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Is it a common occurrence to awaken as a result of being overpowered by an emotion? I remember as a child being terrified beyond belief during nightmares, but not waking up. However, last night I had a lucid dream where I was unexpectedly reunited with my dead childhood dog and thus far best friend. I was overwhelmed by surprise and joy, then a few licks on my face and I was awake. Bummer.
Yes, that's very common, especially for those who have not experienced many lucid dreams. Very often, the simple excitement of realizing that you are dreaming that first time is enough to wake you up. With practice, you should be able to learn to control those emotions, and stabilize the dream.
When talking about dream stability, lucid dreams and non-lucid dreams are completely different cases. In a non-lucid dream, all sorts of things can happen, such as extreme fear, disorientation, and excitement, without waking us up, though they could rip a lucid dream apart. Lucid dreams seem to be inherently less stable, so it takes less to throw them off balance and result in waking us up. Especiallly when first learning to controll lucid dreams, it is quite easy to become too excited and wake yourself up. Withh practice, you'll be able to stabilize your dream. This may initially entail supressing the emotion which lead to destabilization, but the end goal is to maintain focus on keeping the dream stable and keeping it lucid.
Sometimes i'll be having a non lucid dream, and wake up laughing or crying, or feeling some strong emotion.
I have had emotional dreams that made me wake up. It's probably because higher functioning brain areas overlap pleasure zones in the brain. Stimulating one can stimulate the other.