Thread: Can (Lucid) Dreams Cause Fatigue?

First, some things I should mention before I get to the nitty-gritty:
[list]I do not know alot about lucid dreaming. I have a basic understanding of the subject, and that's about all. [*]I've always dreamt alot. That is to say that I recall many of the dreams I've had during the night (lucid or otherwise) and I dream quite vividly.[*]I've never actually tried to lucid dream. I've never had more than a passing interest in the subject. Rather, I'm quite sure that I do lucid dream without trying and that's one of the things I need help with.[list]
Ok, so now we get to the matter at hand... I have a few questions.

Can dreams (normal or lucid) affect quality of sleep?
Maybe I should elaborate on that one. What I'm wondering is if someone experiences a dream (or series of dreams) that are physically/mentally/emotionally taxing, will those effects linger when the person awakens? Going into personal experience here, I often have dreams where I'm in hand-to-hand combat, or in large battles or such, and when I wake up the next morning I feel as if I hadn't slept at all. In other words, I'm physically exhausted. This happens even if I sleep for quite a long period of time (10 hours+). So basically I'm asking if this is a coincidence or if anyone else has experienced the same thing.

Is it possible to "un-learn" lucid dreaming?
I lucid dream without any effort to do so on my part, but I'd like to stop. The problem is I'm not sure if I can since I seem to do it unwittingly.

Can I stop dreaming?
I think I know the answer to this one but just incase, I'd like to know if I could cut dreaming out all together. At this point I'm sure it would be more helpful than hurtful. If it's not possible, is their any way I could somehow...lower?... my dream recall. That is, rather than trying to improve it which I'm sure is a question commonly asked on these boards, could I un-improve it? ^_^;;

I'm having alot of sleep issues. I'm tired almost all the time, even when I get quite a bit of sleep. I also have a very hard time getting up even when I hear my alarm (most of the time I sleep right through it, and it's very loud). I'll have periods where I will sleep for a few days, getting up only periodically to go to the washroom, get a drink, and such. These things are having a very negative impact on my quality of life and I'd like to fix it. While I realize that their are numerous things which can affect sleep, you'll have to take my word for it that the usual factors (health, medication, stress, etc.) are not what are causing my problems. Getting in to detail would take too long but suffice it to say, I've done my own experiments and have kept track of the variables. The only common thread I've found is dreams. I always dream, and I always dream hard. When I was younger my dreams were not of the taxing sort but for the past few years they have been. Of course there's the possibility that it's something else entirely. Hell, it probably is something else but I think that this is worth exploring.

Sorry for the length of the post. I just wanted to make sure that anyone who read it would have all the facts although there are probably still a few I forgot to mention. I'd also like to apologize if a similar topic has been posted before, I did several searches but didn't see any relevant topics. I also spent a bit of time google-ing looking for information but didn't find anything. Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

-AE <3