Lucid Dreaming-depressing?

Hey people. First of all I LOVE lucid dreams, I've had about twenty so far, mostly in the last year or two (before that I had virtually none despite trying to have one for years) averaging about one a week I'd say.
It just got me thinking that when you're dreaming (especially lucid dreaming) and if it's a particularly long and vivid dream where there's a story and lots of DC's and you have loads of fun, when you wake-up, don't you feel depressed? I mean, yeh you've just had an amazing dream and you're happy that you had a super long vivid dream that was perhaps lucid, but then you're awake in bed and it's all over.

I know you're not really supposed to get attached to DC's but sometimes you can't help it and when you think about it being just your mind, on the one hand it's great because you create everything and can create anything you want, but on the other hand, nothing is real and you are completely alone and the only person who experienced it was you. No one else was really there, so that fantastic, enlightening conversation you had with that cool celebrity or the girl/guy you've had a crush on for years was all in your head. That other person wasn't affected at all by it because they weren't really there.

I don't wanna bring you all down by pointing it out, but it just made me think. I will of course continue to have and want to have lucid dreams, but it's depressed me thinking about it lol, I guess it's both good and bad for different reasons.

Any thoughts?

I don't get depressed when I wake up because it somehow makes me appreciate my waking life more.. and I know that I can always just get lucid again and go back to that dream.. every night, if I become that good.

I don't know what to say about the second part because I've never had a relationship in a lucid that I regretted wasn't real...

I was thinking this about an hour ago funnily enough. It is depressing in a way but i don't thnk of them as fictional, i like to think of them as real people with real feelings, opinions etc. I have made friends in lucid dreams and when i wake up i am thinking how tidy that person was and thinking about the conversations we were having and i am thinking then for a second i wonder what that person is thinking now and if he/she is thinking about the night we had or whatever then i realise the answer is nothing and no because that person is not real, then i am sad.

Wow, ld_master, that's weird that you were thinking it too!
What it reminds me of, is going to some place in real life like a concert or something that you are never going to experience again and meeting some great people, but forgetting to get their phone numbers and never seeing them again.

I know you can make them appear and recreate the same situation, but somehow it seems like it wouldn't be the same.

I will still be really happy after a lucid, I do like to think of the DC's etc as real, and I guess they are in a way as part of you. It got me thinking because I just read a post- can't remember who it was by sorry, where someone had a lucid about a man in an elevator and he knew he was gonna die or something. The person said to them "don't worry, it's just a dream" but the man said "but after this you'll never dream about me again, and isn't that the same as me being dead?" How depressing!

LD still rocks though.

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Originally Posted by Jules2007

Wow, ld_master, that's weird that you were thinking it too!
What it reminds me of, is going to some place in real life like a concert or something that you are never going to experience again and meeting some great people, but forgetting to get their phone numbers and never seeing them again.

I know you can make them appear and recreate the same situation, but somehow it seems like it wouldn't be the same.

I will still be really happy after a lucid, I do like to think of the DC's etc as real, and I guess they are in a way as part of you. It got me thinking because I just read a post- can't remember who it was by sorry, where someone had a lucid about a man in an elevator and he knew he was gonna die or something. The person said to them "don't worry, it's just a dream" but the man said "but after this you'll never dream about me again, and isn't that the same as me being dead?" How depressing!

LD still rocks though.

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Yeh i agree with you about the concert thing and it is very weird that i was thinking about this earlier then you go and post it. :eek: That post you were talking about was Sympathy for a dc.

Ld's certainly still rock :)

Wow, what an interesting and important conversation going on here! This is actually something I've dealt with when I first got into Lucid dreaming. What I found was that I wasn't happy with my Waking life, and became more of a Narcaleptic because I couldn't stand being awake (In my case I wasn't comfortable with where I was, I had no friends and I wasn't doing anything active at all, sleeping didn't help.)

Lucid dreaming is great, but it is a part of your mind and cannot substitute real life (Everyone reading this is thinking, "Yeah, I know.") So guess what? When you were wondering if that person was thinking of you? They were, because you are them. Everything inside your dreams represents the truth about yourself.

Lucid dreaming is actually one of the first steps people take towards reaching a higher self. Alot of people I've talked to that are great are into lucid dreaming, and the things that they can't control in their dreams they realize is something that they need to recognize and decypher.

Lucid dreaming shouldn't be the reason for depression. But Lucid dreaming is a step to finding out what the source of your depression is. I love my dream characters because they're so enlightening, they teach me about myself. Even when they do bad things that make me mad, I know it's me doing it when I wake up.

I'm just rambling now, I'll post again after someone else brings up a good point.

PS A smart person told me, "People that need constant interaction with other people (Or Attention from other people) are not comfortable with themselves, and have a low self esteem." Then he told me that if this makes me sad or defensive than it's true and instead of being one of those things I should do something that makes me feel good about myself.

I experience this problem more with the non-lucid dreams. Perhaps this is because once I become lucid, I consign to the fact that it is all in my head and I'm just going to have a good time with it.

Normal dreams, however, your entire self is tricked into believe the situation is real. I've had dreams then where I met wonderful people, found true love, banded to make the world a better place, etc. It is on the night I have those dreams that I wake up bitterly depressed. Usually the entire day that follows I think about how to go to that world... but it is not to be.

I find depression on lucid dreams on a different sense. Sometimes I feel as if I'm going too far into my subconscious, into a world too demented from reality, and wake up in a dark room, depressed. Sorry if that doesn't make much sense.

The only times lucid dreams depress me is if:
-my alarm wakes me up shortly after becoming lucid
-I lose lucidity to a false awakening

I'm happy, energized, and inspired after a lucid dream. Being inside my own mind is fascinating.

Getting sad about an experience in a lucid dream? I'd avoid contact with people you know in real life, then. I've never held a conversation with a real-life dream counterpart in a lucid, and don't plan to for the reasons you've stated. But holding a conversation with fiction... That's fun.