Thread: The "Oh, I do that all the time," response.

So, when I get to know people, we somehow always end up talking about weird things (my one friend says she's psychic, another can, apparently, see the future in his dreams. I don't know if I believe them or not. I'm on the fence. This isn't the point of this post) and I always bring up Lucid Dreaming as something I "do sometimes, but am struggling to get into because of my sleep patterns."

I couple of times now, I've told someone about it, and after they ask what it is and I explain, they say things like, "Oh! That happened to me when I was little." Fair dues, I get it. I did it a few times when I was little, too.

But when I told psychic friend (and a couple of others before her), what I got was, "Oh, I do that all the time. It's easy."

After a while? This gets annoying. I

Anyone else received responses that make you feel really fed up about how hard you have to try to lucid dream?

(I hope this is the right place for this thread. I thought this was the most appropriate forum, but... )

This is only my opinion but in my experience there are very very few people who lucid dream all the time with no practice and it just happens for. Most people who know what lucid dreaming is or even don't know the term till you explain it to them have either given me responses similar to some you got. "Yes I think I had that experience once or twice when I was little." or have said "Yes I'm very interested and I'm trying to make it happen more often." I HAVE had friends or acquaintences that have said "Oh yeah I do it all the time its easy." but they are usually the ones in my circle of friends that are prone to lying, bull sh**ing, and telling awesome stories of things you know never really happened to them. They will latch onto anything to try and look special or out of the ordinary. Someone who has been LDing for a while and is familiar with the terms and such will acknowledge that there is some difficulty and frustration involved when it comes to this. They won't just say "Oh yeah I do that all the time. Every night." Don't let it bother you. Some people just always have to try to feed their own insecurities or one-up people around them to make themselves seem more interesting.

Originally Posted by Malika

Don't let it bother you. Some people just always have to try to feed their own insecurities or one-up people around them to make themselves seem more interesting.

Yeahh... I know. It just bugs me a little I know a lot of people who one-up people around them. It gets me down rather a lot XD

I have gotten that a lot from people who don't even know the definition of a lucid dream, it's somewhat annoying.

There are people who are naturals at lucid dreaming, who have never heard of it before and think that everyone does it. However, it sounds like your friend has "special snowflake syndrome."

Most people I've mentioned this to have experienced it at some point in their lives, others have researched it as well, but none of them are particularly skilled. A few of my friends had never heard of lucid dreams before.

I've yet to meet a person who's proficient at this, though.

Yeah i have heard one or two friends said that, but when i think about it, they couldn't have been THAT lucid. I know someone says semi-lucid is not a thing. But i have myself been semilucid and then another time been superlucid which is (for me) something complete else. I tend to use the word "like supernatural" when superlucid. Then i just think that they never been at that state.
If they had, i KNOW they would tell it all the time. If they come 5 years after you got to know them and says "umm yeah i have done that", sorry that couldnt been that amazing since you havent said anything before now.

I told my friend about that, thinking I could be all knowledgable and coach her in how to remember her dreams and do RC's and get lucid and all that. I wanted to be the mentor, and have somebody to help and dream with all the time.

So it was kind of like that at first. Now I hardly ever have LDs and she gets them three times every week and has her own dream world and perfect dream control. I know I shouldn't be jealous, but I am. I really have to learn how to appreciate that and work on my own dreaming.

The only thing I hate about a response like that is the lack of knowledge as to how special LDing really is.

My feeling is that most people dont understand the difference between Lucid Dreaming and a vivid dream. Lucid dreaming is a tough skill to master and takes a lot of time and dedication . I discovered this by lapsing on my dream diary duties as it was taking quite a while each day to type four or five dreams up in detail. Comsequently I havent had a LD in six months!

u havent got a lucid dream in six months cuz u failed to do all the necessary requirements to achieve it?

Originally Posted by Reinhardt

u havent got a lucid dream in six months cuz u failed to do all the necessary requirements to achieve it?

Quite correct Reinhardt. It seems I can only have LDs if I Read books about it, reality check all day, listen to affirmation recordings before going to sleep, keep a dream diary and take suppliments like B6 or do a WBTB with Galantamine. In this way with maximum effort I can achieve a short LD an average of once every two weeks. It is such a major effort that about six months ago I decided to go away and work on my basic level of awareness in everyday life as I believe that natural LDers have a greater sense of being 'in the moment' than I do. No more instances of Ld for me but some life-changing ideas from reading books by Eckhart Tolle, Steve Taylor and Jon Kabat-Zinn.

yes... I've heard this a lot as well... very annoying

My brother was noticeably upset when he began talking to me about LDing and I told him of my successes. It got worse when I explained how little I do to actually get them. =/

I think in the cases where these people actually do have some innate talent for LDing, it's important they realize how hard it is for most to accomplish. They need to know bragging about how "good" they are is only going to hurt someone's morale and make it even harder for him or her to LD. Unfortunately, a lot the people who "do it all the time" aren't in the know. Therefore, it's up to the LDing community at large to help spread awareness to these kinds of people. This means continuing the conversation from that point of awkwardness and learning them fools something new.

