Hi guys, as the title suggests my question is regarding the fear of not being able to wake up during a lucid dream.

I have been learning about lucid dreaming for the past 4 months and in all I've had about 10 lucid dreams. 7 of them were more lucid "experiences", i.e. I woke up very soon after becomming lucid. In the other 3 dreams however, after learning more and more I managed to stabalise the dreams and try things out.

The thing is, I've wasted two of these lucid dreams by waking myself up. After the joy of realising I am lucid, the thought of not being able to wake up and being stuck inside my own head starts to cross my mind. I reassure myself that everything will be fine and to make the most of the experience, although the thought is still there. A few moments after stablising the dream, I wake myself up, and as soon as I do so I kick myself for wasting the dream.

The reason for this fear is down to one of my childhood lucid dreams (when I was about 6 or 7 years old), back when I didn't understand what they were. I had dreams in which I would become lucid although almost always it would be during a nightmare. So I would wake myself up straight away by hitting my head really hard on the floor, or jumping out of a window etc...

So anyway, I became lucid during a dream and tried to wake myself up as I assumed it would be a nightmare. I hit my head on the floor, jumped through windows, ran infront of cars etc... but nothing worked. I started to panic, thinking that I would be trapped inside this dream forever...
It seemed to go on for hours, I was running around a town on a dull, rainy day, just trying to wake myself up! Much like the film Waking Life.

Eventually I talked to a man that looked like a detective in a resturant, and told him that I was dreaming and couldn't wake up. I don't remember what he said, but after the conversation the dream faded to black and in bold yellow letters I read "The End". After reading that I woke up.

After wasting 2 lucid dreams to this fear, I am now assured that I will wake up, and I won't waste the next lucid dream I have! The dreams I woke myself up from were also in pretty creepy environments, the one I remained in until I woke up naturally was in a very "normal" environment with other people around.

So, have any of you had this fear?
Have any of you also been unable to wake from a dream at will?

Please let me know, I am fascinated by lucid dreaming and would like to know as much as possible!