4 ms·

From my limited experience, once you are aware you are in a nightmare it relieves you somewhat, and then you try to reverse/ward off the 'bad things' in various

by gone35 12y ago

From my limited experience, once you are aware you are in a nightmare it relieves you somewhat, and then you try to reverse/ward off the 'bad things' in various ways or wake yourself up, depending on how much control/lucidity you got. So it's still stressful but not nearly as much as a full-blown nightmare with no insight whatsoever.

jerf 12y ago
I learned to lucidly dream when I was 8 or 10 or so. I was having a recurring dream where I was being chased by a Big Bad Thing, something crocodile-esque that wanted to eat me. Of course I ran away, but in general you can't deliberately run away from something in a dream; the act of remembering that you are running away from an X itself keeps X around. I finally was able to "carry in" the knowledge that this must be my recurring dream, so after running away for a bit, I turned around and jumped in the crocodile's mouth. I swear, a subconscious can be surprised at your dream actions. Perhaps someday we'll understand the neuroscience enough to explain that. But I'd swear there was a two to three second massive huh? what now? from my subconscious. Once again, I was faced with the crocodile, almost by some sort of default, and once again, I jumped in. After that, the dream just moved on. I haven't had many nightmares since. Non-zero, but the incidence rate went way down. If one is having troubles with "simple" nightmares, which is to say, bad dreams that are just bad for no apparent reason, as opposed to bad dreams which represent real traumas or real problems, lucid dreaming is certainly one good solution. Based on my personal experience I'd be a great deal less sanguine about lucid dreaming being able to deal with personal traumas... dreams are not logical, and if you're having a nightmare based on real things the "dream" may metaphorically laugh off your attempts to change it (i.e., if you lost your buddy because you had forgotten to pack more bullets in a war situation, you can dream that you brought more but the "enemy" may well just soak them up and keep coming), but I guess it can't hurt to try... based on reading around and even in comments on this thread, I've observed it's even more difficult than usual to generalize from personal experience to general "rules" of dreaming because it's probably pretty different for us all.
- Ygg2 12y ago
  I have had lucid dreams, but I'm not able to control it. I remember one dream about being cornered by a bully in a dream, a person that bullied me in real life, but for some reason when he punched me it didn't correspond to what I remembered from reality so I figured I was in a dream. Which meant, guilt free revenge :D i.e. punching him in his face. I soon awoke. Also the whole thing about not being able to change scenario seems off, I do remember literally saying, you know what dream would be better? The other one. And then switching to that dream. If you really are in a dream and have nightmares about being in a war zone, just transforming into Iron Man and going ballistic would be the most prudent thing to imagine. After all your dreams, won't kill you and you can change yourself if not the scenario.
  - jerf 12y ago
    "Also the whole thing about not being able to change scenario seems off, I do remember literally saying, you know what dream would be better? The other one. And then switching to that dream." I've done that too. But dreams that are just random and dreams that are based on real experiences and "issues" you may have are different, in my personal experience. You may transform into Iron Man and just go ballistic, but in my personal experience, what starts out fun and empowering will likely break down; Iron Man's weapons stop working quite as well, then they just plain stop working, then despite the fact he can fly away it turns out he's always also flying right back to the problem... dreams are not a perfectly-accurate 3D VR simulation of the world, they are heavily influenced by your internal mental and emotional state, deeply symbolic (and I don't mean in the "this tree is your mother" way, I mean, you are not truly visually processing data, you are not navigating in a true 3D space, you are navigating through the highly-processed symbolic representation of the space that is the end result of all your visual processing, which is a very different space than the true 3D world, despite its correspondences) and in fact often quite lacking in true spatial structure, and if you're having problems, you won't be able to escape them by flying away in a dream anymore than you can solve your issues by just "stopping thinking about them"... for indeed, they are the exact same thing, so if the latter sounds foolish, so should the former. I think a lot of people, lacking control of their dreams, end up reversing cause and effect. With real issues and not just "night terrors" (random nightmares), you're having a bad dream because you have mental or emotional issues... you don't have mental/emotional issues because you have bad dreams. It's a fun metaphor in movies like Inception, but it's not how it actually works... as usual, the reality is a great deal more prosaic, and less full of easy answers.

