Thread: Why is there so many dream negativity posts?

Looking through the forums I find so many threads about nightmares, bad experiences, and a lot of other dark themes. I get dreaming isn’t always light and happy, but even in the lucid specific forums there’s so many ‘dark’ threads. Where are all of the positive stories lol

Most of my dreams are pleasant, half of them are sort of surreal, rest are mix of everything. I have very few nightmares. I'm probably among the few that never had scary sleep paralysis experiences. I'd probably go crazy (more than usual) if most of my dreams were unpleasant.

I'm also one of those who started a "dark" tread, specifically "dark experiments". I was asking others if they have on purposely incubated unpleasant experiences. I learned that most don't. XD

because most of our lives are bombarded on all sides with negative input. For example if you can stand it, watch the nightly "news", or the nightly bad news as I call it. Also depending on what school of thought you prescribe to, when you dream you tap into the ALL, everyone's feelings and emotions. Ever get the feeling you were dreaming someone else's memory? Ever speak a foreign language in a dream? Ever see future events before they happen? When you dream, you are plugged into "It"...whatever "it" is. And right now we live in a culture of negative, only 1 in a 1000 have actually raised their vibration enough to not dream negative, and that number is a guess..there is no real way to measure that, but its rare.

I can think of three reasons, Arad, for the popularity of negativity:

The first is that more people tend to want help with their negative dreams or related experiences than the positive ones, so more threads will be started listing questions about how to deal with them. By the same token, curing frequent nightmares is a great use for lucidity, so a site focused on LD'ing will tend to have lots of threads on the subject of lucidly resolving nightmares. ... but that is by far the lesser reason:

The second, and I believe far more prevalent reason, is that scary is fun. It's a whole lot more exciting -- and easy -- to talk about things like nightmares, the SP myth, demons, battles, dream walkers, dream police, etc., etc., than it is to talk about pleasant dream experiences. The dark imagery of our dreams seem, on paper, a lot more nakedly impressive than etherically fluffy things like joy or personal enrichment. I think a lot of new dreamers are drawn to the real potential for excitement that dreams hold, and want to discuss -- and read about -- the scary stuff because it brings that excitement closer to them. Also, it can be very difficult to describe the pleasant, joyful, peaceful, transcendent, etc. experiences that happen regularly in our dreams, mostly because they tend to be very personal, or simply don't translate into words the way a powerful nightmare can; so we don't see as much of that stuff talked about here.

The third reason comes from the second reason: because there is so much scary talk out there, LD'ing novices may have been lead to believe, incorrectly, that a big part of their LD'ing journey will be negative; and so they start threads about how to deal with the things they've read "will" happen to them. It's a bit of a vicious cycle, and one that winds up with the balance shifting heavily toward "scary," rather than toward the pleasant and genuinely positive experiences that dreaming can provide.

And that negativity isn't just in our neighborhood: I remember reading a long article about dreams in the NY Times years ago in which they quoted experts saying that most dreams are negative in nature... which is true for the experts, because people with positive dreams don't go to them for help, so the experts only tend to hear negative examples of dreaming (and thus assume that most dreams must be negative). Now that I think about it, I would imagine that most of the time dreams are discussed at all is when someone is remembering or sharing a nightmare or disturbing imagery; we may be much more likely to remember and share high-drama or scary experiences than we are pleasant experiences, fun or not.

The bottom line here, I guess, is that negativity is part of the formula for the overall discussion of dreams, and, because the negative stuff is more interesting (or just plain fun), it tends to get a larger stage that the positive stuff.

