Fear

Recently I've been having a string of crazy-ass lucid encounters with devilish creatures.

some examples:

• I WILD into the dreamworld off my bed
• I open my dream eyes
• suddenly paranoia sweeps over me--theres something in the room with me
• In my peripheral vision I see a black figure walking towards me (about 3 feet away)
• I will it out of existence and move into a bright happy place (a field of grass)

another:

• I'm in a lucid dream and walk into an office building
• After exploring the place for awhile I walk into an old messy bathroom (the atmosphere slowly gets "darker")
• I walk around looking in the old dirty stalls and see a faucet and mirror in one of the larger handicap ones
• walking up to it I begin to look at my reflection--Its perfectly lifelike
• out of nowhere a massive burst of paranoia sweeps over my mind. I suddenly notice a little girl with blood spattered all over her blouse in the mirror standing behind me
  Her cold stare appears dead and hateful
• I turn around as quickly as possible. Shes gone, I warp myself into another dreamscene

Then there was the last one that I found most unsettling:

• I'm lucid and decide to try opening an imaginary door in front of me to see where it leads
• I reach into the air in front of me and grasp the handle, pulling the door open
• I feel no paranoia this time as the door continues to open
• Theres suddenly the most terrifying creature that I've ever seen in my life staring at me, blood is trickling out of its mouth
• I make its head implode on itself and close the door as its body begins to fall to the ground

As you can see, whats happening is not that I'm "losing control" of the dream, its more of the dream randomly spitting out terrifying imagery for me to deal with

I usually wouldn't care (because I'm often warned by intense paranoia before something terrible happens), but this last experience had no precursor, I was just suddenly and surprisingly standing face to face with my worst nightmare (though I did kill it instantly, I still have that twisted image stuck in my head)


I've tried to solve the problem myself (of having random freaky things happen in my dreams) by watching no horrors, never thinking about scary stuff, etc... but I just can't seem to make scary things stop happening
Does anyone have any suggestions or things that they've used to overcome this problem?


PS. this isn't a huge problem at all, its just a little thing I'm trying to solve to make my LDs more lifelike and enjoyable

Wow, that kinda stuff would wake me up in a cold sweat. The only thing i could think of thats causing this stuff would be influence from stuff you do during the day, like watching a scary movie or something.

Try dealing with your real life demons. Is there anything about your life that you should be dealing with but have been pushing off. Your subconscious mind will persistantly remind you of the things you don't want to deal with until you deal with it.

Just a guess.

I know this is a lot easier to say than do, but try to enjoy the moment. Haven't you ever seen a scary movie and really enjoyed it? Of course it's easy to point out you're only enjoying a truly terrifying movie because you're safe, but that's not entirely true.

Some of the best dreams I have ever had have been nightmares. Next time you see a monster, try to admire it instead. Remember that your mind created it, that's pretty impressive, it knows exactly what you're the most afraid of. Try to feel the rush, don't worry about dying, you know it's just a dream and even if it wasn't, we're all going to die eventually anyway. :)

Dream monsters can SMELL fear. (Or is that dogs? I can never remember.) Either way, don't be afraid of them. Try to admire it instead of fearing it. Don't run away, don't just kill them and don't just make them disappear either. You have to deal with it, so face the monster.

Humor might help too. Look the monster in the eye and make a comment about how he's not exactly the prettiest thing you've ever seen. :)

But in the end, I guess what I'm saying is: "Make the best of it." If you can't get rid of your nightmares, at least try to enjoy them.

Trust me, nightmares can be absolutely awesome if you like horror. :)

Instead of destroying or fleeing from your nightmare next time, ask it who it really is and what it wants, and use your dream control to get it to answer truthfully. EWLD says that this can provide far better results than fleeing or attacking the nightmare, if you hadn't read it before, here's the chapter on nightmares.

http://www.lucidity.com/EWLD10.html