Liam, you might be surprised when you do put the dreams in which you were tortured on your list of favorite dreams...

I don't know if you've heard of the The Old Hag Attack. When I was in South America, where the phenomena is talked about by even adult academics in biology, I had the experience of the old hag. The way it goes, is that you wake up paralyzed in your bed. You can't move. And there's a hag at the door. She slowly comes up to you and the fear is unbearable. In my experience, it was funny, because I had already had sleep paralysis before so I was not scared, but I was not completely lucid so when I saw the "hag" in the doorway (I couldn't see her), I thought it was the woman who owned the house. I thought she was merely coming in to wake me up. She came so close, I thought she was pulling a prank on me to wake me up. I wasn't scared, but then, she pinched my ear, causing pain (nothing horrible though. The pain was surprisingly intense but very bearable at the same time). Then, confused, I realized it wasn't the woman I know. And then I woke up. I found that dream very interesting, because I could relate to all the people around me who had experienced it. over there, there was even a myth about a man, who did the same but raped women. To fend him off, you need only put men clothes beside your bed.

You'll see, when I try, I remember 6 short dreams or 2 long ones per day. That makes up a lot of dreams. I would say, only 0.1% of my dreams involve pain, but because they are so rare, they become curiosities. And no dream pain, for me, has ever surpassed the pain of a paper cut. And even if you were tortured in impossible ways, you would probably wake up, there's also no real physical damage happening, so when you wake up, you're fine.

I wish you good luck in your dream exploration. It is probably the most curious of explorations that there is. (And although I gave examples of scary experiences, these are very rare occurrences for me... Oh, and do you have dream terrors or nightmares? I think only such people could worry about this, and lucid dreaming is actually one of the cures for it, so, again, it's all safe!

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