Scared, almost only having nightmares

[Humla]

Hi. As the title says I'm having a lot of nightmares. I stopped writing down my dreams and just with lucid dreaming in general for a long time because busy with life, so I started forgetting most of my dreams. Now I started writing them down again a few days ago and only nightmares started to come to the surface. It's not the ''regular'' nightmares either, it's extremely vivid, horrible and graphic everytime. When I wake up they can leave me feeling depressed and scared to go to sleep in the evening. I already had one lucid dream after just a couple of days which was extremely uncomfortable and I managed to wake up by will after a while (I know, lost opportunity to make it a good dream but I was too scared). I've had severe anxiety issues this last year, and the anxiety has made me scared and very skittish in general which I believe is the reason for this. Mostly because lucid dreaming never scared me before, even after having nightmares. I'm trying to solve the anxiety issue separately already of course, but does it seem like a bad idea to jump into lucid dreaming again during this kind of situation? Where I'm not exactly mentally stable. I want to, I feel motivated to lucid dream but this is ruining it right now. The fear is horrible. I would also love any kind of advice on different methods to rationalize the fear in my head. Thank you in advance! All kinds of perspectives are appreciated. TL;DR: Approach for lucid dreaming while mentally unstable and very scared?

[slash112]

I am so sorry you are going through a difficult waking and dreaming life. My opinion is, you should go into this lucid dreaming thing with the attitude that it's going to help your anxiety and stuff. Y'see, lucid dreaming is a practice of exploring one's own consciousness. And even gaining control over it. Lucid dreaming can be used to face your fears. Face them head on. Look 'em right in the eye. Lucid dreaming can even be used to transfigure your fears into something positive. What happens when you face your fear and you come out unharmed? Your subconscious registers the fact that you had nothing to fear in the first place. Takes you one step closer to overcoming the fear itself. With lucid dreaming you have the opportunity to do this in a completely safe environment. You could even try talking to your subconscious in lucid dreams. Ask dream characters for information about your subconscious. Or even ask your dream characters to change things or improve things in your subconscious. I have not personally experimented with this before so I can't say too much about it. But I do recognize the potential for communicating with your subconscious in lucid dreams.

[DawnEye11]

I agree with Slash. I've experienced with what I feel is terrible night anxiety that I had to overcome little by little. However, if you keep in mind what slash mentioned you can still have a great lucid dreaming experience despite the fears. Although, there have been times when I couldn't focus on lucid dreaming because my anxiety had kept me up. At that time my sleep was more important so I just relaxed and thought positively about the good non lucid dreams that were to come. Even if an anxiety dream popped up I accepted it as a sign of my fear and found ways to diminish the scary parts into mediocre or funny parts. Its kind of how in scooby doo the gang is all afraid and running around till they uncover that its all special effects and just a guy in the mask. Reminding myself of all the other wonderful dreams I had before helps too.

[Humla]

I am so sorry you are going through a difficult waking and dreaming life. My opinion is, you should go into this lucid dreaming thing with the attitude that it's going to help your anxiety and stuff. Y'see, lucid dreaming is a practice of exploring one's own consciousness. And even gaining control over it. Lucid dreaming can be used to face your fears. Face them head on. Look 'em right in the eye. Lucid dreaming can even be used to transfigure your fears into something positive. What happens when you face your fear and you come out unharmed? Your subconscious registers the fact that you had nothing to fear in the first place. Takes you one step closer to overcoming the fear itself. With lucid dreaming you have the opportunity to do this in a completely safe environment. You could even try talking to your subconscious in lucid dreams. Ask dream characters for information about your subconscious. Or even ask your dream characters to change things or improve things in your subconscious. I have not personally experimented with this before so I can't say too much about it. But I do recognize the potential for communicating with your subconscious in lucid dreams. Thank you. I think the hardest part for me is to convince myself that the scary entity (in case of monsters and stuff like that) actually is able to communicate and work with me, logically speaking. Because they look the opposite to approachable, and it's very hard for me to convince myself of that when I look at them. I end up, impulsively, expecting them to lash out at me while trying to fight that expectation at the same time (because I know if I think it it'll happen). Before when I've tried to distract myself from getting into a nightmare while being lucid, I couldn't get rid of it completely many times, so instead of it becoming a full blown nightmare I could see something strange in a corner lurking, for example. (An anecdote: I did confront a monster in a dream when I was a kid, very confidently because I realized he wasn't real, but instead of ''giving up'' the monster took a new approach to scare me and I fell for it.) To actually go through it a few times and realize it's not harmful like you suggest is probably a good way to look at it. I will remind myself of this. It's also difficult for me to see how these fears could turn into something positive most times (?). Hearing about yours or other people's experiences with that would probably be enlightening, if anyone wants to share.

