help please with terror inducing, recurring, lucid dream

I am now aged 19 but from as early as 4-5 years old i have been plagued with a very frightening dream, the dream in itself is not scary, but i always without fail have the strongest feelings of fear that i have ever experienced... and i am not easily frightened.

I posted on Yahoo answers yesterday asking for thoughts on the dream but found no help... search for the title Help with night terrors! in yahoo answers mental health section if you want to read the topic (cannot post links here yet)

I will try to explain the dream here too in case you don't feel like following that link ;)

While i am having this dream i am aware that i am dreaming yet have no control over the dream and cannot wake myself up... in other dreams when i realize that i am dreaming i can always wake myself up, though not control the events of the dreams despite efforts to. This dream however is different... this is partly why i am afraid of the dream. So, i will try to explain what happens and feelings etc. in real time yet may miss something out and come back to it at the end.

I am in a pitch black open space, i cannot see what the place is but can only describe it as a loft or attic with no light on yet 100o times bigger and no apparent exit. Looking around i am noticing that i feel scared, i am being watched. The things that are watching me are so small and numerous tht they appear to be moving as a single being yet i know with the certainty that only comes with dreams that they are thousands, and they are evil. When i realize that i am not alone i am surrounded by mounds about 8 feet high, more like very little hills, yet they are soft and hard to climb over, like black plastic bags... know that i have to get ahead of these "things" and reach something before they can. climbing over the mounds with difficulty i come to a road with a set of traffic lights and a zebra crossing in the same place... The "things" are ahead of me as i have to wait to cross despite no traffic or other people, as the road is still in the dark place, i start crossing. Now i am unsure how it comes about but i am in a waking state now, in the real world. I am not in bed but in the middle of my bedroom, i start walking about the house, looking in rooms, going outside and looking up and down the road, looking in cupboards. I prefer to go into rooms with a light, and if i see a person i stop and look at them, i feel confused. i usually end up sitting on a hard surface before snapping out of it, more then not it is the toilet seat. While all of this is happening i am fully aware of what is happening yet cannot stop myself from the wandering and searching. I have a terrible feeling that i have to find something (i have no clue what) but i have to get to it before "they" do, i still feel them while in this waking trance state, or something bad is going to happen.

While all of this is happening i r have no control over anything, and am filled with the strongest feelings i have ever felt, panic and pure terror. This is not because i cannot stop myself from wandering or anything, it is them, these "things" that i can feel.

Also while this is happening i will see an object, like a coin, or cushion or anything really and i get a really bad thought, like if i lost it i would have to replace it, then this burden of replacing the item suddenly grows a thousand fold, and i am overcome by even more fear and terror though i don't understand why.

Also in the topic from Yahoo answers i explain another dream (though i described it as a single time it was seperate occasions)

I am lying in bed looking at a wall or the ceiling but cannot move, i feel very sharp and heavy things pressing on my chest, about an inch underneath my collar bones, one on either side of my chest. I can move my eyes, then i see myself standing in the doorway holding my quilt, when i see the quilt in my arms (in the doorway) i can feel my arms getting very heavy (the "me" that is paralyzed in bed) and i am overcome with fear and terror, and the burden type feeling from the last dream.

The other one was me looking at myself from my bed (in another house i was living in at the time) again holding a quilt rolled up, then i fly into my own body and am suddenly awake in the middle of my room, this was not accompanied by any particular feelings and i just fell back to sleep when i got into bed.

If you wouldn't mind i would like opinions or interpretations or advice on the dreams.

I know that i am afraid of these dreams, yet i think about them all of the time, they don;t happen often, perhaps once every few years (the latest being 5-7 months ago) yet since i was a child it has always been the same dream, never changing. I would like advice on how i can control what dreams i have, as much as they frighten me i am fascinated by them and would like to experience them more often, to help me understand and remember more details about them. Any advice on how i could do this would be great. Things like recall and how to take control of the dream would be nice too.

