Lucid dreaming, depression, and motivation.

Hey guys, been a good while since I last logged in on here. As some may know, when it comes to lucid dreaming, I tend to have a rise and fall with my practices. I'll build up recall, start recalling lots of dreams in vivid detail, and quickly reach the point where I'm having a lucid through simple DILDing. Then, usually around this point, I just stop doing it, for no reason I can fathom other than loss of motivation. It almost always happens without fail. This latest time, however, went about differently.
You see, my life's undergone some big changes this past year, and I ended up losing somebody very important to me, on account of something I did. This affected me badly both mentally and physically. I began showing some signs of depression, and grew extremely unhappy, and fell perpetually in that state for most of the year to this point. I'm sort of coming out of it now, but it's not easy. Needless to say, this affected both my sleep and my dreams. I began to sleep a lot more than I used to do, going to bed at the same general time, but sleeping in later and later, and even taking naps, which I never used to be able to do. My recall, conversely, has been dead flat for all this time. Every couple of weeks or so I'd have a dream that was very vivid or impacted me emotionally, and those, I would remember in pretty good detail. But aside from those, I've had next to no recall, and I've been out of practice for a long time.
I've realized lately that maybe I can get at this again and, if I don't lose my motivation again like I typically do, I could use lucid dreaming to overcome these issues, become happier. So that's my goal, and it's what I'll attempt to do. I've thought up some ways to keep myself motivated, and I do hope those stick, but if anybody has any suggestions, that would be excellent too. I know this probably isn't the first thread of its kind, but I felt like sharing it, and this section seemed best fit for it. The last time I was practicing this, I had managed two lucids in one week, which is the most I've ever gotten before. I was even showing better dream control within those lucids.
I don't know if mood or things like depression can affect lucid practices in any way, or if they can affect dreams themselves, but if anybody has any insight into that, it'd be interesting to hear about. Anyways, this is how I've been, and here's hoping to plenty lucids to come. Thanks for reading. ^^

Oh man, depression sucks. Seriously, though, if you have depression number 1 thing you should do is see your GP, seriously. Beyond that, spending time with people you care about and exercising help. With regard to LDing, I dunno. I kind of suck at it, but I can tell you that when I had depression I had lots of insomnia too. Personally, I would try just not being hard on yourself and focusing on getting through the depression rather than trying to push yourself into LDing. But yeah, going to a GP is super important if you think you're depressed.

Thanks for the reply. Honestly, I've found ways to help me come out of it. Haven't been to my GP, but really, the whole matter was about me learning to accept and move on, and I'm making better strides towards it. More than anything, all of this spurred my motivation in LDing again, but rather than use it to simply be happier, I can focus on doing that in waking life where it matters most. I've gotten my motivation back, and thanks to it, I've been recalling a dream every night since that post, and that's a great thing to me. I'm doing a lot better happiness wise than I was a few months ago too. ^^ But once again, anyways, thank you for the reply.

Thats good to hear Dragonworkz. I feel you, since I suffer from chronic genetical depression. All of my psychotherapists and psychiatrists were unable to help me and some of them even said that since my depression is genetic it will probably stay like this for the rest of my life. So since medical attention is unable to help me, I have to deal with it somehow. And it's totally true, depression is like a stone that crushes your motivation without mercy...
That being said, I've been training Lucid dreaming for roughly 5 years now and in that time I had 2-3 very short Lucid dreams, which were unintenional (I didn't become lucid through RC or anything, I was just Lucid from the beginning).
Therefore I'm still unable to induce Lucid dreams. So yeah, Depression definitely has an effect on LDing, even though indirectly as it crushes your motivation (depending on the kind of depression of course).
Funny thing is I also thought that LDing could help me to bring my motivation back, but since I cant motivate myself enough to begin with it kinda traps me in one place and I cant move forward.
Sorry that I cant be very helpful to you, but I felt that I had to post this somewhere.

For me, the period of time when I was depressed last year was actually when I had the most success lucid dreaming. During that time, I didn't want to be awake. I slept more than usual, including taking naps, which I hadn't been doing previously. Lucid dreaming was one of the few things I still enjoyed doing then, so I was more motivated to do it.

Hi @Dragonworkz
..umm well iv suffered with long term depression.....at least 11/12 years now and if im honest with you, its only really ever effected the intensity of my dreams! If i'm having a harder time of late then my dreams tend to be far far more intense, but i don't know whether depression will affect your ability to LD (In my opinion).
With me personally, the biggest thing i have found to help with LD is simply just having a good "Dream Recall" and bringing your dreaming to the forefront of your consciousness...this is something thats also allowed me to LD twice within just over a week, whereas before that it was literally 2 years since my last one and even more years before my first!!
I think you just need to try and keep a dream journel, so your consciousness has a chance to recognise the fact that ur dream world is a genuine part of your existance (Becaus science says that your brain just can't tell the differance), i believe when you can do this you genuinly have more chance of LD, of course this is simply my experience and i completely understand that the next person may well be completely differant :-)

Hope this helped in some small way