Why do I always have short lucids?

[Caboose128]

I always have these long, intricate dreams every night. Sometimes I am blessed with a short lucid or OBE, usually towards the end of the night. In the dreams I am always somewhat aware of my dreaming state. However, whenever I find myself in a lucid dream I am never able to hold on to that control for very long. Just a couple minutes ago, after a series of complex dreams involving a bunch of my old friends/lucid dreaming buddies from the past, I found myself in a FA of sorts. I was able to fully recognize this certain dream state, and proceeded to walk out my front door and started to fly. The flying is always very uncontrollable, I find myself usually doing the running man in order to just stay in the air, sort of like tricking my mind into thinking I know what I'm doing. Ended up landing in this big field of trees and started to run. However, whenever I succeed in further stabilizing myself like this, I start to get really nervous that I won't be able to maintain it. My mind pretty much knows it won't last for long and I end up waking myself up for no reason.

[Barry]

Having strong emotions while dreaming can wake you up. Also you need to try and convince your mind that flying is easy.

[ThreeCat]

Having the expectation that you will wake up soon usually causes wake-ups. My longest, most stable LDs have always taken place in dreams where I did not think about waking up, and when I did, I wasn't worried about it.

[Laurelindo]

I believe that vivid lucid dreams can be quite intimidating for a lot of people, so that you almost want to escape back to the familiar waking life. I am a lot like that myself, it is hard to handle the vividness and strange emotions that happen during lucid dreams, and the whole experience of existing inside your own mind and realizing that nothing consists of physical matter anymore can be pretty freaky. You might feel something like that yourself without really noticing it very much, so that you start focusing on waking life and thus waking yourself up.

[AstralFlare]

Various things wake me up from LD's, excitement, confusion, anxiety, among others. I think for me the trick is just to try and remain calm and let the dream take it where it wants to take you, and then think about control later. I think people just want to jump into LD's straight away and take control immediately, and this leads to excitement and the idea of wakefulness, which in turn causes people to awaken from the dream. Let the dreams take you where they want to take you first, then think about control later once you're used to the sensations of vividness. Easier said than done, but being calm and serene and comfortable in the moment is the key factor for me.