A little advice for a suffering friend

[thefirstcobra]

Hello, and thankyou for reading this, it means one of three things; 1: you are sadistic and want to find out what the suffering is, 2: you genuinely hope you can help or 3: you are bored and wondering what the newbie has posted and why. I am a new member, mainly because a good friend of mine is having some trouble with lucid dreams. Essentially, he knows that I have some good answers to questions, and recently he came to me with this one; "Do you know how to stop lucid dreaming?" and I couldn't help. He has tried books, the internet and all. He is a natural Lucid Dreamer, however he became facinated with Lucid Dreaming, and now he only has lucid dreams. For most people this would not be a problem I assume, however he doesn't feel like he is getting proper sleep, and he is panicing because it is (Sort of) haunting him. Basicly he wants a break, and he can't stop, he naturally goes into lucid dreaming and his exploits into making his dreams better have made it much much worse. I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't important, as he has never really come to anybody for help before. I think the process may be a little like some of the techniques for starting lucid dreaming reversed, but I have no proof. Any ideas?

[LucidDreamGod]

I used to have the same problem, so I understand your friend, all I did was I used to try to jump off like large cliffs and sky scrapers or scare myself as much as I could, it might have been slightly unpleasant but it only happened for like 1 secound and I'd be awake. The mind works for survival, so if it thinks your in danger parts of the brain wake up as fast as they can. But seriously is he having troubles with nightmares or something? lucid dreaming is not killing his sleep, knowing your dreaming is no diffrent then knowing and being aware that your in school in a dream, just knowing something will not make your sleep useless. My guess is he thinks he is loosing sleep so through the placebo effect he actually feels tired. If it's boring for him if anything he has more time to live out his life.

[thefirstcobra]

He doesn't have any trouble waking up, he brings two fingers together to wake himself up. What I mean is, he wants to stop lucid dreaming. At the moment he dreams only lucidly. I am sorry if I didn't explain myself better

[LucidDreamGod]

Oh I think that was my mistake actually, you said nothing about waking up, I think I remembered my dislikeness of lucid dreaming and how I personaly solved the problem, I understand the answer would be quite hard to find, as no one would ever really consider stoping something like that, I red an article once though from a dreamviews post, about a guy who could not have normal dreams, I'll go look for it and edit it in. EDIT: here it is http://www.jrmooneyham.com/playg.html I do not agree with this guy (I've changed my idea's since the lucids I talked about), but your friend must. You can either read the whole thing (very interesting) or skip ahead to the "My bargain for escape" section. I also have a friend who mastered lucid dreamign and I believe at a time willfully stopped them from happening, I'll ask him about it if I see him online.

[thefirstcobra]

Thanks, that really is very helpful. Much obliged

[Robot_Butler]

I wonder if he should talk to some other natural lucid dreamers, and find out that he is not alone. There's no real reason to stop them. Try sending a PM to Luminous. She's a natural, too. Maybe she could give some advice.

[Akane]

Lucid dreams don't interfere with sleep but at times when my insomnia is bad I can have lots of vivid mostly lucid dreams that I remember and still be extremely tired the next day. It's not the dreams causing it but the fact I'm not getting the proper sleep in the first place. My mind seems to just keep going and going with dream after dream but I don't ever feel like I've truly slept. That is an entirely different problem. The excessive dreams aren't the cause but only possibly a result of interrupted sleep. If he feels more like that and is really tired the next day then he might want to look into things that help him sleep better instead of blaming it on and trying to get rid of the dreams. When I'm getting proper sleep the dreams may still be there but it doesn't feel like they drag on without letting me truly rest and I'm not tired the next day.

[Enigmik]

Lucky! Well, maybe it is like SP. The more you fight it the worse it gets? Maybe he thinks about it too much before going to bed? Hard to say as I'm not a natural but I am jealous.

[Amethyst Star]

What does your friend do when he becomes lucid? At this point, I would assume that he would just be upset and think something like "here we go again." Has he tried just doing nothing. It's one thing to be aware that you're dreaming, but quite another when you take control. Perhaps when he enters the dream, he can try being a passive observer, watching what is going on, but trying not to influence it. I don't know if it would help, but he could try just sitting down and taking several deep breaths just to try and relax. Just look around the dream scene and let things happen. Personally, things in my dreams are always changing, so something's bound to happen. He could try to clear his head of all desires except to just stay calm and see what happens, focusing on the scenery, on how he feels. Perhaps he could try giving control over to other dream characters and let them decide what to do next...