Hi, fellow dreamers... My name is Meidosemme, I'm 26, French, and somewhat new to the world of lucid dreaming. Dream Views is the first non-newagey, non-commercial, no-nonsense website on the topic I've encountered… Congrats to its creators and administrators!

My main interest in lucid dreaming is therapeutic: as far as I can remember, my nights have been plagued by gory and sometimes devastating nightmares. I have been very interested in dream lucidity and control since childhood and had many spontaneous experiences, but I've never learnt how to have such dreams at will.

I have good dream recall skills. I've just started a dream journal, and I can name a few recurrences that I can use as dream signs. I guess that filling my journal with dream recollections and comments will keep me busy for some time before trying to induce lucid states. It's a difficult exercise as it is: I woke up this morning with three full dreams and fragments of others swarming in my head, grabbed my journal but forgot one dream as I was jotting the two others down… It was very chaotic anyway, barely translatable into words. Do you have any advice on how to deal with those ones?

That said, I expect to have a hard time becoming a lucid dreamer, because I actually rarely dream about my everyday life and most induction techniques count on this. Deep fears, ghosts of the past and long-term issues occupy most of my dreamspace. I have also difficulties staying awake: I suffer from hypersomnia, attention deficit, often fall asleep while meditating, relaxing or even reading, and hardly ever reach high levels of lucidity in dreams.

Before getting too pessimistic, I'd like to read stories from people who began studying LD in similar circumstances. Thanks in advance for any kind of help!