[Humla]

DawnEye11: I love that way of looking at it. Could make the scary parts seem more trivial, creating a comedic twist to them.

[slash112]

I'll tell ya a wee story then. Last year I had a crazy-ass experience. The doctors call it a "manic psychotic episode". I call it "dreaming while awake". Anyhow, at one point in the experience, I looked in the mirror and what was looking back at me? This faceless thing. It looked like pure evil. I was enveloped in a deep feeling of terror. I immediately decided to face this fear. Instead of looking away or running away, I went right up to the mirror and stared at this thing. The feeling of fear and terror built up in intensity. I continued to stare it down with an unshuddering faith in myself. I knew I would be ok. The fear built to such a point... I realized that nothing is happening to me. All this fear but still I'm fine... Why am I so afraid then? Suddenly all this fear that is inside me, I see it for what it truly is. NOTHING. WOOSH. Gone. Fear gone. You just gotta stare it down with such a conviction that you are ok. The rest will take care of itself.

[Humla]

That sounds like a very frightening experience, especially since it doesn't sound like a typical dream. Very impressive that you faced it so directly though, I think many people would do the opposite. I will write this down, just need to have determination and some real confidence in it, I suppose.

[slash112]

I have had many frightening experiences. But facing them head-on has always saw me through it very well. And this always affects me extremely positively. Some people find it best to have total faith in God. Some have total trust in the universe. Some have complete trust in themselves. Any one of these options can allow a person to go through a fire without getting burned (metaphorically speaking). I've always had issues with anxiety myself, but this stuff I'm talking about is a skill which at some point translated into my everyday life and has really helped my anxiety.

[Goldenspark]

Hey Humla, sorry to hear about your nightmares. A lot of good replies on here. I would only add that it does depend on what the cause of your nightmares are. Maybe you are "just" having nightmares, and there's no underlying psychological reason other than you being under stress at this point in your life (all sorts of possible causes). The answers above about confronting your fears can work even if there is a deep underlying cause, because you can just leave some deep-seated trauma buried and "get on with life". ( It may be that the early life trauma was actually something very innocuous but just interpreted as something more shocking than it really was). It is quite normal for a lot of dream content to involve negative emotions (fears mostly), but one thing lucid dreaming allows is for you to rationalise (because you have waking life consciousness available), so you should be able to use logic to overcome your fears. I once became friends with a very scary tiger in a lucid dream. It started off semi-lucid, and I was being stalked by this tiger, very frightened, but then it sat down next to me and started telling me about its claws, showing me how they worked in a very matter of fact way! I didn't consciously cause that change, it just happened on its own, but you can use expectation within a lucid dream to cause such changes to the plot. Good luck!

