Thread: When false awake becomes a nightmare

Hi Everyone,

I'm a chronic lucid dreamer (without actually wanting to be!) who has had a good solid week of 2-3 wake induced lucid dreams a night. I've developed a problem, however. After each lucid dream terminates, I experience many false wake-ups. I'm aware that these wake-ups are false immediately, as I feel paralysed and have trouble opening my eyes properly (although my surrounding look exactly like my bedroom). Sometimes as many as ten can happen and it's quite distressing. I scream at myself to wake up properly and have tried several techniques, such as throwing myself off the bed in my dream to 'shock' myself to a state of wakefulness with limited success.

When I do wake up, I feel disorientated and confused and often have headaches. I'm also exhausted from mental exertion. Does this happen to anyone else? Does anyone have a better technique for snapping out of the conscious dream state - or a way to deal with it without anxiety?

Please post your experiences as I'm interested to know if this is a common phenomena.

Ciao!
Jane.

Originally posted by lucidjane
When I do wake up, I feel disorientated and confused and often have headaches. I'm also exhausted from mental exertion. Does this happen to anyone else? Does anyone have a better technique for snapping out of the conscious dream state - or a way to deal with it without anxiety?

I often feel alot of mental exhaustion after a long episode of lucids. Sometimes when I nap during the day I'm in and out of lucidity for a few hours...and when I do finally decide to wake up for real, sometimes I can barely get out of bed.

And welcome to DV

This is very common. This "false awakening paralysis" has only happened to me twice. The first time I "awoke" paralyzed, I was alarmed by it and my anxiety manifest itself into "person" who appeared at my bedside enflicting me with a constricting feeling in my chest. The second time I told myself to be calm while I could not move. The thing that kept me relaxed was knowing that it IS a common experience and any negativity assosciated with it is created by my own anxiety. I understood that it would run it's course and be over with in a matter of seconds. I did not feel any painful constriction, and just sort of looked at my surroundings noting that it looked a lot like the actual surroundings with an unusual aspect to it. It has not happened since.

I wish I had more false awakenings. I think it is kind of neat to wake up and think....
'This is the second time I woke up in a row'

I am a chronical LDreamer, too.
Yes, I know this feeling. It may be really frightening. I can see the room around me and I know I am sleeping in a bed. I cannot move. And I see some dream creatures around me, they seem to be evil. Then I think to mysellf that I do not want this dream to last more so I should get awake as fast as possible. But it isn't simple. Have tried putting my finger deep into my head (it is so hard to move my dream body when my real body is paralised!) to cause my brain understand that something illogical is happening. This trick helped for some years. But once I did it again and then I had such a nightmare that I was reallllly happy to finally wake up. I haven't tried this method since that because I am afraid to induce this nightmare again.
So I can suggest to try not to move but get deeper into the dream state and try to mentally change environment to something pleasant. And then you can try to slowly dissolve your dream with thinking about your everyday's problems: work etc. If phisycal efforts do not help maybe mental could. At least it helped me a lot. Good luck!