What do you do when you get stuck in a dream?

False awakenings are my nightmare. I began to explore the world of lucid dreaming after I had horrible experience with false awakening years ago. To this day, I find it hard to deal with those. When I experience usual DILD, I enjoy it and manage to control it, more or less. Mostly I just fly above the city. :) But, when it comes to false awakenings, I always get scared so I don't even try to control the dream. I just wanna get out of it because it feels sickening!

This morning after I woke up at exactly 8, I had no intention of getting up, I knew I'll fall asleep again and I just knew I'll have a lucid dream, no doubt at all. It was more of a decision. I tried with WILD, but I'm not sure what happened. I fell asleep, no sleep paralysis experienced, I just found myself in a vivid non lucid dream, but very soon I realized I was dreaming. Then everything went wrong. Instead of stabilizing the dream, I had a first false awakening. It confused me, I got scared cause of the sensations I always experience during this, such as this horrific static and something like a vacuum force in my head. I know this is a normal phenomena, just don't know how to deal with it. I wanted to wake up, then again had a false awakening and from that point on things got shitty and messed up, Christopher Nolan would easily get confused... My awareness was floating between being awake and being asleep, my balance was messed up, I could barely move in my dream bed. So it was very hard to stabilize myself in a dream, and being unable to do so, I wanted to get out! But I couldn't. I kept telling myself I would wake up when I counted to three. And every single time I did so, my awareness shifted and I felt I had awoken, but guess again.

I was exhausted and terrified, mainly because of what I mentioned before - my awareness was messed up, I was disbalanced and hallucinative. I think that I finally woke up when the REM ended. I opened my eyes and knew this was for real this time. It was 8:40; cca. half an hour of madness. I'm still shaken up with this experience.

I would like to know, do you have similar problems with false awakenings and how do you deal with it? I know this is going to happen again, cause it happens every now and then, so I would like to talk about it.

Oh come on people! I need some advice. Maybe I didn't phrase the thread title correctly. What do you do when you get stuck somewhere between being awake and asleep, as described above?

um hey would you like my advice?

I would like an advice from someone who had similar experiences; it's up to you to decide whether you are competent for it or not. I appreciate anything that could help me deal with this false awakening madness.

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Originally Posted by twan4chaos

um hey would you like my advice?

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Um, I think that's the point of this thread, so yeah...

Pris: I'm not an experienced WILDer, but I think I know what you mean. I've experienced something similiar, and I would recommend you to do a reality check every time you wake up and every time you go to sleep. :)

If you want to wake up, feel for your body, the one lying in bed. Start focusing on the way your bed feels, and the position of your limbs. Try and open your eyes. If you can't figure out how to open them, close them.

I have a few tricks for waking myself up. Unfortunately, they normally lead to several false awakenings until I finally wake fully. I feel your pain. I rarely even get the option to reality check in these false awakenings. I wake directly into sleep paralysis, or some other bizarre hallucination.

Thank you guys for your answers,

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Originally Posted by Robot_Butler

I rarely even get the option to reality check in these false awakenings. I wake directly into sleep paralysis, or some other bizarre hallucination.

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Exactly! I believe we experience the same thing. I'm unable to do a reality check, cause it's not the usual false awakening where I get out of bed and go on with my day; instead I get stuck in hallucinations and I can barely move.

Next time this happens I won't even try to wake up, no matter how scary it gets. Maybe trying to wake up is the worst thing to do in this situation and I actually "push" myself into the hallucinations.

I know you posted this a while ago.. but i have found a way to wake up from this situation. I find myself waking up to a dream to find my self in another dream. and so on.. two ways to wake you from any dream. 1 when you find yourself laying in bed and can't wake up have a bottle of water by your bed before you go to sleep then while in your dream in bed and you can't wake up grab the bottle and pour it on your head. I know it sounds crazy but your body will wake its self when it thinks your are going to drown. 2 you can also fall backwards off your bed. the thought of your body hitting the floor will also wake you. out of all stages of your sleep.

I would be afraid I would really dump a bottle of water all over the bed. Somehow, I don't think my wife would like that very much.

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Originally Posted by Robot_Butler

I would be afraid I would really dump a bottle of water all over the bed. Somehow, I don't think my wife would like that very much.

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That would be pretty funny and that's excatly what i was thinking. What if you accidently done it in real life? I'd be pissed but laugh about it later on :)

I don't know if this is similar, but when I was little I was actually terrified of my lucid dreams. It's not that my dreams were scary it's just that the thought of my body permeated somewhere else freaked me out. I also found that the only way I could wake myself up was to kill myself. So I would just climb to the highest area and just dive of it headfirst. This was a pretty fool proof way to jerk me awake.