Thread: I'm gonna start a dream journal, but i'm scared of lucid dreaming

Most lucid dreams aren't scary. I don't know where you even got the idea that they were scary. It may have come from the idea that sleep paralysis is scary, and most people associate that with lucid dreaming.

Becoming scared is the least of your worries in lucid dreaming, or rather the least of your focuses. You are going to be spending more time with awareness techniques than thinking about emotions and being frightened within dreams.

I can't convince you to start, but I can tell you it's worth it. It's truly life changing.

Much of lucid dreaming is expectation. Expect it to happen, and it will happen. Vice versa.

Why would you expect lucid dreams to be scary? Are you prone to nightmares normally?

The great thing about lucid dreaming is that even if things turn creepy, since you already know you're dreaming, you can remind yourself that you're actually perfectly safe. Normal nightmares don't give you that luxury! Also, with lucidity you can develop dream control, which will let you avoid or transform any disturbing scenario that might arise. Dreams are a product of your own mind, so they respond very promptly to the mental impulses you supply. If something threatens you in a way you don't like, turn the tables by responding with friendliness, or if you can't muster a friendly attitude, at least find something else to distract your attention. In contrast to waking life, dream characters and events don't tend to last very long once you stop paying attention to them! And if worse comes to worse, you can leave the scene entirely... just levitate right up out of there. Or as a last resort, you can always decide to wake up. So lucidity offers many more options to deal with scary situations than non-lucid dreams, where you don't have so much freedom of agency!

If you're hesitant to attempt lucidity because you think you'll have nightmares, this suggests that you don't trust your own mind. In this case, you might begin meditating in waking life before attempting lucid dreaming in earnest. Meditation will give you insights into how your mind works and can assist you in learning how to direct your attention and focus in ways that can be very helpful for dream practice.

Thanks so much for both comments verre and sinisterdezz and yes i am prone to nightmares and friends at school said you can see demons and other things… but besides that I will defenitely give it a try and i hope for the best!

Originally Posted by Jimbo2001

Thanks so much for both comments verre and sinisterdezz and yes i am prone to nightmares and friends at school said you can see demons and other things… but besides that I will defenitely give it a try and i hope for the best!

It angers me when people associate sleep paralysis with lucid dreaming, and some how make the connection that you will see demons.

Sleep paralysis, if you are unlucky/lucky enough to have the medical condition, can be inherently bad. Our natural response is to assume something bad is going to happen.

It doesn't have to be bad at all!

/rant

As far as being prone to nightmares, that seems like a blessing.

Take that and turn it into an advantage. Nightmares are good for lucid dreaming, to an extent.

Sleep Paralysis has nothing to do with Lucid Dreaming.

Sleep Paralysis is the state when you become conscious before your body is awake, and this can happen to anyone at any time, although it seems more common for some people.

Lucid Dreaming is the state when you realize that you are dreaming while you are still in the dream.
This skill can be developed by developing a questioning attitude to your surroundings in general, like using your senses more than usual, performing reality checks (with the right mindset, not just blindly performing them but actually doing them with a purpose), and in many other ways.

A lot of beginners seem eager to go for Wake-Induced Lucid Dreaming (WILD) right away, where you try to fall asleep and become lucid without ever losing consciousness, and personally I am a bit skeptical about that.
It might work for some people, but to me it seems kind of like trying to learn calculus before mastering geometry and trigonometry first.
WILD requires a fine balance between being aware and letting yourself fall asleep, and this is probably more complex than most other techniques.

I always recommend beginners to start with more simple and less "mysterious" techniques, like Mnemonic-Induced Lucid Dreaming (MILD) for example.
That technique is very easy to understand - it simply means that you firmly decide for yourself to recognize the dreamstate then next time you are dreaming, so you basically use prospective memory to "prepare" yourself for the dreamstate - and it also tends to have a high success rate.
It also seems to work really great if you combine it with Wake-Back-To-Bed (WBTB).

But if you can fall asleep easily, then it's not exactly "wrong" to try WILD at once - but it is a fairly different and unusual way to enter a dream, so you need to know what you're doing.

Wow I never thought about encountering my nightmares like that before, this could really help me thank you and Yuusha I think im gonna try the MILD technique thanks

Originally Posted by Jimbo2001

Wow I never thought about encountering my nightmares like that before, this could really help me thank you and Yuusha I think im gonna try the MILD technique thanks

No problem.
Yes I can recommend the MILD technique, however you should choose the one that feels most natural for you.
But MILD is fairly simple and a good start for most novice lucid dreamers.

Here is a chart on the number of lucid dreams that the professional lucid dreamer Stephen LaBerge had over a three-year period.
As you can see, he managed to increase his general LD frequency with about 400% in three years, from an average of about 4 lucid dreams in the beginning until he had lucid dreams almost every day after three years - also, notice how the bars A, B and C stand out;
that's because he needed to have lucid dreams those months for his dissertation study, so he was extra motivated those months, and this indicates how important it is to feel motivated.
I highly recommend that technique, and then you can of course use other techniques at the same time for even better effects.

ok thanks ill check it out

There are tons of other methods that don't induce SP. As for the Dream itself, what ever happens you have complete controll of.

