Theresa Cheung Interpretation: If you are being attacked in your dreams, this suggests you are feeling threatened in some way, perhaps by your own impulses, or perhaps by other people and their attitude or remarks to you.
If you are the attacker in the dream, who or what are you attacking? Attack is almost always a form of defense, so may also suggest defensiveness about some issue in, or aspect of, your life.
There is also a positive side to attack, as new ideas and positive changes can threaten our old way of life and habitual way of thinking about things.
If you are attacked by an animal in your dream, this suggests anxiety about aggression in yourself or other people.
If you are attacked by a shadowy or frightening figure, this may depict feelings of fear and pain associated with the past. How you deal with the attack is important.
If you run from it, the trauma is not being dealt with in waking life.
Feeling attacked or threatened by one’s own impulses, such as anger or sexuality; feeling surreptitiously attacked by other people and their attitude to you or their remarks; a subtle sense of being attacked by age, or a serious attack by an illness— one speaks of an asthma or virus attack, for instance, but also one may be attacked by a poison or food if one is allergic to it; one might personally attack an issue or a project, and so a dream might depict one attacking something in this sense; confidence may be attacked; it is a common term in sport or business, and so may refer to attitude or energy. This aspect of attack may also refer to one’s beliefs, or to other people’s, that may be attacked and threatened; attack is also sometimes a form of defense, so may suggest defensiveness about some issue or aspect of one’s life. A positive side to attack is that we often feel attacked by an emerging new insight or positive personal change. We feel it as an attack because it threatens our old way of life, habitual way of doing things and thinking about things. Attacked by animal: introverting one’s own aggression or sexuality; fear of one’s own natural urges; anxiety about aggression in oneself or other people; feeling attacked by an external person. Attacked by shadowy or frightening figure: our childhood traumas and fears may take this guise in a dream. So in this case the attack is depicting feelings of fear and pain surrounding those past issues. How we meet such an attack is important—as, if we run from it, the trauma may remain largely unconscious, and therefore capable of influencing behavior negatively. See fight; war.