Originally Posted by Sageous

I can think of three reasons, Arad, for the popularity of negativity:

The first is that more people tend to want help with their negative dreams or related experiences than the positive ones, so more threads will be started listing questions about how to deal with them. By the same token, curing frequent nightmares is a great use for lucidity, so a site focused on LD'ing will tend to have lots of threads on the subject of lucidly resolving nightmares. ... but that is by far the lesser reason:

The second, and I believe far more prevalent reason, is that scary is fun. It's a whole lot more exciting -- and easy -- to talk about things like nightmares, the SP myth, demons, battles, dream walkers, dream police, etc., etc., than it is to talk about pleasant dream experiences. The dark imagery of our dreams seem, on paper, a lot more nakedly impressive than etherically fluffy things like joy or personal enrichment. I think a lot of new dreamers are drawn to the real potential for excitement that dreams hold, and want to discuss -- and read about -- the scary stuff because it brings that excitement closer to them. Also, it can be very difficult to describe the pleasant, joyful, peaceful, transcendent, etc. experiences that happen regularly in our dreams, mostly because they tend to be very personal, or simply don't translate into words the way a powerful nightmare can; so we don't see as much of that stuff talked about here.

The third reason comes from the second reason: because there is so much scary talk out there, LD'ing novices may have been lead to believe, incorrectly, that a big part of their LD'ing journey will be negative; and so they start threads about how to deal with the things they've read "will" happen to them. It's a bit of a vicious cycle, and one that winds up with the balance shifting heavily toward "scary," rather than toward the pleasant and genuinely positive experiences that dreaming can provide.

And that negativity isn't just in our neighborhood: I remember reading a long article about dreams in the NY Times years ago in which they quoted experts saying that most dreams are negative in nature... which is true for the experts, because people with positive dreams don't go to them for help, so the experts only tend to hear negative examples of dreaming (and thus assume that most dreams must be negative). Now that I think about it, I would imagine that most of the time dreams are discussed at all is when someone is remembering or sharing a nightmare or disturbing imagery; we may be much more likely to remember and share high-drama or scary experiences than we are pleasant experiences, fun or not.

The bottom line here, I guess, is that negativity is part of the formula for the overall discussion of dreams, and, because the negative stuff is more interesting (or just plain fun), it tends to get a larger stage that the positive stuff.

Are you nuts. Talking about nightmares is not an easy job, every time I try to write down a nightmare, I relive all the bad feelings once again. This is not a fun roller coaster, believe me on this. That is why I'm holding myself to post my nightmares here. If I were to write all the nightmares I have, I will write some "heavy" book. My imagination is very developed, so some of my dreams can make you go crazy overnight. Especially the semi-lucid one's or the Dark FAs. Of course I have my share of bad SP as well. As to why...... This world is not a nice place for everyone!

I definitely see where you guys are coming from. Now that I think about it most of the time people discuss their dreams in conversation it’s usually about a nightmare they had. I guess the bad stuff just sticks more. I still wish I could see more fun, positive dream posts though lol

^^ Nope, I'm not nuts -- as far as I know.

I'm pretty sure that most of the discussion of nightmares is about having them, and not a listing or discussion of the nightmares themselves... I think there might be lots of people who are discussing nightmares and what to do about them who, like you, never want to revisit them by writing them down again; just as there are lots of people who rarely or never have nightmares but may feel that talking about them, and even imagining having them lucidly*, is exciting.

I never said that having the nightmares was a fun roller-coaster; I said that talking about them was "scary" fun. By saying that scary is fun, what I meant was that it seems to me that there is much more interest in talking about the scary stuff than there is in talking about pleasant stuff. I could be wrong, but, given the wealth of threads on these forums with topics like "Help me stop my nightmares," "How to incubate nightmares," "Lucid nightmares," "SP scares me," "There are demons in my dreams," etc., I think think my opinion might be well supported.

I hope you might reread my post while keeping in mind the fact that I wasn't calling the nightmares themselves fun, and maybe you'll better understand what I had to say.

Also, this was not my point may be but worth considering: Though your experience and perspective are certainly valid, keep in mind that yours is not the only sort of experience or perspective of nightmares that drive these forums. There are a few people out there who do indeed draw excitement from their nightmares, and there are more than a few people who think their dreaming lives will be more exciting -- more fun -- if they could have a nightmare now and then.



