Thread: I want to have Nightmares..

Chances are you are having plenty of nightmares but are not remembering them, along with other lost dreams. As you probably know, recall is the most important step in making your dreams more lucid.

Anyway, I can see why you want to have nightmares. Consciously having them is better than unconsciously finding yourself in them, on top of being able to change anything for personal preference. It's also like watching a horror movie - you do it to get a thrill, and it serves as a sort of release of tension regarding other stresses in your personal life. But even more so, it's like some kinds of meditation, where letting yourself be aware of negative thoughts and feelings will dampen them and eventually strip them of their power of you.

Originally Posted by ElectricSheep

Try eating a heavy spicy meal right before bed. Old wives tale

As long as we're throwing out old wives' tales, I remember always hearing that eating a shitload of candy would give you nightmares. Pretty sure that's just a way to keep kids from eating a shitload of candy though, heard similar things about chocolate, etc. Seems anything people have difficulty controlling themselves over causes "nightmares", so definitely take all these ideas with a grain of salt.

Originally Posted by AirRick101

Chances are you are having plenty of nightmares but are not remembering them, along with other lost dreams.

While this is most likely true, even with myself, it depends highly on what the dreamer considers to be nightmare material. I have nightmares on average ~1 a year. I have plenty of dreams all the time that others would label as nightmares, but I do not view them as negative, scary, or anything of that nature, and whilst in the dream I do not feel negative feelings either. Bad things just happen to be happening all around me. Like lots of violence, people getting killed, shooting, stabbing, running, hiding, not all like action movies, in fact very few, but such things happen and at no time is it ever grounds for me to confidently say that I had a nightmare. It isn't limited to violence either, stressful situations and other things that people would find nightmare material just aren't that way for me. I can't force myself to feel like it is, it's just not. It's definitely got to be unique to the dreamer, maybe not even in regards to mindset and perception but also brain chemistry. I know when I used to be prescribed adderall that when I would stop taking it, for the next two nights I would have extremely vivid dreams, but the content would be overwhelmingly negative. Still not enough to be a nightmare, but the overall tone, feeling, and atmosphere was... wrong. On top of all that, I suppose it helps my case a lot that usually my dreams are very abstract, sometimes extremely so. They are highly nonsensical, non-sequential, and often just flat out bizarre. The ones that seem to be less abstract are the ones that could be considered nightmares though, yet they still aren't nightmares.

Idk, I'll quit my ranting and raving there, just thinking out loud, er, well, through text really.