Dream smoking - Should I be worried?

[Caboose128]

So here's my story. I just quit smoking last March, so that ends up being 9 months ago or so. The problem is, despite my best efforts I still find myself smoking in my dreams. I'll always wake up worried that I broke my huge 9 month long attempt at quitting as I smoked steadily for 7 years straight, never missing a day. When I wake up more I see that it was just a dream, but still I worry. I realize I wouldn't be getting any nicotine because I'm not physically smoking anything, but still I don't know because my mind might not be able to tell the difference. I've even told some reoccurring DC's that it's become a problem. I don't see how I can stop this unless I develop perfect dream control. This doesn't seem fair as it looks like there's no real way to completely quit unless I give up sleeping all together or find a way to perfect my dream control. Both seem impossible! While on the topic of dream interpretation and stuff, I've also been meaning to ask about some of my more recent dreams. I keep having dreams of family members coming and visiting me while asleep. These are people who are supposed to be far away, and they always disappear by morning. How is this possible? I am somewhat of a hermit, so if I'm anywhere but my room or my house I can be pretty sure that I'm dreaming. However, to my surprise I keep having these dreams. I keep having this huge anxiety pervading through a lot of my dreams. I'll be in my room trying to sleep and I'll be afraid of some hostile presence trying to break in. Now I realize this sounds very childish, almost like the boogeyman, but it's very scary sometimes! Especially since most times it's one of my family members, and like I said they will be gone by the time I wake up. I also keep having recurring dreams of being sent to the hospital, kind of like playing off the fear of going to the doctor most people have as a child. Any possible reasoning behind this? Usually it has something to do with my dreaming, as this always happens when I'm asleep, but usually it makes me feel like I've done something wrong or my health is in question because of my smoking/dreaming. What should I do? Any ideas or thoughts? I'm really at a loss here!

[m4ra]

I don't think you should worry about smoking in dreams. As you've probably noticed, dreams feel very real when you're having them. So waking up, it is natural to feel bad as if you broke your long streak. The important thing is, you didn't break it! I usually felt relief when I realized I was only smoking in a dream, it showed me how bad I would feel if I did break the streak. This is your mind showing you something you are trying to repress. Repressing it further will likely only make it stronger. On a more general note, I've come to notice that trying to get and retain perfect control, be it in waking life or in dreams, is almost always doomed to fail. You can use pure force of will and discipline to start new habits and do things you want to start doing but you have to also be reasonable. Change is a long process. If it was really that easy and people could just develop new habits in a drop of a hat, no one would have problems. You said you smoked for 7 years. That's a long time. Think of it like taking the same route through a forest everyday for that long. You'd start making a path, and in 7 years it would be a very well-worn one. Once you stopped taking that same route, it'd take years before it would start to vanish. Your mind's the same way. I don't think you should be beating yourself up over having a dream where you smoked. It's a dream. As the months turn into years, you'll have smoking dreams less and less until they disappear. That's what happened to me. As for your dreams in which you're seeing family members, you said you live a fairly isolated existence. There's a part of you that might want to reach out, after all people are social animals and want to see other people. Dreaming about family is a pretty common experience. Don't know if that helped, these are my two cents.

[figurefly]

Hello Caboose! I can relate to all of this. You don't need dream control nor any kind of lucidity to get rid of smoking dreams and the other unpleasant ones. It's pretty simple, something you can even fix right now using auto-suggestions. Before going to bed say something close to this: "I won't dream of ... / I will dream of ..." and repeat. But firstly -and the most importantly- you must have belief in your method. To build belief, read more into auto-suggestions and hypnosis and learn the science behind them. You might even master dream incubation practicing auto-suggestions. And set the scene and theme in detail before going to bed. Really hope this helps you!

[Lichi]

Dreams tend to show situations that finished from happening a while ago in real life. For example many of us dream about school after years of having finished it, still we might not be aware that it is a dream and we would act as if it was real. The same happen with scenarios just as cities, streets, people you don't see anymore and that you meet in your dreams. Also with dead people, that can appear in your dreams only. It is not something you should worry about it is normal. In the same way im thinking about smoking, you quitted like 9 months ago, but your dream mind is not sufficiently aware or lucid to actually say "no, i don't do this anymore, this isn't real" so you keep having these dreams. My recommendation is not to worry about it and maybe practice more ADA or Self Awareness, so maybe in a situation like that you can become lucid with a succesful DILD technique.

[Eonnn]

Not sure if this relates to what your saying but I went through a period once where I felt a lot of fear and anxiety in my dreams. Even once lucid, I would get paranoid in my dreams that aliens were going to come abduct me or that a demon would try to kill me. Usually this never happened - noticed I said usually... - so I told my psychiatrist about it and she said it was hypnagogic paranoia/anxiety basically meaning it only happens in your dreams. It eventually went away with time.

[ThreeCat]

I would actually use this as a dream sign. The next time you are smoking, you are definitely dreaming. Recognize that and then do not worry about it anymore. You can either smoke in the dream or not. Ultimately it will have no effect on your health. Tossing them in the dream probably a powerful deterrent to picking them up in waking life again.

[Caboose128]

Thank you all for the responses! I'm just now waking up from another one. I don't know how I'll be able to go through the actual nicotine withdrawal if I keep finding myself smoking every time I try and close my eyes! The hard part is for some reason I'm always with old friends and I end up blaming them for smoking in the dream, when it's not really their fault. I'm always relieved when I wake up to find that it was only a dream though. Who knows, maybe this will make the journey toward health and recovery even easier in a spiritual sense using this type of dream logic.