[Humla]

Hey Humla, sorry to hear about your nightmares. A lot of good replies on here. I would only add that it does depend on what the cause of your nightmares are. Maybe you are "just" having nightmares, and there's no underlying psychological reason other than you being under stress at this point in your life (all sorts of possible causes). The answers above about confronting your fears can work even if there is a deep underlying cause, because you can just leave some deep-seated trauma buried and "get on with life". ( It may be that the early life trauma was actually something very innocuous but just interpreted as something more shocking than it really was). It is quite normal for a lot of dream content to involve negative emotions (fears mostly), but one thing lucid dreaming allows is for you to rationalise (because you have waking life consciousness available), so you should be able to use logic to overcome your fears. I once became friends with a very scary tiger in a lucid dream. It started off semi-lucid, and I was being stalked by this tiger, very frightened, but then it sat down next to me and started telling me about its claws, showing me how they worked in a very matter of fact way! I didn't consciously cause that change, it just happened on its own, but you can use expectation within a lucid dream to cause such changes to the plot. Good luck! Hi Goldenspark, thanks for the reply. The cause of my nightmares, fear, anxiety (I take for granted they are connected) is something recent. A substance pretty much messed up my brain's way to function properly and needs time to heal, from what I've read. I think I'm worrying that LD will somehow worsen my state of mind when I'm so unstable, even if looking at it logically it seems very unlikely. Your nightmare that ended positively was very charming, I wish my latest one ended similarly. And you're right that expectations are very important, I think I need to focus on putting my mind in a positive place, maybe especially before going to sleep somehow. It helps to read on this forum, because it's very positive and friendly, so that will probably become a habit of mine. I have had many frightening experiences. But facing them head-on has always saw me through it very well. And this always affects me extremely positively. Some people find it best to have total faith in God. Some have total trust in the universe. Some have complete trust in themselves. Any one of these options can allow a person to go through a fire without getting burned (metaphorically speaking). I've always had issues with anxiety myself, but this stuff I'm talking about is a skill which at some point translated into my everyday life and has really helped my anxiety. I can imagine that way of thinking would help a lot with anxiety, that makes sense. It's a skill worth practicing, for sure. Hard to achieve when in a bad headspace I find personally, but very important.

[Goldenspark]

If you are worried about lucid dreaming in your current state of mind, maybe just give it a rest for a while and concentrate on positive affirmation to try and ease yourself away from your nightmares. Perhaps try mediating last thing before going to sleep for about ten minutes or so, and tell yourself that you will have happy, positive dreams. If you try to imagine yourself actually in one of those dreams, it should bleed over into your dream experience. Hopefully you will see an improvement, then you can get back to thinking more about lucid dreaming, knowing that you won't be having lucid nightmares.

[Humla]

Goldenspark: Great idea. The last time I had a lucid nightmare (a few days ago) I actually meditated for ca 30-40 minutes before falling asleep, but I wasn't necessarily thinking positively. Might have even come across some negative stuff online earlier that day, so that might have affected me on some level. Will focus on positive thoughts and dreams while meditating for now.

[Humla]

I have another question related to this. If I have one of those terrible nightmares, should I still write them down? Is it possible my mind will focus on more positive dreams in the future if I don't try to remember the bad ones? Wishful thinking maybe, but sometimes I read my dream journal when practicing LD, and the nightmares can give off a more eerie vibe when reading them.

[slash112]

There's actually two different ways you could look at that. 1) Forgetting nightmares allows your attention to be drawn away from negativity, and therefore will attract less negativity. 2) Remembering the dream allows you to "face it". It does actually help to look at things through the eye of truth. It allows you to get comfortable with the things you once feared. These are seemingly conflicting points of view. But the ultimate route would be to combine both these points. First write it down, face it with honesty and bravery. THEN lock it away, forget about it! This is my opinion anyways.