* As an aside, I believe that lucid nightmares are impossible, because the driving force behind a nightmare is that the dreamer believes they are real, and by definition a lucid dreamer knows they are not real -- but, per my point, creating nightmares in LD's is a fairly popular pursuit -- just like going to scary movies is very popular.

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ Nope, I'm not nuts -- as far as I know.

I'm pretty sure that most of the discussion of nightmares is about having them, and not a listing or discussion of the nightmares themselves... I think there might be lots of people who are discussing nightmares and what to do about them who, like you, never want to revisit them by writing them down again; just as there are lots of people who rarely or never have nightmares but may feel that talking about them, and even imagining having them lucidly*, is exciting.

I never said that having the nightmares was a fun roller-coaster; I said that talking about them was "scary" fun. By saying that scary is fun, what I meant was that it seems to me that there is much more interest in talking about the scary stuff than there is in talking about pleasant stuff. I could be wrong, but, given the wealth of threads on these forums with topics like "Help me stop my nightmares," "How to incubate nightmares," "Lucid nightmares," "SP scares me," "There are demons in my dreams," etc., I think think my opinion might be well supported.

I hope you might reread my post while keeping in mind the fact that I wasn't calling the nightmares themselves fun, and maybe you'll better understand what I had to say.

Also, this was not my point may be but worth considering: Though your experience and perspective are certainly valid, keep in mind that yours is not the only sort of experience or perspective of nightmares that drive these forums. There are a few people out there who do indeed draw excitement from their nightmares, and there are more than a few people who think their dreaming lives will be more exciting -- more fun -- if they could have a nightmare now and then.



* As an aside, I believe that lucid nightmares are impossible, because the driving force behind a nightmare is that the dreamer believes they are real, and by definition a lucid dreamer knows they are not real -- but, per my point, creating nightmares in LD's is a fairly popular pursuit -- just like going to scary movies is very popular.

I see that you enjoy posting long post

As for the people you talk about, only one word come to my mind - *Masochists*.

Nah your post is fine aside from what I had bolded.

For your side note, you are right, but wrong.

I had many nightmarish lucid dreams. They started as normal DILD, but I go with the scenario instead of changing it, as second type(induced from NM's), I am too busy running to be able to change it.(let's see what you gonna do if giant spider chase you around in the dark woods)

If I try to categorize them, it will be in this order: Normal NM->vivid NM->FA NM->semi-lucid NM
There is one dark side of Semi-Lucid and Lucid Nightmare, in normal scary dreams there are some safety measures, when you are about to die,be biten,eaten they turn on-> you wake up, also most of the time pain is off. But in any lucid form, you got eaten,die or torn apart with alot of pain(aka like real world). Sorry if I scare some of the new guys on the forum They must be warned.

GordonFreeman, you seem to be enjoying your dark dreams more than you let on

The new guys on this forum don't need to be scared or warned about dream "pain".
Sure, it exists, but in an illusory way. Similar to how you can imagine pain and make yourself cringe without actually feeling physical pain. It has little to do with lucidity. I have experienced dream "pain" on rare occasions, and it is not worth warning about, especially since the only cause of this pain is the belief that something will cause pain. Instead, the new guys should be reminded that there is no "physical body" in dreams and therefore no physical pain.

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

GordonFreeman, you seem to be enjoying your dark dreams more than you let on

The new guys on this forum don't need to be scared or warned about dream "pain".
Sure, it exists, but in an illusory way. Similar to how you can imagine pain and make yourself cringe without actually feeling physical pain. It has little to do with lucidity. I have experienced dream "pain" on rare occasions, and it is not worth warning about, especially since the only cause of this pain is the belief that something will cause pain. Instead, the new guys should be reminded that there is no "physical body" in dreams and therefore no physical pain.

