Self-awareness in Nightmares: My Experience

Greetings all, this is my first post. I would like to share my own experiences with how I attained self-awareness in dreams on my own, and how I continue to do so to some extent. At the same time, I am still learning about what it all means.

I grew up as a child terrified by nightmares on a regular basis. To this day, I do not know what triggered such experiences in my mind. Such confusion in my past included recurring dreams of the same exact set of horrifying events, usually including physical contact by one or more outside entities. Other times, I would have out-of-body experiences in which I would look down upon my sleeping self.

Lucidity, if I understand its meaning, has to do with attaining self-awareness in a dream. I never knew that such a term existed, even though I had inadvertently attained this since my nightmares began at a young age. I would usually be aware that I was having a nightmare, but the real terror began when I had no way of waking up from it, after realizing this fact.

I was too scared to tell anyone, until one day, something miraculous happened. I was finally able to control my dream as I was self-aware. This happened at a point in a nightmare so bad, that I gained the confidence and strength to break free and escape. There may be others out there with severe lucid night terrors, so I'd like to share my technique.

I had a theory that when one enters a dream state, it is the exact opposite as entering the state of reality. I had to put this to the test, so I let my own nightmares become that testing environment. After I became aware of the nightmare I was in, I simply closed my eyes, and allowed myself to drift to sleep within the dream.

As I mentally let go of my surroundings, I felt myself gradually descend into a calmer state of being. The physical manifestations of my terrors and feelings in the dream seemed to linger further and further away. The calm feeling eventually became complete, so I next opened my eyes. There I was in my bed, fully awake, and remembering what had happened.

So from that moment on, I used that same technique to escape any lucid nightmare, no matter how terrifying. Perhaps this varies from person to person, as in my case, I had to wait until everything around me was calm, before I could open my eyes again. Otherwise, I'd still be trapped in the nightmare.

I apologize for the rather disturbing nature surrounding my experience with lucid dreams. Nevertheless, I have since learned to control all my nightmares to the point that I rarely suffer from them anymore. The dream world is still a confusing one to me, but at least now I can fully appreciate the positive lucid dreams I have had recently. I may share these in the future.

A lot of people have this sort of thing happen to them (mostly when younger) involving nightmares. I'm guessing a majority of people here had their first lucid dream as a kid, via a nightmare.

Some theories say, that anything bad we encounter in our dreams, are manifestations of our deeper self. So it is suggested, that when you encounter something scary, instead of running away from it or killing it, express your love and understanding for it and it may turn into something harmless and it may even merge with the dreamer and give him good energy. When this happens, this nightmare will never occur again, because the issue that was causing it is now resolved.

I really wish I had read up on this at a younger age.. around age 8 the Grudge plagued my resting hours. I had around twelve dreams costarring that little asian ghost bastard - the one with the cat. I remember one dream where he did everything with my family and we had mac and cheese for lunch. He refused to put his bowl in the dishwasher so I kicked him and he flew through the wall... that may not actually count as a nightmare hahahaha.