It goes without saying that dreaming about someone dying can feel extremely troubling. If you’re superstitious or believe in prophetic dreams, for instance, you may even fear your dream will come true.

The good news, according to professional dream interpreter Lauri Loewenberg, is that this isn’t a dream you need to take literally. Rather than speaking to an actual death in your life, she says these dreams often relate to endings or change.

“The subconscious will use death to represent a change or ending because it is the way the subconscious is helping us come to terms with, and understand, the finality of what’s going on—to allow us to let go of that which is no longer viable or that we no longer need,” Loewenberg tells mindbodygreen.

Further, she notes, characters in our dreams actually often represent us in some way. So even if it’s someone else who died in your dream, that could speak to something about yourself or your relationship with that person that’s changing. Sometimes, she adds, other people dying in dreams indicates there could be something changing with that person or within the dynamics of your relationship, as well.

Let’s break this dream interpretation down further, depending on some specific dream scenarios of someone dying in your dream: