I'm calm, but still wake up

Hey peoples I'm back. I've been at it for about a month and a half now. I've had two close attempts and I want to know what you think about what went wrong.
In my first dream, I was in an unrecognizable house with my grandmother and my aunt. They were both playing with a baby kitten whom one of my good friends owned. I tried to play with the kitten, but every time I stuck my hand out, it would viciously hiss and swipe at me. After about three attempts to pet the cat, I thought to myself, "Wait... Why does my grandma have Cambridge's cat? Oh hey, I'm dreaming." Instantly after I said that aloud, my grandmother sneered at me and said, "No you're not!!!" I kept repeating to myself, "I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming" while my grandmother grabbed a hold of me. Attacking me. Everything started to blur, so I tried spinning around, but I was lying on the floor and I ended up kind of flopping on the ground. I woke up. It's almost like the dream turned to a nightmare when I realized I was asleep.
I won't go into great detail about the second dream. It was a pretty long one. But when I was walking back from exploring an abandoned building, I randomly checked to see what my hand looked like (as I made a habit of doing maybe 7 times throughout the day) and when I couldn't make my fingers out, I calmly said, "Oh hey, I'm dreaming." Instantly, hundreds of images flashed before my eyes. Friends, family, places I've been, random shit. It felt like I was on a rollercoaster. The dropping feeling in my gut startled me awake.
So what exactly could have triggered those two responses? Being attacked by the DCs I can understand, but everything flashing before me when I'm going lucid seems odd to me.

practice makes perfect