You are wrong about pain being illusory. Why, because during LD it uses the same neuro-paths in brain, like in real world. Of course you can say that both real pain and lucid pain are illusory. Damn mate, look what you have done now, by relive my LD memory pain, you cause me serious panic attack, now where I left my pills.

Disclaimer: I continue talking about pain.

Well, if you are being serious, I apologize for my comment about you enjoying dark dreams. I was referring to this:

Originally Posted by GordanFreeman

let's see what you gonna do if giant spider chase you around in the dark woods

But I misread; I thought you were letting the dream be, but rather you didn't have the focus to stop it.

Obviously, whatever type of pain it is, it is valid; it is unpleasant at best and distressing at worst. But there are for sure different types of pains and there is a multitude of neuro-paths in the brain to process pain. And pain is influenced by other things than the nervous system, like the immune system, etc. I am not ready to admit that this statement is true or false: that dream pain uses the same neuro-pathways as physical pain. I am pretty sure they must be different, by virtue of one being expected pain and the other stimulus pain.

The point still stands: you have no physical body in dreams, just the illusion of one (well, except the one in bed).

Distressing pain in dreams is most likely a continuation of distressing pain in real life (physical or psychological), rather than the opposite.

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

Disclaimer: I continue talking about pain.

Well, if you are being serious, I apologize for my comment about you enjoying dark dreams. I was referring to this:



But I misread; I thought you were letting the dream be, but rather you didn't have the focus to stop it.

Obviously, whatever type of pain it is, it is valid; it is unpleasant at best and distressing at worst. But there are for sure different types of pains and there is a multitude of neuro-paths in the brain to process pain. And pain is influenced by other things than the nervous system, like the immune system, etc. I am not ready to admit that this statement is true or false: that dream pain uses the same neuro-pathways as physical pain. I am pretty sure they must be different, by virtue of one being expected pain and the other stimulus pain.

The point still stands: you have no physical body in dreams, just the illusion of one (well, except the one in bed).

Distressing pain in dreams is most likely a continuation of distressing pain in real life (physical or psychological), rather than the opposite.

If you are referring to the emoticon, google "nervous laughter" and you will know what I mean. Yep while being chased by something I can't muster enough focus to change the dream, because every time is very dry situation. Thank god, I found my pills.

Not dream pain, but lucid pain instead.

Short example of lucid dream gone ugly.
I'm with my mother in store house to look at some inheritance from distant relative. Then our relatives show up demanding all of it for them. In that moment I get lucid, because I didn't recognize them. I didn't change the scenario and said to my dream mother to look in the other rooms as well. We started walking around and found old elevator. Our relatives came with us and we ended in some underground four floor Mall from late 80 years. We all split in diferent directions. We(My mom and me) took left corridor. It was full of stores with old stuff inside them and everything was covered in dust(this LD was very detailed). Most of the lamps didn't work and some were flickering. I saw blood trails on ground leading to nearby room and terrible smell of rotten blood. I turn around to say to my mom to go back, but she was gone. I was alone in the dark. The door was opened, the room was covered in blood and there was a part of limb on the floor. I freeze, while seeing an arm getting the limb inside the room and shut the door before my eyes. I got freak it out and start running in oposite direction, thank god the dream fall apart.

Yeah, that's a dark dream.

But now I am confused. Did I misinterpret what you were talking about... Dream pain, vs lucid pain. There is no distinction in my mind. Lucid dreams as people talk about them are just dreams with some heightened qualities such as (knowledge of dream state, access to memory, self-awareness, sensual awareness, control, etc...) but they are fundamentally the same.

Your dream is dark but there wasn't pain. Fear, yes.

Here is an example of pain for me in a non-lucid:
- I am staring at my hand. There is a quick red flash and a slash to one finger. I feel a quick sharp pain. This happens again and again for each finger and then the whole hand. An uncomfortable dream, but nothing to worry about.