Originally Posted by Yuusha

Sleep Paralysis has nothing to do with Lucid Dreaming.

Sleep Paralysis is the state when you become conscious before your body is awake, and this can happen to anyone at any time, although it seems more common for some people.

Lucid Dreaming is the state when you realize that you are dreaming while you are still in the dream.
This skill can be developed by developing a questioning attitude to your surroundings in general, like using your senses more than usual, performing reality checks (with the right mindset, not just blindly performing them but actually doing them with a purpose), and in many other ways.

A lot of beginners seem eager to go for Wake-Induced Lucid Dreaming (WILD) right away, where you try to fall asleep and become lucid without ever losing consciousness, and personally I am a bit skeptical about that.
It might work for some people, but to me it seems kind of like trying to learn calculus before mastering geometry and trigonometry first.
WILD requires a fine balance between being aware and letting yourself fall asleep, and this is probably more complex than most other techniques.

I always recommend beginners to start with more simple and less "mysterious" techniques, like Mnemonic-Induced Lucid Dreaming (MILD) for example.
That technique is very easy to understand - it simply means that you firmly decide for yourself to recognize the dreamstate then next time you are dreaming, so you basically use prospective memory to "prepare" yourself for the dreamstate - and it also tends to have a high success rate.
It also seems to work really great if you combine it with Wake-Back-To-Bed (WBTB).

But if you can fall asleep easily, then it's not exactly "wrong" to try WILD at once - but it is a fairly different and unusual way to enter a dream, so you need to know what you're doing.

Sleep paralysis is actually a sleeping disorder.

REM atonia is the correct name for this.

Originally Posted by SinisterDezz

Sleep paralysis is actually a sleeping disorder.

REM atonia is the correct name for this.

That's right, that's what I meant.
My point was that a lot of people seem to talk about normal REM atonia when they use the term Sleep Paralysis, especially novice lucid dreamers.

But yeah, REM atonia it is.

1- Lucid Dreaming is awesome. I naturally experience LDing. You will know you are dreaming, hence you know is not real.
2- Sleep paralysis is awesome. Body asleep, mind awake. Simple formula. Nothing else. You can archive spiritual experiences from here... but nothing negative
3- Demons do not exist. Just a word for religion to control people through fear. Is all energy in the end
4- Visualizing a white bubble around you is enough to fill you up with positive energy. You raise your energetic vibes and so, bad energy -so called demons- can't affect you


Sooooooooooooooo....

First, you really need to relax and stay completely positive if you want good dreams, lucid or not. Dreams are based on our thoughts and if our thoughts are negative our dreams will be too.
That being said, if you have nightmares then lucid dreaming is your best way to overcome them. To successfully end your nightmare and almost assuredly never encounter it again, you should show the nightmare figure or dream itself love. This may sound weird but it works. You are putting out positive energy, so you will get positive energy back. The best part is (like someone else pointed out) you will know that it's a dream so you don't have to be scared.
I'll give you an example because this happened last night. I had a non-lucid dream about being attacked. Just as I lunged to stab my attacker I stopped and jumped back and said, "Wait, I'm dreaming," and became lucid. The dream character attacking me actually did "wait." We stared at each other for a while during which time I did a RC and confirmed it was a dream. Then I said, "This is a dream, which means you are a part of me, so why are you doing this?" The DC then started to ramble a bit. The point is, I stopped the nightmare and showed my nightmare figure (the attacker) love (by not attacking him and by saying he is a part of me) and that was it. No more nightmare!

Until now all the LDs I've had were very enjoyable, some were more fun than others but this was mainly because of a lack of vividness and not what actually happened in them.
Talking about scary stuff in LDs.. there really isn't that much scary stuff that happens in LDs, unsettling at most. Let me give you an example of the scariest experience I've had within an LD as of now: After I became lucid in my sister's bedroom I ran downstairs and entered the toilet to use it as a teleportation-device. (I forgot where I wanted to go.) When I noticed I couldn't lock the door I got a weird eerie feeling that I was very exposed to danger, I used my own force to keep the door closed. I started hearing demonic voices in the hall just outside the toilet and actually got a bit scared at this point that my wonderfull dream would turn into a living nightmare. I decided to sing my favorite song at the time as loud as I could and after some time the music actually began playing on it's own overpowering the demons I heared. It gave me enough courage to exit the toilet and enjoy the rest of the dream.

Mostly of my lucid dream were in apocalyptic world, but I tell you: things only get worse if YOU THINK IT WILL. Example: I had a lucid dream and my family was dead in my front and "ghosts" begun to come out of them to seek me, I stopped serious and thought "this is just a dream", at the same time it all vanished and I was alone in a white space.

You have to believe in yourself and then things will go smoothly ( at least for me it goes ).