Thread: My lucid dream is just crap...

I've been fighting depression for around a year now or so, so let me just start off by saying that I can relate with your subconscious having far too much fun watching your frustration. Ever since I started feeling depressed I've noticed changes popping up in my dreams and LDs; certain unique dream signs or specific nightmares or like you described, just absolutely annoying plots or setups. There are sort of two hidden pros to this: such dream signs get you lucid more often, and also that it enables you to practice dream control more thoroughly, because honestly, I've personally found that mastering dream control was the way to combat it. I can't give any specific tips as to doing so (someone else will probably explain it better than me), but expectations are a big part of it. These include doubts as well as fears. Try teaching yourself to, say, expect that labyrinth to fall apart, or you miraculously know the way through it, or one turn will take you where you want to go. Expect you could fly out of it, even. Expect that one girl is insanely hot. Expect... you get the point. Your subconscious only gives you a dream world to work with--you can mess with it however you'd like.

Another thing I've found helpful is when before falling asleep, instead of telling yourself, "I'm going to lucid dream tonight," start saying, "I'm going to lucid dream, and when I do, remind myself of what I plan to do." It might not work, but it's definitely worth a shot. I've had problems with going fully lucid in the middle of a dream (so, not counting WILDs where I form the dream scenario myself) but completely forgetting I had an objective, and then remembering it towards the end of the dream. But if before I fell asleep I told myself I was going to remind myself when I went lucid, I'll find that I'll end up saying in the dream,
"Oh, wow, I'm dreaming!"
"..."
"Hang on, what was I planning to do again?"
"..."
"Oh yeah, I was going to play chess with my story character!"
And then, cue me completely abandoning the plot of the dream and going to play chess with my story character.

Finally, I'd like to wish you luck in taking down your annoying subconscious in lucid dreams and I also hope that whatever's causing stress in your life right now clears up soon. I've learned by experience that emotion can definitely be a powerful factor when it comes to influencing your dreams, so hopefully whenever you start feeling better, your lucid dreams will be just as you want them to be as well!

Good luck, don't feel discouraged because your dreams aren't what you want them to be right now, and I hope I helped!

Well, if your asking us to try and decipher why this is happening.. rather than telling us that your angry because it is happening, I'd say that yes, it's probably due to stress IRL. Could be because; your stressed about being stressed, stressed about having these dreams because your subconscious is stressed about you being stressed.. Now, i think you must first try and find out the root of the stress being caused, and attempt to silence it. OR like everyone else says and is quite very true, Meditation! Become one with yourself, because it seems as though you've separated, and a portion of yourself is angry at yourself.. I.e your subconscious. Now as to why ? No F**king clue man.

OR maybe the answer to it is, TAKE HOLD IF YOUR DREAM CONSCIOUSLY! Do not allow your subconscious to influence your lucidity, create what you will create. Though, in turn this may then end up with you being in a battle with your subconscious.. That's digging a hefty rut to get stuck in..

- Hope this helps a little, lol. I kinda just rambled through it.

I wasn’t expecting such great responses. It looks like there are many great lucid dreamers. I wish there was a way to summon my subconsc and resolve the problem. But dreams don’t work that way.

Originally Posted by Validus

Well, if your asking us to try and decipher why this is happening.. rather than telling us that your angry because it is happening, I'd say that yes, it's probably due to stress IRL. Could be because; your stressed about being stressed, stressed about having these dreams because your subconscious is stressed about you being stressed.. Now, i think you must first try and find out the root of the stress being caused, and attempt to silence it. OR like everyone else says and is quite very true, Meditation! Become one with yourself, because it seems as though you've separated, and a portion of yourself is angry at yourself.. I.e your subconscious. Now as to why ? No F**king clue man.
- Hope this helps a little, lol. I kinda just rambled through it.

I guess I’m gonna have to fight this through. I remember in my last dream, I was literally begging myself to just let me be free. That was a wrong move haha...

Originally Posted by Maxis

Another thing I've found helpful is when before falling asleep, instead of telling yourself, "I'm going to lucid dream tonight," start saying, "I'm going to lucid dream, and when I do, remind myself of what I plan to do." It might not work, but it's definitely worth a shot. I've had problems with going fully lucid in the middle of a dream (so, not counting WILDs where I form the dream scenario myself) but completely forgetting I had an objective, and then remembering it towards the end of the dream. But if before I fell asleep I told myself I was going to remind myself when I went lucid, I'll find that I'll end up saying in the dream,
"Oh, wow, I'm dreaming!"
"..."
"Hang on, what was I planning to do again?"
"..."
"Oh yeah, I was going to play chess with my story character!"
Good luck, don't feel discouraged because your dreams aren't what you want them to be right now, and I hope I helped!

Yes, as mentioned above, I did this and when I did, my subconsc took me out of the dream. It won’t let me deviate from the objective. And it’s lame but I still struggle to fly; I can fly but gaining altitude is incredibly difficult.

I really think these boundaries are being placed by yourself, I've never had any sort of depression etc, etc, but I really do think that a lot of problems that people have are psychosomatic. Meaning if they don't believe they will do it, they will not. Or at least have a hell of a time doing it. So, if you don't believe you can deviate from the objective and roam free of your subconscious or at least in harmony with it, well, then you won't. You've got to really believe yourself and not allow yourself to become discouraged, thus, enabling you to achieve almost anything!

Originally Posted by Joon

I wish there was a way to summon my subconsc and resolve the problem. But dreams don’t work that way.