Some of my lucid dream examples of pain:
- I am on a dock at night and want to fly to a ship already out at sea. I decide to try a new technique for flying. I think, if I drop back, since there is no floor, I will just feel as if I am floating and can fly from there. I do that, but instead, I hit a cement floor and feel the sharp unpleasant impact at the back of my head. Again, unpleasant, but nothing to worry about.

Even in scary/distressing/stressful dreams, it's all fine. If you don't have physical or psychological pain, dreams will not be the source of pain and distress. Unless we dramatize our narrative. I think it's healthier to set up an attitude that we are safe, if we have the luxury of being safe (especially dreaming, which is the safest thing you can do).

Sorry that I didn't specify, but that example was targeted at Sageous. I will try to answer you tomorrow for the rest.

So am I the only one who sees being eaten in a dream as fun when it includes real-life sensations? Just me? Alright.

I do agree with what's been said already though. People tend to talk waaay more about what they don't want or want to stop than things they desire, hence why "negative" themes pop up far more often than positive ones.

I have experienced very realistic pain in both lucid and non-lucid dreams. Pain sensation is not exclusive to lucids. However, in lucids I can suppress the pain most of the time if I have advance knowledge of any pain inducing elements.

Originally Posted by Hukif

So am I the only one who sees being eaten in a dream as fun when it includes real-life sensations? Just me? Alright.

Probably, but I'm sure there are more people. XD

Originally Posted by Hukif

So am I the only one who sees being eaten in a dream as fun when it includes real-life sensations? Just me? Alright.

You probably mean, with dream-like sensations.

Originally Posted by Hukif

I do agree with what's been said already though. People tend to talk waaay more about what they don't want or want to stop than things they desire, hence why "negative" themes pop up far more often than positive ones.

To balance things out, let me report my nightly goals that I have been setting for myself recently.
- Access to memory.
- I welcome in benevolent spirits and God. I'm interested welcoming more mystical experiences but in this case, I am leaving the masochist path behind. I'd rather give myself good experiences than bad ones.
- I want to meet some old wise characters. I find my dreams are filled with children. They are healthy now, whereas they were hurt before. So, my work with them has progressed well, but their presence shows my hesitation to grow up. I want to summon my mature, old wise self in dreams, as I mature and become an adult, free and powerful to take on responsibility.

All good things.

While I am reading your replys, I tend to belive that everyone are looking from their own viewpoint(me included) and starting to think that this is little out of our league. What I'm saying is that, this territory is totaly uncharted. We are like lucid(instead of space) astronauts, exploring the deep space called Lucid Dreaming. So the truthness is somewhere in the middle.

Of course everything I post here were things from my long forgoten past. It seems one more person noticed that I'm mixing too much of LD with Reality, ehh it wasn't really a person. So I don't want to post more nightmerish stuff, but maybe something a little more positive.(because thinking about my past NM of any kind give me serious distress, for which I think, I don't have enough pills)

Four months ago I had a LD induced from FA.
I wake up in living room and immediately gained awarness.(I live in apartment) Everything around was darkish, the lamps doesn't glow enough and the walls were covered in some dark substance like tentacles(or veins), they were like alive, they had a heartbeat(pulsating). I went in the corridor, everything was covered in that stuff, the lamps were flickering. I thought to get out from front door, but behind the door there was a strange noise, so I looked through the spyhole. On the other side of the door there was a black fat monster with big mouth and many teeths, which from time to time was burping with sulphur smell. So I went to my room, the walls were covered also, I thought that I can fly out of windows,but they were covered also, from what I saw through them all the city were covered in that shit. The sun was there, but was a full sun eclipse. In that moment the entire floor started to cover with dark spiders and snakes stuff. I jump on top of my bed. I thought that I can't escape from that, so I just sit on the bed, the dark things were crawling towards me in that moment the lamps gone all dark.

