Thread: Possible Dangers Of Lucid Dreaming!

I have actually noticed that I tend to feel more rested after lucid dreams.
In fact, I once slept for only 5 hours and had a lucid dream that night, and despite sleeping for such a short time I felt surprisingly awake and rested.
Of course, this was probably just because the lucid dream gave me such a rush that I didn't notice that I was "actually" tired, but still...

Please clarify your personal opinion because I gathered that you meant people with mental disorders cannot lucid dream. In my opinion, I think it is a lot easier to lucid dream with certain mental disorders (like ones that my psychologists are medicating me for: C-PTSD, anxiety, depression, and OCD). I feel that with anxiety, I am more aware of slight oddities. And I can say, with much personal certainty, that too much lucid dreaming can be a bad thing. I started at the age of 5-6ish because of an obsessively-controlling, abusive, and militaristic-like father. I can relate with exhaustion (each time I have an LD now, I wake up with a racy heart and have to take a Beta Blocker), alienation, inability to stop for many years, false awakenings and sleep paralysis, and most importantly dissociation. It's really f***ed up when I can remember the order and vividness of my dreams from my childhood but not many waking experiences. I feel that psychologists that haven't had several, if not hundreds, of lucid dreams just won't be able to fully understand the mystery. It really is the most addicting drug ever created.

Does it matter if a religion forbids it? NOOOOOO!! This is why we are so behind in research because our culture puts religion first.

Honestly, a lot of this is possible but if you look at it, you'd have to be mentally weak to have any of these affect you in this way. The only one that might apply to the average person is the false awakening one. I've actually heard of people having 3+ false awakenings.

Originally Posted by BrandonBoss

I have never felt drained from an LD, and talking with people like hukif and Oreo that have LDed alllllll night long, they dont seem to feel tired all the time or worn out. So this is kind of just a hypothesis without any substantial evidence, no good observations, and no experiments that have been run showing that this is the case.

It was for me though I had to put a lot of effort into lucid dreaming and that would tire me up. I have a total of 13-14 lucids.

Originally Posted by mowglycdb

It was for me though I had to put a lot of effort into lucid dreaming and that would tire me up. I have a total of 13-14 lucids.

Putting so much effort into LDing isn't needed. Consistent doable effort is what will bring consistent LDs. Consistency is the key. Consistent sleep and consistent effort.

If you put so much effort that you stress, it will lower LD amount as well. Know your stress level and what you can do daily. All stress will hurt you in all parts of life.

The only issue I have is the occasional loss of sleep. Sometimes I have trouble falling back to sleep after waking up and trying to commit my last dream to memory.

Originally Posted by mowglycdb

It was for me though I had to put a lot of effort into lucid dreaming and that would tire me up. I have a total of 13-14 lucids.

Honestly, I did have a little trouble getting proper sleep early on but I am very glad that I stuck with it and made some adjustments. Getting proper sleep has not been a problem since maybe LD#25 or so. I think rmwebberuark's situation is very specific and would not apply to the average person and I wish them luck as I understand that PTSD is no joke.

Originally Posted by BrandonBoss

Putting so much effort into LDing isn't needed. Consistent doable effort is what will bring consistent LDs. Consistency is the key. Consistent sleep and consistent effort.

If you put so much effort that you stress, it will lower LD amount as well. Know your stress level and what you can do daily. All stress will hurt you in all parts of life.

Exactly!

Originally Posted by Sensei

And it also seems like lucidity might be. The brains natural defense mechanism against nightmares. >_>

I agree, I started LDing in order to overcome nightmares and since then I have used it to become lucid. It helps to calm me down, otherwise I used to wake up so disturbed and taking a lot of my daytime to overcome the nightmare I had.

Hey everyone!
As far as I know there arent any dangers doing lucid dreaming. It is a normal state of mind. Even if you get addicted thats not a problem. Its like getting addicted to normal dreams, never gonna happen because they acure ever night. Some experts have only lucid dreams. Their normal dreams are gone. Well not exactly. Its just that their mind learned that it had to make the pearson lucid when he enters a dream.
So in my personal oppinion ther are no dangers to lucid dreaming.

Originally Posted by rmwebberuark

Please clarify your personal opinion because I gathered that you meant people with mental disorders cannot lucid dream. In my opinion, I think it is a lot easier to lucid dream with certain mental disorders (like ones that my psychologists are medicating me for: C-PTSD, anxiety, depression, and OCD). I feel that with anxiety, I am more aware of slight oddities. And I can say, with much personal certainty, that too much lucid dreaming can be a bad thing. I started at the age of 5-6ish because of an obsessively-controlling, abusive, and militaristic-like father. I can relate with exhaustion (each time I have an LD now, I wake up with a racy heart and have to take a Beta Blocker), alienation, inability to stop for many years, false awakenings and sleep paralysis, and most importantly dissociation. It's really f***ed up when I can remember the order and vividness of my dreams from my childhood but not many waking experiences. I feel that psychologists that haven't had several, if not hundreds, of lucid dreams just won't be able to fully understand the mystery. It really is the most addicting drug ever created.

This is very, very interesting - thank you for sharing and for your honesty and openness!
There's this thread next door: http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...iousness.html:

Where we're - well me, mostly - rambling on about ASC, including the thread's proposal/idea (if I managed to understand, finally), that it might be possible to gain more control over acute psychotic states and the accompanying hallucinations by making use of something akin to advanced dream-control, acquired from LDing practice. Lacking such experiences - I can and did only guess so, but I've been also wondering, if not the reverse effect could also come about. That at least excessive LDing would induce psychotic episodes, or make them more severe and less well controllable.
Now you mention dissociation and alienation as side-effects, and I have to say, it doesn't overly surprise me. One needed to ask an actual schizophrenic lucid dreamer to find out a bit more about this specific aspect. Unfortunately that's not so easy, and maybe not a good idea, even, to induce people to make public, what they'd like to have kept to themselves in hindsight.