[Darkmatters]

1) Forgetting nightmares allows your attention to be drawn away from negativity, and therefore will attract less negativity. 2) Remembering the dream allows you to "face it". It does actually help to look at things through the eye of truth. It allows you to get comfortable with the things you once feared. These are seemingly conflicting points of view. I think it honestly depends on what's causing the nightmares, or what they're symbolizing. If they can be successfully interpreted and it's discovered that they contain symbols pointing to some psychological issues that can be worked out, then by all means proceed that way. But if they're just from stress then probably best to forget them and work on developing more positive habits of thinking. Apparently one avenue for depression is simply that people develop bad habits of negative thinking, though of course it could also be caused by psychological issues or chemical imbalances. The thing about dreams is, often you don't need to interpret them - they can still create the transcendent function and bring growth and healing even without interpreting them, though if they are caused by psychological issues then interpreting them can obviously help to diagnose the issues and point the way toward healing. But yeah, I agree with Slash - I can't say whether it's better to remember and try to interpret them or to try to forget them to ease the stress. I suppose if it were me I'd try remembering and writing them down for a while, see if there seems to be anything interpretable there, and if that just increases the stress levels and doesn't seem to be helping, then just work on forgetting them. Though of course bad interpretation can be a problem. Probably best if you want to go that route to try to find a psychologist who is very good at dream interpretation (which would probably be a Jungian). Ok, I've just read through the thread - so it seems it's connected to a substance, rather than something psychological? Of course I didn't read the entire thread - I might have missed something. If it is strictly due to chemicals, probably you need to just give it time to heal or see if medical science has a cure. But if it's related to trauma you might need to work through that. The other thing that occurs to me is - it could be something you need to do in life that you're not doing. Or something you need to stop doing that you're still doing. If you're breaking your moral code it will wreak havoc in your dream life and your emotions and cause all kinds of stress. Often you just need to figure out if you're doing anything like that - if there's some moral problem you need to address and do so if there is.

[Humla]

Slash112: I was thinking about what you said about facing my fears when I made that post and felt that it was conflicting, without a doubt. And I know I do need to work on facing them, so I think I will try that for a while, and see if I get anything out of it. Confront it and then ''leave it''. Darkmatters: I think my nightmares mostly stems from the problem with the substance, but at the same time everyone has issues IRL that they need to work on, and I don't doubt they are represented in some of my dreams in one way or another. Sometimes it's very obvious, other times not so much. This problem with the substance was actually from seeking help in medical science, so I have little to no trust in that anymore, even though I'm sure some people can be helped by it to some degree (but not as much as it's being promoted at the moment). Anyway, that's of course a whole other subject. Very good point, but I can't come to think of anything that's problematic for me in a moral sense at this time. I've always valued a strong moral compass and prioritized it above other things. But I'm still pretty young, so maybe I just haven't had enough time to mess it up yet.

[Darkmatters]

This problem with the substance was actually from seeking help in medical science, so I have little to no trust in that anymore, even though I'm sure some people can be helped by it to some degree (but not as much as it's being promoted at the moment). Anyway, that's of course a whole other subject. Ah, ok - I see where you're coming from. Yeah, I've learned a lot of the same lessons when it comes to modern medical science and the scams it promotes in the name of making money. What I've found is that you can't just trust a doctor or a hospital - you want to go online and do some serious deep research. If there's a scam or something that you're being led into you might be able to find message boards where people have discussed it at great length and sometimes people have found the solutions. Often the solution is not even known to doctors, who these days aren't taught anything about natural remedies or healthy living - they're simply taught a list of symptoms and which medications to prescribe for them - they don't really even learn about exercise and proper nutrition anymore. They've essentially become pushers for big pharma companies and they're being dumbed down in the medical schools. But the real wisdom is online in secret little enclaves of message boards. If you do enough googling and following obscure links to other discussions, you can often find the info you need. So you might be able to find some cure for whatever poison they put into you that way? Often other people who have had the same problems have already done massive research and laid out their findings online, sometimes after desperately self-experimenting. I was able to heal myself from some very dangerous health conditions brought on by eating the so-called Standard American Diet (SAD ) for my whole life, and discovered a huge web of deceit running all through schools, mass media, and government, and I was able to self-diagnose and heal myself strictly through proper diet, eating good natural whole foods and pretty much inverting the food pyramid, which seems designed to create hordes of diabetics and heart disease patients in midlife so the medical industrial complex has a steady influx of endless patients, all of which could have easily been avoided if they had properly educated doctors and the public. Now I literally know more about health and nutrition than the majority of doctors, except some of the older ones who did get taught the real stuff 30 or 40 years ago. I was pre-diabetic, or possibly already diabetic, and had a whole host of other related problems, all of which I healed by just eating right for a couple of years. Had I gone to see a doctor about it, they would have immediately put me on insulin, which only makes the problem worse, and then more drugs and more drugs, all only contributing to the problems.

