with blood dream symbolism such as a threat to your life force.

As painful as glass in your mouth would be, the worse possibility with that would be having the glass go down your throat and cut up the rest of your digestive system. A dream of broken glass in your mouth could therefore symbolize a danger that must be addressed before it becomes more serious.

Conclusion

Your dream of broken glass will likely show you that something important in your life has broken. As uncomfortable as this might be in the moment, it could be an opportunity for renewal in many cases once you are able to clean up the mess.