I believe many of us have such a hard time to lucid dream in the first place, that it is difficult to imagine, there could be anything negative about it, and how it would be like, if you did it since 5 years of age and excessively, obsessively. I have to say, I take claims of people saying they don't have any normal dreams any more with a big grain of salt, but that's something else. I'm not addressing you with this (at all) or anybody specific here, just wanting to make sure...

I'll quote from my over-extensive ramblings of my latest post in the above mentioned thread:

Space enough to say, what I believe dreams to be - evolutionarily developed for once and secondly providing a simulation space for practising for real life.
Nesse doesn't mention this, but it's not my idea, well it is - but I read about it, too. Maybe I'll find something later. Lucidity is the next logical step for self-aware creatures in my view - only then can we, as complex as we are, really profit from this great tool. While our dog dreams of hunting or taking flight, we so often repeat socially awkward situations and whatnot else in normal dreams, which might often be rather irrelevant for our actual lives. Or maybe not so - maybe solvable and to be solved better with lucidity. Most of us are aware of the beneficial potential of LDs anyway, but much more might be possible than most can even imagine and/or are able to realize.

How would teaching/coaching/fostering it in young children turn out?
In principle it's of course possible, that it would interfere with the (classical/usual) cognitive development. Many young children lucid dream (citations can be produced!) and cease to do so around puberty (me too). Around that time, schizophrenia develops as well, which could be completely coincidental, or not. To what effects would it be to motivate children to practise, and keep it up into adulthood? Nobody knows, but I chose (on faith) to be hopeful there until evidence to the contrary reaches me!

I really hope, it could be beneficial - but as said, that's on wishful thinking and faith. Good to have a voice like yours, even if I don't like the conclusions, which follow. Do you sometimes hallucinate, or lucid-daydream, or however you want to call it? Does it happen while excessive bouts of lucid dreaming, that you start to really be unable to decide what is reality and what not, too? Only if you want to answer of course!
So - it might actually be a bad idea to motivate and coach kids to keep it up from external...
Shame that - well - if it is so - and who knows?

Originally Posted by rmwebberuark

Does it matter if a religion forbids it? NOOOOOO!! This is why we are so behind in research because our culture puts religion first.

Most definitively not!!
And yes - we are in dreary lack of psychiatry and psychology catching up with the sort of scientific scrutiny being wielded in other fields of medicine, or human biology, if you will, which would gain us important insights. And that's - in my view - not least because of culture and of course esp. religions and superstitious, dualistic thinking having long impeded the idea that mind is something for science in the first place.

Maybe you'll like this place: http://www.dreamviews.com/religion-s...ists-here.html

I don't entirely get why everyone needs to have their argument male-genitalia (to be polite) thrust prominently to show off when they are getting their point across. And yes, I am talking about the first response by the psychologist. I expect more thought-out and polite responses from someone in that community than BS and a winky face.

Actually addressing things, nicely, like you are sitting down to a comfy chat with a friend is pretty much the minimum level of attitude I would think to see on message boards discussing topics like this.

About lucid dreaming, and this is ENTIRELY based upon my own experience, I have a few things to share.

Firstly in my LD's I can feel pain. Distinctly. So that probably changes things a little bit in terms of the effects.

For me the dreams were often very negative and dark, since most nights when I would see a documentary on sharks I would LD being pulled under the water and chomped on by one. Needless to say I would stay awake often.

After a while you get used to the scary stuff and you learn to accept it. I have had to.

Point is, these dreams were very formative in my life. Like mini-experiences. I knew they would end and I eventually learned better control, but they still had an effect on my development as a person.

I certainly DONT expect that to be the case for alot of people. Alot of it probably has to do with the fact that I was a personality who took over for the central one a while ago. Before that these dreams were often the only time I existed or could act.

-flies away-

I think it could be dangerous for people with certain conditions. Escaping reality to lucid dreams can be really harmfull and being obsessed to lucid dream could have negative effect on your social life. So yes i think it can be harmful for people with problems. As long as you have healthy attitude to lucid dreaming and first reality then dreams nothing bad should happen.

Originally Posted by Seltiez

I think it could be dangerous for people with certain conditions. Escaping reality to lucid dreams can be really harmfull and being obsessed to lucid dream could have negative effect on your social life. So yes i think it can be harmful for people with problems. As long as you have healthy attitude to lucid dreaming and first reality then dreams nothing bad should happen.

Well yeah you are right thats on one side of it. Some conditions can stop you from lucid dreams. Like lots of the LDs give you fast hearth beat in the begining and the end of one so that might be harmfull for some people with certain conditions. But overall I think that you can still LD. Consulting with a sleep speacialist or a psycologist is a priority here.
And for the other part. Yeah it can kind a give a negative effect on your social life, but in my perconal appinion the individual should know for itself what is good for him or her at a certain moment of their lifes. Yeah I have bad days too and want to jusy escape this reality and start flying above some Tropical island or meditate near a waterfall in a blisfull forest, but I know that this is all a part of my nornal physicall evryday life. Plus I know that I can go to bed with a propper mindset and still go to those places. Still as I said every individual should know whats good for him or her.
Hope I was helpfull ^ω^
Ciao.