Love/hate relationship with LDs, anxiety

**salsashark** · 02-06-2016 11:43 PM

Hey guys.
I know you've probably read these kinds of posts a million times before, but every situation is a little different and it would mean a world to me if you could help me with figuring out mine.
I started lucid dreaming about 10 years ago. Didn't really have any problems with that, two weeks of reality checks and it was done. From the very beginning it was both amazing and terrifying. Over the years, depending on how I was doing mentally my LDs were either more or less scary but there is always some level of anxiety in them.
At some point it got really bad, I stopped for a very long time, my mind got calmer, I started again, signed in here, had some incredible fun and then the anxiety ruined it again and I had to stop. But the reality checks are still in my subconsciousness so I still get an LD once in a while. 90% of them start in my bed, I plug my nose, breathe through it and then immediately jump out of the window because I'm afraid that something scary will happen in my bedroom. Like one night I had this non lucid dream where there was this incredibly scary figure just standing in the doorway watching me and my boyfriend sleep. I started screaming in this dream and woke up screaming too. So now when I gain lucidity in my bed I expect for this figure to be there. Or something else, I have a lot of ideas. So I jump out of the window and feel safer in the air but sometimes it doesn't work and I fall into some shady neighborhood or other gloomy scenery and get scared again. At this point I've lost a lot of the ability to control those dreams (not doing it this often anymore) so I cannot really do much, even flying requires a good level of concentration. No way I can just think 'hey I wanna be in a nice place' and it's gonna happen. It has gotten to a point where before I plug my nose I think 'oh no, please don't let it be another lucid dream'.
On the other hand I really want to. During the day I think about it a lot and I wanna do this because, come on, it's amazing. But right before I go to bed I start thinking 'nah, better not today, let's hope I won't get one this time'.

Now, from what I've just said it's pretty easy to figure out that I have anxiety. It has gotten a lot better, I meditate a lot, do yoga and all of this hippie stuff, but it's still there. To make things worse I watch a lot of horror movies as it's kind of a part of what I do in life. They don't scare me anymore but they give me a lot of ideas for what can appear in my LDs. And when those things become 'real' they get scary again.

To me not having LDs is like missing out on life. I had this plan to meditate away all my anxiety but it may never fully happen. I also know that some people use lucid dreaming as a tool to defeat anxiety. So perhaps waiting is not the best option? I also thought that I'm gonna take a break from horror movies for now. this may affect my work a little bit but I think it's worth it. The problem is that I still have the previously seen scary stuff in my head. Like do you know the clapping scene from The Conjuring? Well yeah, I have a closet in my bedroom so I feel like I know what's gonna happen in my next LD.

I would really appreciate any tips here. Would you start now, try to defeat the anxiety even further, watch a lot of movies about sunshine and rainbows for a month and fill my subconsciousness with nice stuff? I have so many plans for my future LDs and it kills me that this fear is making it impossible.

**ParanoidLlama** · 02-07-2016 01:35 AM

I don't think watching happy movies will change anything at all. At this point this fear is stuck in your mind. Sure, you could get exposed to content and happy elements, and yeah they might (note: MIGHT) appear in your dreams occasionally, but seeing how you had to mention this "scary figure" as well as other scary scenarios from horror movies, you are subconsciously attached to this feeling of dread and anxiety that it unconsciously becomes represented most of the time in your lucid dreams. Let's face facts here, it won't go away.

You probably pondered (and hoped to go around) this solution, but you're going to have to face it. Like any recurring nightmare, it might serve a purpose. Maybe not, but either way it's there to stay until you start understanding something about it. If I had to interpret it, it is a representation of your fear and anxiety. It fueled these ideas of horror and scary elements, which then bounced back to fuel your fear, which bounced back to the representation, etc. . I assume you have given your dreams a lot of thought during the days, adding to the possibility of it being featured more.

Back to the solution. You're going to have to face the nightmare. One common method is to go up to whatever it is (in your case, the scary figure) and give it love. Most of the time they will end up being nice and friendly with you in return. You could hug it, kiss it, whatever it may be, as long as it's with the intention of happiness. It should stop happening after that. Maybe if there is some meaning to it, you could ask the figure why it's there. The dream should be happy from there.

You could also just defeat it with your dream powers, but I wouldn't recommend it in your situation. It seems you have lucidity but don't exactly believe you can manipulate the dream. Also, if the shadow figure's presence serves a purpose, I don't think the problem won't permanently subside through this method.

Hopefully this helps, and sweet dreams!

**Intet** · 02-07-2016 03:54 AM

Since you like horror movies, it's clear that you can enjoy being scared. You could try thinking of the scary things that happen in the dream as a source of entertainment for you to enjoy in the same way that you enjoy horror movies. As long as you can maintain lucidity and know that the scary things in the dream can't actually hurt you, you can treat them as a more immersive equivalent of a horror movie and start seeing them as something fun.