You can talk to your subcon every time you are falling asleep. Especially, if you are very close to falling asleep. Then you can talk to your mind, higher self, subcon, god, ... That's all you. And it listens.

So instead of having thoughts that your subcon (you) hates you, you could be thankfull for the dreams you have and for lucids. And just ask for them to be a little different. Think of specifics. Tell you mind exactly what you would like. Spread love and happy thoughts, and they will return to you.

And btw, I don't see anything wrong with your dreams. But as it was said, expectation plays a huge role. If you expect to have obstacles in your way, dark dreams, unpleasant dreamscapes, then that's what you gonna get. Not because your subcon hates you. But because you summoned it.

Daydream about your ideal dreamscape and what you would like to do in your LD. Be happy and excited about the prospect. And a genuine "thank you" and "I love you" directed at your mind will do wonders to "both of you". Happy dreams

I don't see anything wrong with your dreams. But as it was said, expectation plays a huge role. If you expect to have obstacles in your way, dark dreams, unpleasant dreamscapes, then that's what you gonna get. Not because your subcon hates you. But because you summoned it.

Precisely. Your conscious thoughts intern create your subcon, so, just like gab said; Consciously expect to have obstacles, and your subconscious soon latches on to those thoughts and they then carry on into your dream space.

Personally, If i was in your situation, As soon as I entered the dream lucid, I would take a seat and poke a whole in the ground. This hole would then suck me in, almost like a portal to a new dimension. Except this new dimension is composed of absolute nothingness. Whilst here, I'd create what ever I wanted and play with it however I seen fit. I would create my own little space where my subcon has little to no influence. Through out the day, I'd be thinking about this place and how wondrous it is, and how i have complete control over it's entirety. Soon, leading to the collapse of the hatred for my subcon's influences on my past dreams. Because, soon enough, my subconscious would be then trained to help me create my little dream world.

Sitting down and poking a hole in the ground, which leads in the void - and from there where ever you want - this sounds very desirable..

well, as mentioned above, it's bcz of expecting the worst that your subconscious can do. Your sub never meant to hurt you, but when your stress started, your dreams where influenced badly, and you took it as your sub wants to do bad, so it starts doing bad. you get more miserable and angry at your sub, take it as an enemy, and expect that this will get worse, and that's what happens. It's all, just like a dream, a big messy plot. For instance, when you find yourself in a dark street at night in a dream (not lucid), what do you expect? That a thief would be in such places. Bam, a thief appears and the whole thing turns into a nightmare.
What to do?
This is tricky. You need to expect a nice dream (or LD) to get one, but you wont believe it would work unless it actually works at least once (which would need the first part to happen, and that part needs the second part for it to work). You see, it's a crossroad. That's why it's difficult.
Now what?
You know your expectations are what is causing this, not at all your sub. You're pointing fingers at the wrong direction. Subs don't do that, you always have control over the dream (remember how that door magically opened?). This is not a problem at all! It's like that big nightmare thing I said earlier. Your sub is fully innocent, and it's time to fight your expectations. It's not so hard to work out that crossroad I talked about earlier. Force your expectation to good. It's just like changing a rock to a log when you want to. Expect it to and it will. It's all about expectations. Remember, expect is a verb, so do expect a beautiful dream (it'll be easier with practice).
Hope this helps, sry it was long, but all this information is useful

I feel empathy for you and yes, stress can cause a lot of problems with lucid dreams. Sometimes when I get stressed, I feel like I don't have "time" for lucid dreaming. When in reality, all the time it takes up I would be sleeping off anyways. Stress can cause loss of interest and persistence. I can't give a whole lot of advice, as I am fighting the same thing. I feel a dry spell coming on.

I won't pretend to understand what it's like to be in exactly your position, and I don't want to labor the point that others have made about expectation. I do however think that expectation probably has a huge role in all this, and it seems like you are expecting the worst (e.g. when you say that all the doors are gigantically wide and that this has to be something negative - what makes you think is has to be negative?).

I read something in Daniel Love's recent book "Are You Dreaming" about dream control that might be helpful to you. He talks about "reframing" as a strategy for enhancing one's dream control. It basically amounts to changing the way that you think about your lucid dream in order to give you greater control over it. For example, we all know that we can't really fly unassisted or shoot lasers out of our eyes in real life. But, we know that Superman *can* do these things. So if we can somehow convince ourselves that we are Superman in our lucid dreams, these actions may become eaiser (we have reframed the dream as one of the adventures of Superman, rather than a bizzarre dream-model of ordninary waking life). Another example is how in Star Trek, they have the "Holodeck" - a virtual reality sytem (essentially like a lucid dream!) where you can issue commands to the computer and it will then create a multi-sensory virutual environment according too what you ask it. So you might say, "take me to Hawaii", or "load Sherlock Holmes' study" or something like that, and then the computer would create a virtual reality environment that matched those things. Or you could issue simpler commands, like "computer, open this door" or whatever. For someone who was familiar with Star Trek, issuing commands like this in a lucid dream might work in the same way, because they would already have expectations about what normally happens when you issue commands on a Holodeck.

I know I'm rambling a bit, bit maybe something like this - something that gives you more control in your lucid dreams - would be of help. Especially if you can find a way to do it that get's around negative expectations.

Hopefully something in there was helpful!

A B12 and or D3 vitamin deficiency could be aggravating the situation. Stress burns up these vitamins, and a lack of them leads to more stress... a vicious cycle. Can't hurt to give them a try, if you haven't already.