I just met a girl at a party Sat night and when I started talking about LDing, she said "yea, I do that all the time". Lol. She said she's lucid in virtually ALL OF HER DREAMS. Lately her life has been sucking (got dumped, kicked out of apt etc) and all she wants to do is sleep and dream because that's where she feels the most free.

Integral said: "My feeling is that most people dont understand the difference between Lucid Dreaming and a vivid dream."

I agree. I once brought up LDs in front of my sister in law and she said yea, she has lucid dreams all the time. When I asked her more deeply, she said she meant vivid dreams, not dreams where she is aware and in control. But with this girl at the party, I really grilled her and she wasn't just talking about having vivid dreams. I asked her how she does it and she said she's been doing it since she was little. She remember going to sleep a child and repeating something over and over again like a mantra before going to bed and soon she was lucid all the time. (I didn't hear what the mantra was! I think it was something like "I'll be dreaming soon, I'll be dreaming soon".

Integral also mentioned Eckhart Tolle. ET's technique of focusing on the "inner body" is great for WILDing and astral projection in particular. (I think AP is basically just LDing but it really feels like your inner body is leaving the physical body).

When I got into lucid dreaming I told two friends of mine and they said the same thing "yea I do that all the time!" and I felt kinda gutted but later when I talked to them about it in a lot more detail they were like well yea they only actualy happen every now and then and im sure there not very lucid at all. They might nt even be lucid and just have a bit of controll or something. I thnk they just say these things and dont realy know what there talking about. Sure they might have a bit of controll here and there but they probably dont know very much about the subject and just think that they are lucid.

Ask them to describe their lucid dreams. Some people are naturals, but I bet if you listened to the events in the dream it would become clear that many people who say this are barely lucid at all. I had a friend who tried to do it, but when I heard about his dreams it was clear they weren't very vivid and he was still very caught up in the plot, clouded by hazy dream logic. Splitting hairs, maybe, but I think there is a big difference between those type of lucid dreams and the ones where you can actually stop, look around you, and say to yourself "what do I want to do."

And if they are naturals, try and be happy for them instead of trying to make lucid dreaming into something that makes you feel special

Not really! I have one friend who said she gets them a lot, but that's it. One of my friends said that she's had a few, then a few more, thanks to me . Well, I don't find it that hard (I'm KINDA lucky), so it's N/A for me.

I often get the opposite... usually I get asked if I'm a natural, which makes me mad, because I had to work for years to achive lucidity! Don't even think its that related to the OP lol

When people give that response, I assume they don't really understand what lucid dreaming is. I feel like it is their way of dismissing it.

Well, try this on for size, Go to a cow and say, I saw this train . . . yada yada, and of course, you will hear the cow say, yes, I see them all the time. The distinction is not if or if not anyone else does anything, but what you personally abstracted from a given experience.

Meaning. . . . . is how an experience applies to you and your life.

You may as well try to tell someone how absolutely gorgious oatmeal, raison, cinnomon, honey cookies are.

True friends share common goals, and amiable abilities to achieve them.

The depth of communicative exchange between any two individuals is proportional to the distance they plan on traveling together.

For some reason I brought up lucid dreaming with my boss while on a long business trip together. He seemed confused. He said something like " you mean you don't usually know you're dreaming while you're dreaming? That's weird." He said he always knows when he's dreaming because things are just too weird in dreams to be real. He said his dreams are very vivid and he remembers most of them. I tried to convince him that most people don't actually know they are dreaming while in the dream, but he didn't believe me. He said something like, "maybe you and all those people on that forum you visit are the ones who are weird because you don't know you're dreaming and that's why you think most people don't know."

Needless to say, this has caused me quite a lot of consternation. Is my boss a lucid dreaming genius or does he just not understand what I'm talking about?

hehe that was a weird thing your boss said. Almost something like a DC would say :p
Hard to say if he's a LD genius or doesn't understand it, but i could never see before me one that do LD every night, not knowing its "not normal" and don't talk about it.

But then again, if you LD every night from the time you were a kid, why go around talking about it if you believe that everyone does it?

It sounds like he's some kind of LD master. Or he might just be having dreams of being lucid in the dream and not actually presently aware that it's a dream while it's happening. He also may have been misunderstanding you, that's kind of what I'm thinking. Having actual lucid dreams is so incredible that he might not have any concept of it.

People are always like this.
On a game creation forum I was on, whenever someone would think of a really good idea that caught the attention of others, people out of nowhere would be like "Oh, I thought of this a long time a go, but never did it ". Sure sure.
Anyway, either she is really good at lucid dreaming and has become arrogant, or she is really bad at it.

Offtopic: Hint, whenever someone online ends a message directed at you with an " " emoticon, its not friendliness. Its them being condescending.