[Humla]

Darkmatters: Spot on, I agree with everything you said. It's nice to see someone who gets it. What's a shame is that I thought I had done the research before I took this medication, I read a lot before actually going into it. Still there is so much on the surface to go through (articles and sites that repeats what the doctors say, usually) until you by chance or luck find those message boards as you said, that will give you some really important information. But in my case it was very late, too late in a sense. So yes, I have found better advice from those message boards that has helped me a lot, instead of listening to the doctors who were making it worse by wanting to convince me to take even more medications. To them that is the only solution, and if the medication creates any sort of problem it's the human that is the problem in their minds, not the medication. I'm glad you have found a solution to your problem and also seen through the lies of the food industry. I have a relative that was in the same boat and now he feels better than ever, after finding out the same stuff. Very OT but important topic nonetheless, and the whole reason to why I am the way I am right now. It made me change as a person. Very slowly becoming myself again though, so looking at it positively. On T: Started writing down my dreams again, no nightmares last night at least. Did some positive thinking while meditating before going to sleep.

[Darkmatters]

I know, it is off topic, but it was an example of how finding info online helped me in a somewhat similar context, plus I think it's important for info like this to be posted somewhere so people can see it before it's too late in their case. Though I do understand many people would just call me a conspiracy theorist, until they or someone they know experiences it. At least if they've already read about it then they can have an idea of what to do. Unfortunately for most people they don't discover info like this until as you said, it is too late. I was very lucky in that what I experienced was painful and was getting worse, but I was able to learn and change my habits in time. I wish there was a way we could get the info out so people can learn the truth about these institutions they naively trust. To go back on topic myself now, I'm glad you experienced some better dreaming! Hope it keeps getting better for you! Keep up the positive thinking and express sincere gratitude several times every day for things that you normally take for granted - it really helps.

[Humla]

Absolutely, I think it's important as well and don't mind it at all. It's up to other people how they want to take it, but I think a few thousand people with similar experiences might change their mind, if they take the time to look it up. People tend to listen to and be surprised when I (very carefully) mention it to them IRL, but doctors still react the same way and blame the person instead of the circumstances, from what I've experienced at least. Thank you. For reminding me of being positive but also for being a voice in a very important issue!

[slash112]

In regards to positive thinking: I'm very good at being grateful for the things in my life. But we've all been in these situations where it's very hard to be thankful for anything. When I find myself in that situation, I thank the universe for holding my atoms together. Don't get me wrong, I've had times I wish my atoms would just explode. But even in those times, I dunno, it feels like I'm constantly being cuddled by the universe. It helps to just thank the universe for it.

[Humla]

Very nice thought, I think I will borrow that one for when I need it. I feel being grateful isn't my biggest issue either, maybe if so it's rather an issue of not being grateful for myself (?). I.e I can relate to wishing my atoms would explode as well !

[slash112]

Indeed one should be grateful for oneself. It can even start with "I exist!" or "I Am!" These are extremely powerful mantras, in fact. Pick one. Random times through the day, just take a moment to say to yourself "I Am..." or "I exist...", nothing else, just that, then move on. Heck, if you wanted, you could even take a moment to sit and absorb yourself into the mantra. Really feel it when you say "I Am". If ye want

[Humla]

I will try that! Thank you for the advice. I think I heard a similar phrase in a meditation practice that I did a few years ago.

[slash112]

Yeah it's very popular in meditation circles and spiritual circles. The reason is because "I Am" gets to the core of your very being.