by gone35 12y ago

jerf 12y ago

I learned to lucidly dream when I was 8 or 10 or so. I was having a recurring dream where I was being chased by a Big Bad Thing, something crocodile-esque that wanted to eat me. Of course I ran away, but in general you can't deliberately run away from something in a dream; the act of remembering that you are running away from an X itself keeps X around. I finally was able to "carry in" the knowledge that this must be my recurring dream, so after running away for a bit, I turned around and jumped in the crocodile's mouth. I swear, a subconscious can be surprised at your dream actions. Perhaps someday we'll understand the neuroscience enough to explain that. But I'd swear there was a two to three second massive huh? what now? from my subconscious. Once again, I was faced with the crocodile, almost by some sort of default, and once again, I jumped in. After that, the dream just moved on. I haven't had many nightmares since. Non-zero, but the incidence rate went way down. If one is having troubles with "simple" nightmares, which is to say, bad dreams that are just bad for no apparent reason, as opposed to bad dreams which represent real traumas or real problems, lucid dreaming is certainly one good solution. Based on my personal experience I'd be a great deal less sanguine about lucid dreaming being able to deal with personal traumas... dreams are not logical, and if you're having a nightmare based on real things the "dream" may metaphorically laugh off your attempts to change it (i.e., if you lost your buddy because you had forgotten to pack more bullets in a war situation, you can dream that you brought more but the "enemy" may well just soak them up and keep coming), but I guess it can't hurt to try... based on reading around and even in comments on this thread, I've observed it's even more difficult than usual to generalize from personal experience to general "rules" of dreaming because it's probably pretty different for us all.

Ygg2 12y ago
I have had lucid dreams, but I'm not able to control it. I remember one dream about being cornered by a bully in a dream, a person that bullied me in real life, but for some reason when he punched me it didn't correspond to what I remembered from reality so I figured I was in a dream. Which meant, guilt free revenge :D i.e. punching him in his face. I soon awoke. Also the whole thing about not being able to change scenario seems off, I do remember literally saying, you know what dream would be better? The other one. And then switching to that dream. If you really are in a dream and have nightmares about being in a war zone, just transforming into Iron Man and going ballistic would be the most prudent thing to imagine. After all your dreams, won't kill you and you can change yourself if not the scenario.
- jerf 12y ago
  "Also the whole thing about not being able to change scenario seems off, I do remember literally saying, you know what dream would be better? The other one. And then switching to that dream." I've done that too. But dreams that are just random and dreams that are based on real experiences and "issues" you may have are different, in my personal experience. You may transform into Iron Man and just go ballistic, but in my personal experience, what starts out fun and empowering will likely break down; Iron Man's weapons stop working quite as well, then they just plain stop working, then despite the fact he can fly away it turns out he's always also flying right back to the problem... dreams are not a perfectly-accurate 3D VR simulation of the world, they are heavily influenced by your internal mental and emotional state, deeply symbolic (and I don't mean in the "this tree is your mother" way, I mean, you are not truly visually processing data, you are not navigating in a true 3D space, you are navigating through the highly-processed symbolic representation of the space that is the end result of all your visual processing, which is a very different space than the true 3D world, despite its correspondences) and in fact often quite lacking in true spatial structure, and if you're having problems, you won't be able to escape them by flying away in a dream anymore than you can solve your issues by just "stopping thinking about them"... for indeed, they are the exact same thing, so if the latter sounds foolish, so should the former. I think a lot of people, lacking control of their dreams, end up reversing cause and effect. With real issues and not just "night terrors" (random nightmares), you're having a bad dream because you have mental or emotional issues... you don't have mental/emotional issues because you have bad dreams. It's a fun metaphor in movies like Inception, but it's not how it actually works... as usual, the reality is a great deal more prosaic, and less full of easy answers.