What does it mean to dream about nerves?
Nerves often point to sensitivity and reaction, the fine wiring of feeling, and in common speech to anxiety, courage, or the edge you are operating on.
Four ways to read it
Each reading below comes from a named tradition and a cited source, so you can see where it came from and decide what fits your dream.
Freud
Freud would read the nerves as the body's channels of sensation and strain, tied to the tensions that anxiety stirs up. Frayed or jangled nerves can mark a wish or fear that has the dreamer on edge.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung would see the nerves as the fine threads of feeling that link the self to its world, the measure of how keenly one senses. Raw nerves may mark a self stretched thin and in need of rest and shelter.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Continuity ties nerves directly to waking anxiety, since dreams often echo the very tension a person carries through their days. Dreams of jangled nerves usually follow stretches of stress or dread.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
To find or lose one's nerve has long been a plain image of courage gathered or undone in the face of a trial. Folk speech made the nerves the seat of steadiness, the inner sinew that holds a person firm under pressure.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Brewer; Bulfinch).