Wow, a forum on lucid dreaming

Hi all,
I've been lucid dreaming since I was a teenager (now in my mid to late 30s), long before I ever heard of it. Initially I thought I was just odd then I read something about it once which eased my mind but never gave it a second thought afterwards, until now.
I know that I tend to lucid dream when I am relaxed, stress free and have caught up on my sleep. Unfortunately I work shifts in a stressful and often unpleasant career choice so that is rare these days. That being said it occurred every night for 9 nights back in the summer when I spent some time in the south of France on holiday. I don't do anything to start it, it just happens. I don't know what triggers it, but I have noticed most of the time it's only in happy dreams, it's unusual and even then only a very weak semi lucid state when its a bad dream, of which I have most nights without fail.
I have joined here to try and learn some triggers for the times when I have the most appalling violent dreams. If I can somehow master these 'nightmares' through lucid dreaming then goal achieved.
That's me.
Thank you.

Welcome to DV, Mercia!

I'm sorry to hear about your nightmares. Lucid dreaming is definitely a great way to turn those around!
Are they general stress dreams or is there a specific recurring theme?

Stress is a common dream sign for a lot of people. I often have stress dreams, so I remind myself that whenever I'm feeling stressed, I could be dreaming! I also do reality checks when I'm feeling especially stressed, and that habit has crossed over to my dreams sometimes and helped me to become lucid.
A mantra might help reinforce the idea that when you're feeling stressed, you will realise that you're dreaming. I'm not very experienced with mantras, so maybe you'd like to ask for suggestions in the nightmares subforum:
Nightmares and Recurring Dreams

If there's a recurring theme, PercyLucid would be a good person to talk with. He helped me to overcome my recurring nightmares a few years ago using MILD (mnemonic induced lucid dreaming) practices.

I hope that your dream life will be more peaceful soon! :)

You can indeed help yourself with lucid dreaming :)

Dreamer shared some brilliant information with you and I'd be very happy to help you out if you need it, that's what we are here for!!

I recommend you to do this exercise before going to bed (or if you take a shower at night, do it when you shower) as it will help a ton with stress:

Spoiler for Stress Relief through Solar Plexus:

A great exercise that I want to share with you, is for you to imagine that you have a faucet attached in your lower back (the back of your Solar Plexus Chakra) and when you take a shower (take an actual shower) imagine that you open this faucet and imagine that muddy water comes out of this faucet. You know, like gross water, smelly and dirty. Visualize this water going down the drain and getting washed away. Set the intent for this water to be all the negativity that does not belong to you. Imagine that this water is about everything you need to release, other people, negative experiences, negative feelings, stress, karma, etc… Keep this visualization for a few minutes and you will realize how much it will relieve you, it is an amazing exercise that I personally practice.

And from there, we can work out on the nightmare itself (above exercise is not intended to get rid of the nightmare without solving it, but to get rid of stress :)