Thanks

Do you ever have feelings of being watched while you're awake? Such as maybe just being worried someone is video taping you without your knowledge. Or just feeling eyes on you at random times. It also might being saying that you are in a hurry to find something but you need to wait and let things be. For the other dream where you see yourself does this quilt have any significance like something form your past or current living?
I am not too knowledgeable on nightmare dreams as I haven't read up much on them. As you said generally form what Ive gathered re-occurring dreams generally have a very distinct meaning behind them. Figuring out what its trying to tell you may end them. Meditation, I am not too sure if it helps others with lucid dreaming but I personally think it helped me with controlling dreams. It really takes a decent amount of effort to control your mind to think of nothing. I think it may help you gain control possibly in your dreams.
The best thing i think for recall is to do a dream journal. I did one a long time ago and as soon as you wake up in the middle of the night you write down everything you can recall from a dream. To remember a dream generally it has to be almost the first thing you think about upon waking otherwise you will forget the dream you had. I don't use a written dream journal like i used to as I am able to better recall dreams on my own. A lot of your questions though are up in the stickies on how to recall dreams and get control reading them should be helpful.
I am still relatively new to all these ideas and all while I have read a decent amount these are all just my personal opinions.

First of all thanks for your answer!

Secondly, in response to your question about feeling as though i am being watched whilst awake, I never get this feeling, occasionally walking down the street i can feel peoples eyes on me, when this happens my walk seems to change as it doesn't feel right, but this is not often.

In response to your question about the quilt meaning something, nothing jumps to mind, i just assumed it was a metaphor for a burden, because i felt my arms go heavy when i seen myself carrying it.
I don't have any idea what it could mean as the two dreams where i was holding it occurred at about the age of 10, there was nothing significant that happened then either.
When i think about both types of dreams i always think of them as linked, despite them not happening at the same time, or even close, as the feelings they omit are the same. I suppose it could be a metaphor about having a burden and looking for answers, though the first dream i have had recurring since i was 4-5 (the earliest i can remember) and at that age your view of the world is different and there is nothing that can burden a 4-5 year old, inflict pure terror and panic and then go on to haunt his dreams for the rest of his life (so far), as i never had any bad experiences at that age (that i can remember). The dreams also appear to just happen, with no trigger that i am aware of (including stress).

As you suggested i will check out the stickies when i have a few minutes and try to practice what others are preaching!

Thanks again for the reply ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aldora92

I am in a pitch black open space, i cannot see what the place is but can only describe it as a loft or attic with no light on yet 100o times bigger and no apparent exit. Looking around i am noticing that i feel scared, i am being watched. The things that are watching me are so small and numerous tht they appear to be moving as a single being yet i know with the certainty that only comes with dreams that they are thousands, and they are evil. When i realize that i am not alone i am surrounded by mounds about 8 feet high, more like very little hills, yet they are soft and hard to climb over, like black plastic bags...

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Hmmm... this is a strange one. The beginning of that dream sounds like a classic night terror as you can see from the description in this thread http://www.dreamviews.com/f46/geomet...-dreams-29794/
This "small and numerous tht they appear to be moving as a single being" sounds like the type of cognitive dissonance that causes many night terrors. And the age they started is about right too.

Check out that thread and tell me if the descriptions of the night terrors sound anything like the start of your dream. Reading it certainly gave me the goosebumbs I get whenever I think of my night terrors.

The odd thing is that if it was a night terror at the start, yours is the only dream I've ever heard of transitions into a dream.

I would suggest meditation everyday. This will give you a great power of mind and emotional control that you can carry with you into your dream. Jut focus the the mantra when get to sleep "DREAMS ARE NOT REAL, I CAN CHANGE THE SCENE". This works for me

A lot of that sounds similar, like the shapes (though not geometric, they appear like flat splashes to me) also the evil feeling when they get to a certain point, though for me it is if they find the thing i am looking fore before i can find it. I also feel like i am moving at an impossibly slow rate, despite "them" moving at a much faster rate. The descriptions of these "things" having infiinte mass is the feeling i get in the waking worlds, this also describes better the feeling i get in the experience of watching myself carrying a quilt. I can say that in the last experience of this dream i never had a fever but i cannot be certain about my younger days.
I am only on the first page but am eager to keep reading, Thanks!

I never had a fever during my night terrors, I just woke up with feverish symptoms. I'm trying to remember is they were always the same, but it's difficult to make sense of.

Anyways, it sounds like the intense emotions you experienced are what created this reoccurring dreams. Each dream element offers diverging paths the dream can take. The more you take one path, the more likely you are to take it again. Strong emotion further reenforce the likely hood of you taking that path in the future. In your case, the super intense emotions of the night terror reinforced the paths you took the first time you had that dream, creating the recurring dream. If you want to break that cycle, you'd need to better control your emotions next time you have it.

