Thread: Hello - Need A Little Advice

Originally Posted by SavageHurricane

Hello

Thank you for letting me join your forum.

I learned about lucid dreaming from an online friend about three or four years ago. She told me about lucid dreaming because I have suffered from recurring nightmares from childhood through to adulthood. (I am now 34 and still have nightmares.)

I tried very hard to have lucid dreams and used the technique of telling yourself to look at your hand (Carl Jeung’s technique I think?), anyway one time I managed to tell myself to look at my hand in my dream and immediately I saw my hand and woke up… very disappointing, lol… the next time I was successful and had (what I think was) a fully fledged lucid dream where I realized I was dreaming and was able to do anything I wanted so went for a “fly”… without going into too much (boring) detail I found it to be the most the exhilarating experience I can remember. My thought processes were comical as I realized certain precautions were unnecessary (like making sure I wouldn’t lock myself out of the house while out flying) since I was in fact dreaming and in total control of the dream.

Anyway, that was about three years ago now and I never had another successful lucid dream after that in spite of trying extremely hard… perhaps I tried too hard… and I lost interest in keeping up the effort.

Recently I had a nightmare and it replayed over and over again, the same scene repeating itself as I tried to clamber over a wall and escape… because the scene kept repeating itself I became aware I was dreaming and almost began to feel exhilarated again but… weirdly enough… I couldn’t think of what I would like to do in the dream (instead of running away from murderers) and so I woke up. I was pleased to get myself out of the nightmare and also pleased to have stumbled across becoming aware of dreaming.

The reason I signed up in this forum is that last night I had an unpleasant experience. I had one nightmare after another in quick succession… lots of them… I became aware I was dreaming but had no control. I screamed to myself to wake up but started to suffer sleep paralysis…I couldn’t wake up and my eyes wouldn’t open even though I was telling myself to open them and I remained stuck in the frightening dream.

I even told myself to look at my hand hoping that old technique might help wake me up but the person in my dream held my hand down so I couldn’t look at it… again, I had no control even though I knew I was dreaming. I decided I would try to mentally visualize my hand but I couldn’t manage it and the nightmare continued.

I had many nightmares last night and through several of them I seemed to manage to become aware of the fact I was dreaming without gaining proper control. In the last nightmare I managed to force myself to throw myself out of the window head first through the glass… smashing it and breaking through so I could escape the nightmare and attempt to “fly” and turn the dream from a nightmare into a pleasant lucid dream. After smashing through the glass I felt I could feel the glass shards all over me… not painful but worrying and I became fearful it may be dangerous to lucid dream in such a violent and desperate way in case I was actually sleepwalking instead of dreaming.

So… anyway… my hope is that others may have experienced something similar to me or that someone may know why this is happening or that it is a normal process. It was very frightening to be in the middle of a nightmare and become aware I am dreaming and still have no control over it. I woke up feeling very disturbed.

Any advice would be so very much appreciated. Many apologies for such a long first post.

Thanks
SH
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When I was very little I had bad nightmares as well and went to sleep singing a silly song "It's only a dream" until in my dream I still had the song stuck in my head with the words to remind me that this was in fact a dream. Ever since then I have had lucid dreams. I would try making a song with the words "It's only a dream" and record your voice singing it over and over. Maybe you could then burn a cd with you repeating that over and over to listen to while you sleep. Then in your dream you may hear yourself saying that it's a dream and you'll start lucid dreaming. Just an idea?!

Hi there, SavageHurricane Welcome to the forum.

I'm sorry you've been experiencing these recurring nightmares - they can be quite terrifying. You should have a look through the Nightmare tutorial first and see if there's any info you can take from that.

Also, dream incubation may be worth a shot as well. This means you will think about, or "incubate", a dream scenario that is different than what you usually experience. Do this while laying bed, before falling asleep. Think about the nightmare you have and how it usually progresses. When it gets to the point that it gets scary, make up an alternate course of events or ending. Really concentrate on your surroundings and how good this change of events is making you feel.

You can also think about a good way to wake yourself up. Some people close their eyes in their dream, which causes them to wake up. Sometimes when I'm having a scary dream and I'm lucid but have no control, I have to close my eyes in the dream, then open them again, concentrating on wrenching open my real eyes. It's different for everyone, unfortunately, so there's no real cookbook recipe to follow.

I hope you find some helpful answers on the forum. Please feel free to post any other questions or experiences you may have.

Good luck! And sweet dreams!

Thank you for those tips. I would definitely like to hone the skill of being able to wake up at will when the nightmares get the better of me.