Thread: Nightmare related questions

First:



And second, part of the answer to your last question is in the SP video... there's a part of the brain called the Amygdala (say it with me... Aaaaa Mig Da Laaaaa... love saying that!) that's responsible for terror and primal aggression, which is sometimes strongly activated in REM, and especially in SP. It just simply injects a chemical into your brain that makes you scared shitless... terror on command! Once you understand this, you see fear is really nothing to be afraid of, capiche?

The second part of the answer to your last question is this....

Learn to lucid dream. After you've gotten fairly good at it, then you'll be ready to go in and face those nightmare creatures. Apparently the thing to do with them is to ask them why they're in your dream or if they have a message for you. Supposedly this will cause the nightmare creature to become less menacing and it should transform into something more human (possibly totally human) and it should become an ally.

Keep in mind, everything in a dream is some part of your psyche... a nightmare is usually just something we're afraid to face. Running from it or fighting it makes it stronger and scarier and more aggressive... just like running form a predator or a bully. Facing it and asking it questions will bring our its humanity. So I've heard anyway, from a lot of sources.

Thank you for the informative reply.

My nightmares are difficult to analyse, let alone fight, during sleep, as they are usually only slightly weird dreams that suddenly take a horrifying turn. A perfect example of my nightmares is one dream where some of my teeth suddenly fell off (this is very common for me and I'm quite sure why I have those dreams). It was only slightly upsetting until someone in the dream tried to help me with the teeth. Like dentists sometimes do, she pressed each (remaining) tooth and asked me to say when it hurts. One of the teeth apparently triggered extreme fear instead of pain, and I was aware of that, and I thought it'd be fine since I could just shout when the fear would kick in. It did, and I tried to scream but I couldn't. The fear became unbearable, and I woke up trying to scream "fear! terror, fear!". In other words, I couldn't run from it if I tried, so that's not the problem. I've learned to tell off more typical kinds of nightmares since childhood and I no longer wake up to any of them.

Anyhow, I'm trying to learn to iniate lucid dreams at will. I've mainly succeeded when going to bed completely exhausted and falling asleep almost instantly. I've never had nightmares when lucid dreaming even though I can control my dreams to a very, very limited extent (and even then the fact that I actually succeed surprises me so much that I nearly wake up).

Sounds like you're at about the same point I am. I've now induced 3 LDs since joining 2 months ago, but no control or powers yet.

From what I understand though, as you go you'll get better at all of it. Hoping anyway!!