That's an interesting phenomenon, the rewind effect. It doesn't sound like a lucid dreaming experience particularly. In lucid dreams, at least in mine, I realize I'm dreaming, from some discrepancy or 'clue' that things aren't the way they are in real life or I fall directly into a dream with very little or no lapse in consciousness and hence know that I'm dreaming more or less from the outset. Afterward, I say OK, I'm dreaming and sometimes the dream dissolves and I wake up or I walk around trying to change things or lately (from reading this forum and gathering ideas that I remember to remember in my dreams) I try to do things you can't do in real life like fly or tell the people if they are somebody I know that we're dreaming, or if they're a character trying to engage me "to fuck off", etc. I also have had these for a large part of my life and didn't know the term applied until my early twenties and then still didn't do much experimentation, as many of the folks at DV do, and gain more competence and practice as a lucid dreamer. At one point I was very good at it but more or less without trying and had experiences of teleporting myself and a few other tricks.

I'll get to the point. Lately, I've been telling my dad who lives in the same town as I do, about my LD experiences and in one of them, which I went to sleep with the intention of sharing a dream with somebody, he was present and we were in his house across town. He popped up on the TV screen while we were chatting and then looked around quizzically as if for a camera and I told him that we are in a dream. After, I said, "if you remember this I can ask you in the morning and we will know that we shared a dream." I talked to him the next day and he didn't remember anything and later I had another LD with him in it and we talked about it again, and again he didn't remember. Without leading him as to any imagery I asked what he had dreamed that morning and he told me his dream. He said he had a dream about losing something and didn't like the outcome and that he started the dream over and changed it so that it ended differently. He explained that in the changed version he had taken out some content that made him uncomfortable, or had negative connotations for him, and though in the reworked version he still lost things at the beginning he ended up getting back more than he had lost in the final couple of sequences. I asked him, thinking in terms of Lucid Dreams, do you know you're dreaming and he said something similar to your 'observer' idea, but that when the dissonant material (something he doesn't do in his waking life) was reworked into a different storyline the dream more or less re-envelopes him and becomes compelling enough again to not no he's dreaming (as one does in a LD) and that the dream proceeds through it's convolutions and plays itself out as a normal dream does with twists and turns and characters and whatnot.

From a psychological standpoint, and I hope I'm not getting to personal here, my mom has mentioned for many years a quote and I can't remember from who, possible CG Jung or Freud, famously said, "Have a good nightmare" instead of "have nice dreams." He was making the point that in dreams we have the ability to exercise the subconscious of certain tendencies that exist in the spectrum of human tendencies, namely those associated with the dark-side of our nature, that we possibly don't have many outlets for in waking life. I'm not sure that a symptom of being a perfectly integrated person would even exhibit itself as a warm and rosy and perfectly peaceful dreamlife. That's a matter of opinion, however, and not having the opportunity to talk to a lot of enlightened folks about their dreamlives I can't make that claim with any authority at all. I guess what I'm saying is that if you have that kind of control over your dreams to edit out content, and bad outcomes, but still seemingly are persuaded to have the dreams but with positive outcomes, you may be offended (conscious 'observer') by what your dream life is entertaining or exercising you with in terms of content and so are radicalized into changing the content until you are comfortable with it. If there is indeed a positive aspect of dreaming things that are difficult to cope with or uncomfortable to experience you might be exerting an iron control over something to point that you've eradicated that from your dreams for the last couple years, as you said. On the other hand there may not be anything wrong with that at all. Most of the people here use the kind of control they have in LD to enjoy themselves and do cool shit that you can't do in real life, so more power to you! Have a good one.