Thread: Lucid Dreams and Past Traumatic Events

So this may end up being a long post... depends how much I can ramble right now

So... I have had my first panic attack while tripping shrooms like 8 months ago, and then another one in November, and have had anxiety for as long as I can remember, even though it just got diagnosed recently. Now the panic disorder was brought on by drugs, but I was at a much larger weakness for it because I already had anxiety disorder. I am now on the search to figure out what happened as a kid that triggered this anxiety disorder, as I have no idea what it is.

The event that got me so very interested in dreams was an intense dream I had in November which triggered my 2nd panic attack. Now I often have very high anxiety dreams but this actually triggered a full blown panic attack and was very memorable. Now unfortunately at the time I rarely paid any attention whatsoever to dreams, so when this dream came around it was not easy for me to remember details. I don't remember the whole dream but the parts I do remember are very vivid. A nice summary of why I had a panic attack in the dream is:

Cold War 2. Russians nuke us. I see nuke explode. I think I am dead for 10 seconds and then realize I am awake. Bam. Panic attack ><

Now my therapist has told me that it is possible to become any object in a dream with training in order to feel the emotions associated with it and map it out to parts in your conscious life.

What I want to be able to do is to have a lucid dream and bring out objects that invoke strong emotions and be able to utilize the most out of a dream to help out with psychotherapy. I would like to, in the course of my lucid dreaming journey, is to be able to learn what happened to me that caused anxiety. Growing up I have always had really really intense dreams that aren't always scary but are just very emotion filled. Because of this I know it is possible for me to have these emotional dreams without having panic attacks.

So I am sure I left a lot out, I think a lot about this stuff, but I would love to hear your opinions and suggestions on my goal.

With my lucid dreams I am going to do a lot more than explore this part of my life. I plan on doing what everyone does, having trippy experiences, meeting new people, exploring your subconscious, doing whatever you want to do in your life, but in the safety and ease of a dream. I am going to take my lucid dreams slowly and not going to tackle the anxiety thing until I have lucid dreams under some control.

I haven't had a lucid yet but I have only been trying for a bit. Since when I am writing this it is saturday this is going to be the night I try the hardest. I have been eating a fair amount of peanut butter, have tons of resources and techniques available, though I unrelatedly pulled an all nighter last night, and I have a very weird brain , I really feel like I will be able to have LDs easily.

So if you want to talk to me more about this or ask any questions to clarify go ahead. I guess it ended up being a long post! thanks for reading <3 <3

~~Rimnii


EDIT: I am currently beginning a trial of zoloft. I have been on 25mg for like a week, so far not too much of an effect but maybe when I really do start to notice a difference it will be harder to trigger emotions in dreams. Any experience with zoloft and LDs?