Hello everyone. About 5 years ago I became interested in Lucid dreaming. I began with working on my dream recall and reality checks. (Pinching my nose). Over the course of a year I slowly began to experience some lucidity. For some reason in all of the lucid dreams I had at that time there would be no people, always places I know but no matter where I went they were devoid of life. So to press forwards I tried controlling these lucid dreams to no avail with one exception when i almost was able to fly.

Fast forwards a couple years and the negative effects start to happen. By this time I'd given up with lucid dreaming but it wasn't finished with me. Quite often I would find myself in a semi-lucid state where I was laying in bed aware I was dreaming but unable to fully move. (Classic sleep paralysis). In many of these dreams I would sense that some vicious dogs were near my bed.. I knew they were not real but I was scared anyway and wanted to wake up. I usually had to jerk my head. Over time these have become more intense. Sometimes I am able to get out of bed but in my dream state but am usually unable to open my bedroom door and if I do everything is so dark and the light switches don't work.

A couple times I managed to roll of my bed and willfully sink through the floor. (Which tells me I am capable of some control). At this point I am just floating in darkness or sometimes with some patterns of color around me. This particular sensation is comforting because I have escaped my room but scary because it's more difficult to wake up from.

Furthermore I've had some extremely vivid dreams that are unlike anything I've experienced. In the past if I had a dream where I was about to die or suffer some type of serious injury I'd wake up right before it happened.

Over the past year I've had a reoccuring dream of being shot, usually in the face. The circumstance are always different. Once I was outside a store and saw a kid trying to break into my jeep. I approached him and yelled and he turned around with a shotgun and fired. Another time I was driving with a friend and he stopped next to a guy holding a sign, the guy pulled out a pistol and shot me. In both dreams I can hear the gunshot and smell the smoke. My head has a tingling feeling and I can actually feel cold blood running down my face, then I wake up.

The most recent was even worse. I was on a military base when some enemy attacked. Troops chased me and I was shot in the leg. I could actually feel slight pain in my leg, it wasn't as bad obviously as a real gunshot but it's alarming I felt pain in a dream. The troops then actually cut my body into fourths starting at my calfs and I could feel pain when they did it.

I don't know how I can avoid these terrible lucid dreams and sleep paralysis and turn the skills I developed for dream recall and lucidity to my advantage. If anyone has experienced similar circumstances i would love to hear about it.