Again, on the second page, something i never mentioned was the silence... always completely silent. somebody mentioned they had a similar dream with mats and algebra, i suppose one dream from when i was younger (that i cannot remember, just that my mum tells be about it) was i woke up screaming because i couldnt count, my mum then went into my school and the teacher said maths was one of my best subjects...

blade5x describes waking up with the feeling that he had to grab onto something and them jumped out of bed, he was slipping away into something, this is what it is like for me when i wake, though i cant control it, ever, like a trance. juroara also mentions maths in her dream

People mention an evil feeling from these shapes or as i refer to them "things" and this is how i feel. One person also mentions somehting is wrong, something has a sens of great importance, for me this is finding the thing i m looking for, others seem t have this with touching things.

"I go to sleep and then I wake up. I wake up to this horrible feeling that I have to finish a TASK that I know is IMPOSSIBLE... but yet, I have no idea what the task is. I just have the feeling in my body that I have to do something... (i dont know what) but something that is VERY VERY VERY IMPOSSIBLE." was exactly the thing i feel when i wake, yet my body ats this out and i cannot control it untill i have snapped out of it ( i snap out of it when i move into a bthroom with the light on, thoug i dont understand why as i never need the toilet or anything.

People also metntin getting smaller or things getting bigger... i feel this in the waking world after the dream, and i once got the same feeling when i seen a newly installed wind turbine that was huge a few years back walking out of college. Dont know what triggered this but it only lasted a few moments.

ONce again, mention of a feeling of impossibility, i get this when i wake, also somebody said about a room that kept doubling, so the single room would become two rooms, then four and so on untill it was infinite, this is how i feel when i am awake if i lok at something for linonger then a few seconds, evein if i think of something for a few seconds.

Somebody mentions the unknown entities to be terryfying and evil and says that them words dont cut it, exactly how i feel. There ARE NO WORDS that can do justice to the experiences

You can try a dream journal, as said above, for help with dream recall. But another idea is you could try to learn to WILD. Don't be thinking about the dream while you try to WILD, which might take a day to years to get right. WILD guides can be found all over Dreamviews, such as here. If you end up getting good at WILDing, you can try talking to your subconscious. Talking to dream characters, which are projections of your subconscious, or going onto a computer database or file cabinet (some sort of mass storage device in your dream), can sometimes extract information.
If you don't want to or can't ask your subconscious for answers, you can try to find out for yourself. Once you have experience with WILDing you'll have better control over all of your dreams. And one night you can be in a WILD, concentrate on changing your surroundings, and enter your old nightmare. Perhaps try viewing it like on a television, be a bystander, or be in your dream as usual (but being careful of losing control). Then maybe instead of crossing the road, you can do something else, and see how the dream reacts.
Keep in mind that mastering WILDing isn't instantaneous, but might give you the most satisfying and useful results.
Good luck. :)

Reading a few things on WILDing i don't think it is for me, despite the fact that i have once or twice experience SP, i occasionally sleep walk, though not often it is far more frequent then both the dreams mentioned here and a lot more then i have suffered SP. I have only ever hallucinated once before, this was just after i woke up and was also about 15 years ago. When i transition to the waking world from m dreams i never get hallucinations but strong emotions and urges.

Thanks for your reply, despite not thinking i will be able to do it i am going to give it a shot!

Hmmm. Let my try this from a subconscious standpoint. Basically there was this popular idea that the brain has three parts: 1) the personal subconscious 2) collective subconscious 3)the conscious. The collective subconscious is like a library of the emotions and reactions processed by our ancestors that we inherited. Kind of like the Assassin's Creed games if you have played them. Our Ancestor's world was screwed up. Think about all of the death that happened in generations past. Basically our collective subconscious is like our lifeline trying to guide us according to our ancestor's experiences in order to affect us emotionally to help keep us alive. That collective subconscious sends us a lot of messed up scary things to keep us on our guard. The personal subconscious is like a boarder between our logical conscious mind and our emotional collective subconscious. It doesn't wan't to let us get overwhelmed by these scary ques that our collective sends us so we won't be paranoid like you are experiencing. Our conscious mind is logical and if it experiences something that it can't understand like inexplicable strong emotional impulses of fear it begins to become paranoid and even schizophrenic in severe cases. Dreams are like raw emotions because our personal subconscious is taking a break and it lets the collective subconscious leak through. This could be the link between your lucid, conscious dreams, and the fear that you feel in them. Take all of this psychological stuff with a grain of salt but I think, even if incorrect, it could help you visualize from a logical standpoint why you are so afraid in these dreams. Perhaps once you gain a strong logical standpoint of your emotions this fear could subside. Still just and idea though. In no way is this real proven hard science. Just more of a visualization tool than anything.