Okay, so my “condition” that I am referring to seems to have some relationship with what this website refers to as “lucid dreaming”. However, I want no one to be confused; I have only come to the website in an attempt to understand if this “condition” can be harmful. I want to try and learn about it so that I may begin to deal with it better. As of now the “condition” is hard for me to deal with, and frankly scares the shit out of me.

Well I will get right to it then. For many years now I have had this “condition”. Basically, I would akin it to lucid dreaming; however, it is much more traumatic than some of the descriptions of other peoples experiences here on the site. I liken it to being trapped inside a coffin or a jail that I cannot escape. Here is what I know about the “condition”:

A) It ONLY happens when I oversleep. For instance, if I take a nap in the middle of the day, or if I try to sleep in after a full nights rest.

B) I am completely cognizant to the fact that I am dreaming. However, I have never made any attempts to control the dream. I believe this is because in the dream I am not thinking logically. For instance, I can never remember where I am sleeping in real life wherever I believe I am asleep is usually more related with the dream sequence that it is with reality.

C) As of now I do not know how to wake myself up. Although, I do have a method that seems to work it is hard for me to tell if I am waking myself or if I simply wake up after a certain period of time. What I attempt to do is to relax, and wait a moment before ‘mentally thrusting myself awake’ for lack of a better description. If I would have to characterize this action I would say it is as if I am trying to shake myself back into reality. However, this usually results in what I would call a dream within a dream. This can happen several times, and is an extremely traumatic event. This is the part I am most concerned with as it sometimes causes panic attacks and results in a dream like inebriation. Things become hazy and I often find myself asking god to wake me or cursing him out of anger for the predicament I am in. I cannot stress enough how absolutely frightening, and stressful this can sometimes make me feel.

D) It is easy for me to trick myself into believing I have woken myself in my dream. This usually causes me to start dreaming again; however, I always eventually realize that I am still asleep. In other words if it happens once during a nap then I am screwed. This is the dream within a dream that I am referring to.

E) My dreams become hazy, and it becomes extremely difficult to see or “hear” or experience any of the “normal” dream senses. Also, if there are other people in my dream when I realize I am dreaming they always seem to try to convince me that I am actually awake. This can be quite disorientating and is the dream like inebriating I was referring to earlier.
The reason I have only recently become so concerned is because normally I can deal with the “condition” in fact, as I stated earlier, I have been dealing with it for quite some time now. However, just today it happened and it was unlike any time before. This may be because it has not accrued in so long. I make an effort at avoiding naps or oversleeping, obviously. However, I must have become complacent as I completely forgot about it and took a nap today.

Today was… well.. the worse experience I have had with it thus far. I realized I was dreaming, and was almost immediately flooded with paralyzing anxiety. When I tried to relax and begin the process of waking myself it was, well, hard to say the least. I must have tried a dozen times and to no avail. Waves of anxiety washed over me in my dream. I was in tears in my dream begging god to wake me; which is a fact I am none too proud to admit. As I said before I am hardly logical during the moment which is odd because in real life I am an engineering student who is: contemplative, intelligent, and I would say a very logical person in general; a bit of a stiff really.

However, I have not always been like that. In my 26 years I have experienced, and been diagnosed with severe depression, anxiety and OCD. I have demonized those characteristics in myself, and this is probably why I believe they may be related to my “condition”, and am mentioning them here. However, some of you who may have more experience with this stuff might have a better idea of what is going on. Please feel free to email me directly if you’re a professional otherwise please reply, and know that I will be checking this thread periodically throughout today and days to come. Thank you for your time and your attention.