Hi! I'm Anne. I'm 27 years old and I'm an accidental lucid dreamer. I've always had a wild imagination, which helped me get through my traumatic childhood. I suffer from PTSD, nightmares, and insomnia. (Along with bipolar disorder)

Over the last year, I came to realize during waking hours that I'd had odd dreams in which I knew I was dreaming. No control, or very little, usually just an awareness that passed after a minute.

I read about lucid dreaming and realized that that was what was happening, mildly at least. After a little bit of reading and practice, I'm starting to lucid dream almost every night and gaining more control each time. Sometimes I can change my nightmares into regular dreams, which is helped along by my Prazosin, a medication used for PTSD-related nightmares

I've been trying to LD and improve control for a few days and already I've had more LDs than I could recount. Maybe 20? At the same time that's balanced out by trauma and nightmares and a general struggle in my soul...it seems inevitable that I couldn't have one without the other. I'm ok with it; I see a poetic justice.

I used to be so terrified to sleep. I hated it. I had terrible insomnia, trying to avoid it. Once I didn't sleep for 2 days in an effort to avoid the nightmares. Now I'm excited to sleep. It's amazing. Practicing control over my fear in my dreams is crossing over into controlling it in waking life. I'm calmer. LD has changed my life. If it wasn't for communities such as this, I'd never have known how to develop this skill.