Thread: During my dreams I feel like a bystander

I feel like I'm just watching a movie, albeit blurry. Often, it happens from inside a body of a person and I can't control anything, the body just does whatever it likes and says whatever it wants to. I can't really explain it because when I wake up I literally recall only about a second or two of my dream, can someone help me break this feeling of hopelessness.

I think it's normal, you don't need to worry about that.
I often dream in third-person view, or sometimes I see things like my own funeral etc.
I think that dreaming like a bystander is a common thing.

Yeah, but I want to attain some kind of control in my dreams, or atleast be able to recall my dreams with a lot more depth.

Practicing being more aware through the day should help with this. Focus on living in the moment. Keep your attention on yourself and how you are interacting with your surroundings. It is easy to lose track of ourselves with so many distractions. Engaging work, books, movies, and video games all take us to that blissful state of mind where we lose ourselves. It is fun to escape, as long as we remember to always return fully.

Avoid lots of tv. Ive found I do more 3rd person and repackage movies or tv if I watch too much before bed. Books are better as you tend to out yourself in a book.

Oh I actually haves stopped reading before bed replacing with watching tv, and I do recall having more vivid dreams; one of which happened a few years ago which I can still recall today (:

Originally Posted by Rothgar

Avoid lots of tv. Ive found I do more 3rd person and repackage movies or tv if I watch too much before bed. Books are better as you tend to out yourself in a book.

Nice theory, but watching television before sleep is extremely common and there are very few people who ever experience this on a daily basis, so statistically its unlikely watching television has any major impact.

I personally find this quite an issue. I don't know what the solution is, but you'll have to do work to fix this in waking life because your level of control in the dream sounds hopelessly bad.

This nothing more than an idea, but try doing more things during the day that require your attention and you can't just zone-out through. Robot_Butler is right, but I find it much easier to be in-the-moment when I'm doing something that makes me use my body and mind at the same time. Sitting at the computer, watching TV, or doing routine activities I tend to zone-out as I do them, or generally become less aware of my actions and surroundings. I wish you some luck, I've got the same issue--and I zone out all the time. I'm gonna start trying my own suggestion, if you do too maybe we'll both see some good results.

For the majority of the day, atleast when I remember too, I took in every little touch, every little smell, every little sound; and I'm going to continue to do this.

Also, my dream control isn't hopelessly bad; I have none at all.

Originally Posted by Zestorum

Also, my dream control isn't hopelessly bad; I have none at all.

Touche.

Do you have a dream journal? Start logging all these fragments, build upon what you have and prioritize memory. The more you focus on dreams, the bigger priority your brain will take in remembering them. The more information we can get from here, the easier it will be to establish some kind of solution.

No, I actually don't have dream journal.

Also, I'm hopelessly afraid of Sleep Paralysis, even though I've never experienced it. It's preventing me from practising WILDS and WBTB techniques. But I imagine that if I had dream control of some sort, It'd be atleast 10x easier for me to MILD or DILD.

Get started on a dream journal then. You don't need to write out big stories, just whip down notes at night with a piece of paper and a pen if possible. If that isn't your thing, you could try remembering it in the morning and writing up a few paragraphs on what happened but thats a bit harder and less reliable.

Originally Posted by Zestorum

Also, I'm hopelessly afraid of Sleep Paralysis, even though I've never experienced it. It's preventing me from practising WILDS and WBTB techniques. But I imagine that if I had dream control of some sort, It'd be atleast 10x easier for me to MILD or DILD.

That's fine, so many people get worried about sleep paralysis. The ironic thing is a lot of people will never notice paralysis at all. Its way hyped up. I've had hundreds of WBTB and DEILD dreams, and all that happens is my limbs feel comfortably heavy and I feel like I am floating. Then suddenly I'm asleep.

That's a good idea, but I just want to point out I'm a heavy sleeper, and I never recall waking between REM sleep patterns. So the only way for me to keep track of one is writing it down in the morning.

Also, it's not only WILD sleep paralysis I'm afraid of, waking sleep paralysis seems just as, or more, scarier then self induced sleep paralysis.

I thought that lack of dream control was because I wasn't lucid, so is there anyway that I can control my dreams while I'm not?

When I take melatonin it usually stops the bystander effect

I've only recently started dreaming in first person view. I started dreaming in first person quite often after researching Lucid Dreaming but until now, I used to dream in third person nearly all the time, as if I was an entity which had no physical form and was watching myself act out the dream. Sometimes it would be , like you said, from the inside of a body which I had no control of. I didn't really think it was common because when I told my friends and family they thought it was strange, lol.