LucidStarryEyed

It has recently come to my attention that I am a “Lucid Dreamer”. First my mom told me the way I dream is uncommon and is lucid dreaming, then when I talked to my therapist she told me that I have lucid dreams. Because of this, I started searching for lucid dream forums to read about other people’s lucid dreams, or dreams in general, and came across this site.

Ever since I can remember, around age five, I have had lucid dreams. I am always aware I am dreaming when I dream and if I’m not it’s because everything is dark, peaceful, quiet; dreamless. It started with a vivid nightmare I would have 2-3 times a week for a few months when I was about five years old.

In this nightmare/dream, the same sequence of events would happen every time. My mom and I would come out of the grocery store and we would be walking in the parking lot towards our brand new white truck (which we did not own in real life, but was always the same in this dream). When we were two cars away from our truck passing behind a red escort, a man would run up from the left side and grab my mom from behind and slit her throat. He would let go of her and run and she would fall to the ground holding her throat as she bled everywhere and gasped for air. I would then wake up crying. I felt so sad, and scared and helpless when I woke up and I was afraid to tell my Mom about the dream because I believed it would come true if I said it out loud. As I said, for a few months I would have this same exact dream and I eventually realized I was in a dream while I was dreaming. I would recognize the parking lot and knew what would happen as the red escort came up. Awareness of this dream and the sequence of events lasted for about another month. Finally, one night while having this dream, I had the visual cues and was aware of the dream and knew what would happen. Somehow, I had control over my thoughts, body, words, actions, etc, and my emotions about the dream and knowing I would wake up feeling awful if the events continued as they always had. Before we reached the red escort, I stopped walking and told my Mom that we had to stop and turn around and run back towards the store. She asked why and I told her a man was going to kill her, and on cue, the man came out of the row of cars to the left ahead of us and turned to walk at us head on this time. I grabbed my moms hand and pulled her and we ran back towards the store. I started to hear the man running behind us as well and I screamed for help and that he was going to kill my mom. A random man was at the front of the store outside and as we ran up he ran past us a few feet and tackled the man chasing us to the ground and began wrestling the knife out of his hand. I then woke up from the dream as they wrestled and felt a sense of strength and pride, but at that age and for many to come I had no idea that this type of dreaming was any different than dream experiences of other people or that it was called “Lucid Dreaming”.

From that night on when I would have the nightmare, I was always aware and always told my mom we had to get help and the man was always stopped and has never cut her throat again. After a while, this dream became less frequent-once a month, then once a year until I was about 15 when it stopped. I wound up having the dream a few months ago and I was aware of it and remembered instantly that this was my recurrent childhood nightmare and knew to warn my mother.

The next time I spoke with my mother, I finally told her about how I had the dream recently and my childhood experiences and fears of it and the progression of the dream. As I told her about the progression, she was very interested and told me that people aren’t usually aware that they were dreaming and couldn’t control their thoughts, words, actions, etc. in the dream. I truly thought everybody was capable of doing these things. At my next therapy appointment, I asked my therapist for more information and she told me it was called Lucid Dreaming and since then I have been researching and looking to read dream experiences of other people, non lucid and lucid.

In addition to controlling my own thoughts, actions, speech, etc, I also have the ability to think about how I want events in my dream to change, or what I want to happen or what I want others to do or to stop doing and within seconds of my thoughts, those things will come to pass in my dreams. If an event has come to pass in my dream and I didn’t like what happened, I can “turn back time” in the dream and repeat the event, but with the different ending I wanted to happen. I can make events repeat as many times as I want with as many different endings to the event. The whole time I am completely aware of these dreams and that I am asleep and that it is not real. However, there is a downside to this. The more I control my myself, events, and others actions in dreams, the more tired I feel when I wake up the next morning. Because of the downside, I try to just “go with the flow” of my dreams, unless they are a nightmare or I feel like the dream is headed in a bad direction, then I will willfully change actions and events.

I still have a hard time believe it that not everybody dreams this way. I don’t feel like I am different or special in any way than other people. I am going to continue reading experiences of other people and researching this phenomenon to better understand it. I will also post dreams that seem significant to me.

Before I go, I also wanted to mention something I am looking into and will post more about later. In addition to reoccurring dreams, there are reoccurring places and people that don’t exist “in real life”, but in my dreams they seem like a different world and life of their own. I also have dreams of events that seem to happen in “chronological order”. For example, in one dream I dreamt I was planning on getting a new car. Two weeks later I would have a dream in the same house I was living at in the previous dream, except the new car would be in the driveway. Then, a month later, events from the second dream would continue into the third in the same “world” as the previous. ALL of my dreams aren’t sequential/chronologically linked to one another though. It’s very strange, they seem like “other lives” I am living and can control but at the same time I am aware that I am in a dream state. I will post more about specific dreams in the future.

If you took the time to read this long entry I want you to know I am greatful for your interest and time.