Suddenly a person appeared on the bed beside me, he was carrying a little flashlight. He looked at me and say "What are you doing, why are you so afraid, everything in here is an illusion. Everything here is part of yourself, look carefully now". He close his eyes and the next moment his little flashlight lit like a big projector. I asked him how did you do it. He said "You must concentrate, use your inner light", "ok I will give it a try". I closed my eyes and focused on light, the next moment the room exploded in very bright light, all blackness started to burn and disapeared. Outside was a bright day, all the darkness was gone "See you can do it, if you just try and remember this is your inner world, your will is everything". I turned towards him and said "perhaps, you are Me". He smiled and vanish. In that moment the dream fall apart and I woke up in my bed.

Everything changed afterwards.

Originally Posted by lucidbunnie

I have experienced very realistic pain in both lucid and non-lucid dreams. Pain sensation is not exclusive to lucids. However, in lucids I can suppress the pain most of the time if I have advance knowledge of any pain inducing elements.

Probably, but I'm sure there are more people. XD

lol I know! I do like the real-life sensations however, since they make the dream more memorable to me, makes it like another reality I am living in.

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

You probably mean, with dream-like sensations.

To balance things out, let me report my nightly goals that I have been setting for myself recently.
- Access to memory.
- I welcome in benevolent spirits and God. I'm interested welcoming more mystical experiences but in this case, I am leaving the masochist path behind. I'd rather give myself good experiences than bad ones.
- I want to meet some old wise characters. I find my dreams are filled with children. They are healthy now, whereas they were hurt before. So, my work with them has progressed well, but their presence shows my hesitation to grow up. I want to summon my mature, old wise self in dreams, as I mature and become an adult, free and powerful to take on responsibility.

All good things.

I guess that comes with perspective?
To me, what people refer to negative things is the positive ones.
For example, I remember a pretty nice dream where I literally fed a starving dog trapped in a yakuza's base my arm, I could feel while he was munching on my flesh and bones and all the pain that comes with it, but it felt pretty good and made me happy enough to endure it, since the little boy was hungry.

Dreams are just so diverse and beatiful overall, I like them so much ^^

Some of my negative dreams are about real life issues that need more attention than the fluff.

What a beautiful dream

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

What a beautiful dream

I appreciate your sarcasm

Originally Posted by Hukif

lol I know! I do like the real-life sensations however, since they make the dream more memorable to me, makes it like another reality I am living in.



I guess that comes with perspective?
To me, what people refer to negative things is the positive ones.
For example, I remember a pretty nice dream where I literally fed a starving dog trapped in a yakuza's base my arm, I could feel while he was munching on my flesh and bones and all the pain that comes with it, but it felt pretty good and made me happy enough to endure it, since the little boy was hungry.

Dreams are just so diverse and beatiful overall, I like them so much ^^

I feel I would also have appreciated that dream. But I think the pain you felt was probably not as excruciating as if your physical body was being gnawed on by a dog. The pains I described earlier in my example dreams felt very accurate, and I perceived them as intense, but I think that objectively, they are very mild types of pain. Just discomfort, not that much pain.

Originally Posted by GordanFreeman

I appreciate your sarcasm

No really, that dream made me feel nice. I like it. Your dream characters are very smart. Never got such clear guidance from mine

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

I feel I would also have appreciated that dream. But I think the pain you felt was probably not as excruciating as if your physical body was being gnawed on by a dog. The pains I described earlier in my example dreams felt very accurate, and I perceived them as intense, but I think that objectively, they are very mild types of pain. Just discomfort, not that much pain.

Well, it was still worse than the pain from getting my fingernails been ripped off without anesthesic (This was in reality) or some other bad shit that has happened before (including getting high degree burns) to me, so while I can't compare it to the real one at least can say it is very real like.

I don't know about you guys, but i have experienced pain so intense in dreams I have gone into shock in waking. I had to be taken to hospital few times. ^^'