New to the site and afraid

I don't know much about this stuff so I was hoping to find a community that did. When I tried to sleep tonight I felt almost instantly sucked into darkness. I was scared and tried to wake up. My vision was blurred as I got up and fell from my bed. At the point of the fall I was instantly back in my bed. I repeated this many times until things seemed clearer and I walked to my door. I truly thought I was awake this time until I went outside to see many people and this one girl trying to give me a haircut. I determined this was also a dream and actually woke up. I then hallucinated a spider on the wall beside me. I have hallucinated the spider many times. Although the dream wasn't scary I felt terrified the entire time. Months ago I experienced the same cyclical dreams. The worst was my mother coming into my room with a knife on repeat. Sometimes I just can't move when I wake up but I'm not sure if that's part of the dream. Just trying to find out some information on what could be going on with me. I'm a 21 year old male if that makes a difference.

Nothing very unique is happening to you, in my opinion.

But, your recent dreamscapes sound like a very, very good reason to read up on Lucid Dreaming and make some attempts.

If done with patience and diligence, you can take control of not only your dreams, but also your feelings associated with them.

:)

Hey! Welcome to DV!
No need to be scared of waking up multiple times, these are called false awakenings.
A false awakening is when you think you wake up, but it's actually still a dream. These are actually a godsend for LD'ing because you can use them to easily enter a lucid dream by doing a reality check as you wake up.
Once you're in a lucid dream, you can take control and just do whatever you want (like use a flamethrower on that spider!)

Don't worry if you wake up and can't move, this is pretty normal. It's called sleep paralysis, and happens when you fall asleep to stop your body acting out your dreams.
A good tip I found is to vary your breathing rate, to let your body know that you are not asleep anymore and turn off paralysis. Or you can chill out and enter a lucid dream.

Basically have a look around the forum, learning more is always helpful. When experiencing cyclical/false awakening dreams, relax; keep in mind it's probably a dream, do a reality check (to test if its a dream) like trying to breath with your mouth and nose closed. Hopefully this will turn into a cool lucid!
Finally if you wake up in sleep paralysis, keep calm and go back to the dream, or exit by waiting a while and varying breathing.

Hope this helped, PM me if I didn't explain something clearly enough. See ya! :biggrin:

Hi RichardS, welcome to DV! :) Happy you have joined our community, and hope the info we have here will help you understand your dream situation better and not be afraid.

The spider hallucination you are talking about is called hypnopompic hallucination, these are common when waking from sleep, especially with some people. Don't worry nothing is wrong with you.

Lucid dreaming is one way to combat nightmares by becoming aware that one is dreaming and changing the contents of the dream. Another way (that can also be done together with lucid dreaming is via autosuggestion). Just repeat to yourself that you will not be afraid if some unpleasant scenario happens (and become aware that this is a dream). With practice you can transform both normal dreams and lucid dreams to have more pleasant contents.

Hope that helps!

Here are a few links to get you started:

Welcome

Induction Methods and Techniques

See you around! :okbyenow: