Thread: Newbie needing help...I want to stop dreaming

Listen to seeker! That's called an FA!

Cemert, I'd recommend getting into the habit of doing reality checks. Especially in your case, doing a series of them. Try to get into the habit of doing them immediately when you wake up, without even looking at your surroundings, to immediately catch if you are in a dream or not before anything creepy is able to happen. If you try to use a "dream power" and it works, you are dreaming, and there's no reason to get frightened. If it doesn't, try a few other ones. Then, take in your surroundings.

Thanks Shift. Just wondering, I completely enjoy my LDs when I am in an unfamiliar surrounding, but just recently I had a LD and then a FA in my bedroom surrounded by people sitting in chairs. I was so frightened. My husband wasnt in bed yet, and was playing PS3. During this FA I called to him and could see him in the background waving to me to wake up, like I was sleepwalking or something, because I found myself crouched down on my nightstand. Eventually the people faded away and my husband was only there. He was convincing me I was dreaming....then I woke up for real and I was lying in bed, not crouched on the nightstand. What is that called? Lately in my LDs I have a FA or maybe 2 and ask the person in my FA to help wake me up? Is that just my way of finding reality? I would love to learn how not to be fearful of that. My FAs always consist of waking up in my house and strange people being here. Does that have a significant meaning. I mean, what if I started talking to the 20 or so people I FA'd to in my dream. I do not know I could handle that. I am Okay in other surroundings besides my home....is that normal for newbies to FAs to be fearful in their homes? And is it significant to dream about people you have never met?

hi cemert,

I am not a very experienced LDer, but I have had similar "bad" experiences like you some time ago. I can really relate to the "afraid to fall asleep" feeling. This makes you stressed when you go to sleep and subconciously makes you more open to "bad" dreams. I have no magic bullet advise for you, I can only tell you my own story and hope it helps.

edit: as the story got too long you can skip to the last 1-2 paragraphs for the actual advise.

As a kid (~5-14 yrs old) I was really troubled in my sleep. I had constant LDs and many false awakenings, in some of which I was in my own house and I could see ghost-like people etc. I don't have to tell you I was very disturbed by this. I developed a great fear of the dark, and of sleeping, and many times I would stay awake with lights on all night, and then pretend that I am sleeping when my parents woke up to go to work. It was a horrible time (but I got to read tons of books ). Later, as I moved out of children fantasies and more in the real world, the dreams moved further apart but many times I would have false awakenings and be terrified to sleep for weeks. By the way, I have found that sleeping with a light on drastically reduces dreams for me (maybe its psychological).

Mind that I was never religious or believed in the supernatural. I just had a great fear of the "dream-feeling" that now I wait for so eagerly

So, later I started getting drunk every night or so, or just stay up all night and sleep in the day (college is perfect for that), and I had half-consiously blocked most of my dreams out. After some years of few/no dreams, I had a completely terrifying false awakening (that I don't want to share with you - not to give you any subcons. bad thoughts) and I thought to search about it on the internet. Surely enough I ended up here.

Since then, I have managed to conquer my fear of sleeping, the dark, and now actually expect LDs as an opportunity for some fun. False awakenings happen some times, but they are just an annoying sideffect if you manage to handle them.

So my advise is: don't feel helpless or that something strange is happening to you. Some people dream less or more vividly, and you can train yourself to respond to dreams as you want. Reality checks when you wake up will help you. Learning about dreaming will help you. Reading stories of people here will help you. Experimenting with LDs, actually wanting to dream instead of being afraid of it will be the most important step towards getting rid of the "bad" dreams. Try to do the things that you are afraid of but consciously knowing that you are doing them and the fear of the unknown will become less. (I feel I am sounding like a zen master or something now, its not intentional ). So, instead of trying not to dream, try to dream on your own terms. Learn how to fly away of strange situations, learn how to recognize dreams. After all false awakenings are LDs and you can just teleport to another place if you are able enough with the dream techniques.

Really, I think you took the best first step by asking in this forum. Good luck and welcome...

Hello.

i wouldnt wanna stop dreaming for it.. i think thats impossible

Ya those bad experiences can happen from time to time. Even though I thought I had really good control over my dreams, a long time back I was having false awakenings that kept leading to other nightmares where they would be extremely vivid and I would have consciousness throughout the dream but I could not control the main part of the dream. Like people were trying to kill me and I could alter random parts of the dream and get aids to help me fight back and stuff but I couldn't escape the "negative" outcome. Sometimes I'd wake up in a false awakening like this one time when I was trying to escape this "lucid nightmare" of people trying to kill me (couldn't understand why I couldn't control it) I forced myself to wake up before getting shot by this corrupt police and ended up in another FA of someone trying to choke me to death... I kept telling myself to try to leave so I indirectly told my mind that if I kill the man I'll wake up and that's what I ended up doing lol... I actually woke up randomly in paralysis and was seeing imagery of flying demons around me even though I felt awake and was like terrorized for a while... When I finally got up I had actual tears running down my face because my mind believed it was so real and thought I was actually dying.

Long post but basically wanted to say that those bad experiences can happen from time to time to alot of us but you get past them.

Sometimes they're from your mind just randomly trailing to negative thoughts, bad control of the dream due to lack of good practice and knowledge, stress and fear or other external factors, and sometimes they just seem to happen. You also should try to go into the dreams with a positive outlook despite the fact that you may be expecting a bad dream. Expectation can lead to more of them and make sure you relax yourself and try to realize it's just a dream and nobody is really out to get you if you are lucid.

With more experience and if you stick around I'm sure you can figure out how to better avoid those, cope with them, or control them for sure. New techniques and strategies help you escape most of these bad situations or change them around to your advantage.