Held Prisoner in my Own Mind!

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11-23-2009, 03:21 AM
J.D.

Held Prisoner in my Own Mind!

This is copy n pasted straight from my dream journal. I'd just like to hear some people's thoughts on what the hell it was all about, or how I could avoid/beat this kind of thing in future. Ever happen to anyone else? Here's the entry...

Quote:

22.11.2009
Held Prisoner in my Own Mind (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

So far in my lucidity-chasing, all my dreams have been quite light-hearted affairs, and I haven't had a nightmare in about four years. This one was different. I was actually trapped in a scary situation, with the full knowledge that I was dreaming, wanting to wake up.

A bit of background. I'm hungover to the max today. Last night's binge would account for the tiredness and massive REM rebound I got as soon as I went to sleep in the evening. I was also maybe not in the most positive frame of mind, which could have been a factor in all this.

I was sitting on a farm talking to my brothers. I saw smoke rising in the distance. After a while I could see flames. The fire was getting very high, and soon after, fire engines pulled up near me. I noticed one of the firefighters was my friend's dad, who I havne't seen for years. My mum pulled up, driving a minivan, packed with people I knew. She said everybody was going to visit somebody who lived near where the inferno was, to make sure she was ok. I got in too, and we drove off. The car was packed out with people, and it was a bit of a tight squeeze, but there were enough seats.

Instead of driving towards the fire, which was up the hill a bit, we drove downhill, and ended up at a beach. My mum tried to drive up a sand dune unsuccessfully. Next thing I knew, I was out of the car, standing in the middle of the beach. The sun was setting, and the waves were quite high, but very far away. There was a vast expanse of flat beach between me and the water. I turned round to walk up the beach, but out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. A single wave, about 2 feet high was sweeping silently (and very quickly) up the beach towards me. I tried to outrun it, but it got me. It soaked my phone in my pocket. I recognised the dream sign, and became lucid. I marvelled at how real my cold and wet clothes felt now that the water had receeded. I then had the desire to get off the beach. There was something eerie about standing alone in the middle of such an enormous wide open space in semi-darkness. I'm not agoraphobic in real life, but something wasn't quite right here. I tried to run up to the top of the beach, but I realised I was running but not actually getting anywhere. This was a bit scary, and I just wanted to wake up.

Then I had a false awakening. I was in my bed, and actually thought I had woken up. I was like, "Thank god that's over!" I looked down at my left hand and saw that it was glowing a purply-pink colour. "Shit," I thought. I got out of bed and wandered around to see where I was. I was in what looked like a big hotel room. Except there were no doors or windows, and the walls and floor were made of wood. There wasn't much light, but I could see black square panels around the room. I got a bit closer, and saw that they were holographic pictures. As in, if you moved, the picture changed. What was on them was pictures of my friends' heads. Their heads weren't quite solid, they were grey on a black background. As I moved across the room, they appeared to be shouting something at me quite desperately. I really didn't like this scenario at all. I went to look in a mirror out of curiosity. I was wearing my dressing gown in the mirror, and my hair was a lot shorter than it is now.

I then had another false awakening. I looked at my hand, which had an indeterminate number of fingers. I was getting a bit worried now. I got out of bed and walked out into the room. There was some sort of gameshow going on in the middle. I didn't want to take part, but the host forced me to.

Then I had ANOTHER false awakening. I was really relieved because I thought it was for real this time. I looked at my hand, and it didn't even look like a hand. This time, when I realised I was still dreaming, the music from The Twilight Zone played.

Listen to this shit...

This freaked me right out, and I started shouting things like "Wake up!" and just screaming in general. No such luck.

Yet another FA. This time I was in my own room, trapped in my bed and unable to move. I could hear my mum outside the door. I yelled, "Wake me up! Get in here and wake me up!" She never did come in, and the Twilight Zone music played again.

