I’ve never really tried deliberately to lucid dream, but for quite a while now I have a distressing problem where I realize I’m in a dream while dreaming, my dreams are usually pretty chaotic, nightmarish and fast moving.

When things escalate to being particularly unpleasant I will focus all my concentration on the thing I want to change, I used to have some small influence over events if I concentrated hard, but I’ve lost so much influence by now that nothing works whatever I try, I focus on the thing, I stretch out my arm or touch the thing, I repeat out loud (in the dream) what I want to happen, (examples: an escape route, for something attacking me to go away, ceiling to stop lowering etc etc) and nothing changes, and I suffer for what feels like hours and hours through whatever is thrown at me, and it just gets more horrific and chaotic as it advances.

At this point I get desperate and try to wake myself up. Even though nothing ever wakes, I try everything. I scream at the top of my lungs to myself to wake up, or I call out to someone to wake me up. If I find my partner he’s asleep in the dream and I shake him and scream at him to no avail. I text or email myself. I muster everything in my being to try to jolt myself awake, hit myself, throw myself into something, nothing works. A new development is within the dream the ‘real life’ version of me starts to wake up but keeps helplessly falling back to sleep depsite efforts to stay out. I wake up eventually of course, feeling exasperated and a bit traumatised... it’s happening all the time now, I’m so tired of it. It’d taking a toll on me mentally. I tried out a lucid dreaming tutorial and it didn’t do anything for me. If there’s any insight or advice I’d be so so thankful!