Stress and lucid dreaming

I am a technical consultant and occasionally get put on stressful projects. I've been on one for 3 or 4 weeks. In that time my dream recall stopped altogether. From prior experience I didnt worry about this...just told myself it would resume when the stress level went down. It was kinda nice to take a break and I had so much at work to occupy my mind I didnt need the extra pleasures of LD. Not that I wouldn't prefer to be lucid every night, but I was too busy to focus on it and just couldnt make anything happen. I finally got a handle on the project, and then yesterday the deadline was slipped 3 weeks, so stress disappeared. I slept great, and had 2 lucid dreams last night. So, if you get stressed, or are stressed, dont worry about LDs. They will return when you can relax again.

The down side for me is. I get stressed about my first lucid dream :P
For some reason i find it scary

It isnt scary at all...if you go for DILD. I was very concerned too at first, not knowing what to expect. But here's my experience.....we all dream every night...we just dont remember it so it isnt anything new in that sense. In the dream state you are not as fearful as in real life and you are sort of " oh well, that guy could kill me" but it doesnt register as super alarming...only sort of worrisome. When you become lucid it is awesome....an alternate reality you experience real-time.

I've noticed the same thing; the first thing to go for me is dream recall, and possibly LDs as well (though paradoxically, I think I've had a couple of cases where stress apparently resulted in more LDs, perhaps because I slept more lightly than usual?).

I believe it has a lot to do with my priorities at the given time. Even when I'm asleep my mind seems to have a pretty good idea of what's most important at the moment. As a result, I'll have good dream recall and LDs if that's at the front of my mind, but on the occasional day when something is coming up that leaves me little time for LDs and dream recall, that particular night will usually be much quieter. (I can even take advantage of this: Just deciding before going to sleep that I want to take a little break from dream journaling is often enough to “shut off” dream recall for a night.) But all I have to do to get back into it once things settle down is to reestablish it in my mind as a high-priority item.