Another one. I was back in the windowless hotel room. There were two guys doing some measuring. I said, "Fuck this, I'm not playing the game any more," and decided to kill myself. Handily enough, a noose was hanging from the celing. I stood on a desk and put it round my neck. Yep, it's getting a bit heavy! As soon as I jumped off, the scene went into reverse. Everything literally rewound around me, and there was even a "rewinding" indicator at the bottom of my view.

I had, maybe 15 false awakenings, and each time my hand was different. The Twilight Zone music played every time I looked at it. One time it was fat, then the hand of an old man, flashing psychadelically, missing altogether... the list goes on. One time it looked normal until I realised I was actually missing a finger. There was a stump. I nearly shat myself at the music that time. I became increasingly desperate, and even tried holding my breath, in case that meant I was actually holding my breath in real life, and I might wake myself up by nearly suffocating. It didn't work.

Eventually, of course, I did wake up, only 2 or 3 hours after I went to bed. I very reluctantly checked my hand and it was fine. I ran straight out of my room and downstairs. I'm totally exhausted now, and maybe a bit afraid to go back to sleep! Also, still enormously hung over and it's killing me. I really hope I never have a repeat of that episode. Like being stuck in the matrix and not being able to find a fucking phone!
11-23-2009, 05:06 AM
Rosewhip137

I actually got quite scared reading that, I had the feeling something awful would happen any minute. I really like the analogy at the end with the matrix, I feel like that sometimes, that I can only wake up if i find a certain object or go to a certain place.
11-23-2009, 06:11 AM
Serith

I guess you were just too deeply asleep to wake yourself up. That's rare for lucid dreams, but I've had it happen before. In any case, it's usually quite rare, so it's unlikely to happen again soon.

In any case, even though you probably will be able to wake yourself up from future nightmares, running from them that way isn't going to do you any good. The best thing to do is to confront it. In that kind of situation where the nightmare doesn't have any kind of focal point (for example, a monster), you'll probably have to get a focal point to appear. If you ask it to appear, it probably will, most likely as some sort of horrible creature.

Then, you just have to use the tactics like those found here to overcome the nightmare. Basically, remind yourself that you cannot be harmed, and tell the nightmare that you own it and that it is powerless against you. Then you just have to approach it, and not treat it as a threat. That means don't act scared and don't attack. This will most likely be successful in ending the negativity of the nightmare, and it's even quite likely to transform the lucid dream from extremely negative to extremely positive.
11-23-2009, 01:39 PM
J.D.

That sounds sensible, thanks! I tried to calm myself down a bit at the time, but it was kind of like feeling negative was part of the dream and I couldn't change my outlook really. I guess I must have just been too deeply asleep after lack of proper sleep the night before... I'm off drink for a good while anyway! (Or at least that much lol)
Thanks for the link btw, good stuff.
11-23-2009, 02:05 PM
J.D.

I read the part quoting Freud with interest:

Quote:

According to Freud, nightmares were the result of masochistic wish-fulfillment. The basis of this curious notion was Freud's unshakable conviction that every dream represented the fulfillment of a wish. "I do not know why the dream should not be as varied as thought during the waking state..." [3] wrote Freud, tongue-in-cheek. For his own part, he continued, "I should have nothing against it...There is only a trifling obstacle in the way of this more convenient conception of the dream; it does not happen to reflect reality." If for Freud, every dream was nothing but the fulfillment of a wish, the same thing must be true for nightmares: the victims of nightmares must secretly wish to be humiliated, tortured or persecuted.

Not so much "wish fulfilment" in my case, but it did seem a bit like my mind was creating anxiety and fear just to see how much I could take. Take the Twilight Zone music for example, it just came along right at the time when I assumed there would be some sort of scariness- i.e. when I realised I was still trapped.

Thinking back, something about it that was scary was the knowledge that I was completely alone in the dream-world. I knew the DC's weren't real (when they were even there) and it was the feeling of being totally alone in this universe. I never usually get that in dreams, don't know why it should start becoming a problem!