What does it mean to dream about losing something?
Losing something usually pictures anxiety about control, security, and what you value, more than the object itself.
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 ask what the lost object stands for and what its loss would mean to the dreamer, often finding a fear about losing a person, a power, or a part of the self rather than the object itself. The search pictures a wish to recover what is feared gone.
Freudian reading (our summary).Jung
For Jung losing something can image a value, capacity, or part of the self that has dropped out of conscious life and needs to be retrieved. The hunt for it pictures the psyche trying to recover what was set aside.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Cognitively losing things pictures anxiety about control, security, and what one values, and the frantic search tracks a felt fear of loss in waking life. What is lost often hints at where the worry actually lies.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
The quest to recover what is lost drives much of myth: the search for a stolen treasure, a vanished loved one, a token of identity, like Demeter's search for Persephone. Loss sets the journey in motion.
Bulfinch; Miller (1901).