Things happening in dreams that I don't really understand

Hi all, new here. I wanted stop by and talk about what I've been experiencing for the past couple of years. I've meant to find a forum like this for a good while, but I just never got around to it. There are a few things happening in my dreams that I don't think are quite normal. In order to help me organize my thoughts, I think its best if I turn this into a list. So here goes.

1. I can control my dreams if I want to, but if I do it too much, I start waking up. I don't know how, but I can start to feel the expenditure of energy as though I was awake. This I think, leads me to wake up. You know how when you're awake and thinking, you can feel yourself using energy. To a certain extent. Well in dreams, maybe you're so relaxed, that you just don't feel it. But when I take control of a dream and start making it do what I want to do, this only lasts for what seems like a very short time before I start feeling like I'm awake. And then, I am awake. Is this supposed to happen when lucid dreaming?

2. Even when having a bad dream, I often choose to turn to violence, inside the dream, and kill whatever is causing my bad dream. This seems odd to me, because normally I am not a violent person at all.

3. Sometimes in a lucid dream I experience a certain dread. I think that this dread comes from the fact that I'm aware that I'm in a dream, and because of that I'm aware that the dream could turn into a bad dream. Any time this happens I always choose to wake up, because I fear being in the lucid dream and not being able to get out and being stuck, aware, in a nightmare. Which would of course be much worse than having a normal, non-lucid dream nightmare.

4. Other times, I am somehow... aware that I'm asleep, when I'm not dreaming. I am aware of where I'm at, but I can't move at all. And its difficult to wake up. I just lay there, thinking about how I'm stuck. But at any time during this, I can choose to stop thinking about it and actually go to normal sleep. I find this to be pretty strange. What is it? Sometimes I even realize that I'm uncomfortable, and that I'd like to shift positions as we so often do in our sleep. But I am paralyzed, and I can't move. If I try really hard sometimes, I feel like I have moved. Only to wake up and find that I didn't move at all. I don't understand what all this is. In order to come out of it, I have to go back to "sleep", and then I will almost always wake up seconds later and be able to move around.

When you start controlling your dreams too much, your brain has to think a lot harder to figure out what you should "see" that wakes you, your brain has a processing speed limit, get close to it, and your dream destabilizes.

Emotions are extremely exaggerated in dreams and go to the extremes, including bloodlust. It happens, violent movies, tv shows, and vidoe games have told us that killing someone is a quick way to remove them from a situation.

The dread is also just an out of control emotion, think of happy things and it should go away.

That's an in-between state, lots of times you'll have hypnogogic imagery in there during that state. That can be really fun and beautiful.

Ok thank you for the reply. However, I do have one question. How can you remain in control of your dream, if you don't control the dream too much? I find that if I release control of the dream, I begin dreaming normally again and lose control. After I do that, I almost never regain control and my dreams become very strange, having mostly to do with science fiction.

You should find the wiki on this site and read up on dream control, stabilization, and sleep paralysis. Your questions will be answered, and much more thoroughly than just from somebody writing for a few minutes on this thread.

Here - also take a look at this video about the science of sleep paralysis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCSqT5nZ9n4

1. If you have a goal for your dream you can "form" it before your asleep by focussing on that goal/idea/scenario. This way you can avoid changing the dream too much. You could also try to controle your dream more subtle by asking a DC for something instead of summoning it so your mind can explain the change easier.

3. Don't fear lucid nightmares. When you realize your dreaming you also know you can't be harmed by anything. If anything happens in a dream that releases a lot of adrenaline like strong fear, pain or death you will always wake up. Most nightmarescenarios become quite ridiculous when you are able to think logical about them. You can try to deliberately stop breathing(not holding your breath) which should result in you waking up.

4. This is called sleep paralysis and prevents your body from doing every movement that you dream. Feeling uncomfortable is your brain trying to move your body to check if your asleep. You can try to induce a WILD from this state. If you want to wake up from this your fingers, toes and eyelids should be the easiest to "break out of" the paralysis. If that doesnt work you can try the following technique but it may take a few minutes:


(if your eyelids are paralyzed as well include them like your arms and legs)
First get a feel for your body and focus on your breath. Feel where your limbs touch the ground(bed) your sleeping on. Imagine your arms are filled with lead and thats the reason they feel so heavy you cant lift them. Then imagine a comfortable warmth slowly spreading from your torso in to your limbs. A bit more with every breath you take. You don't have to do all limbs at once you can do your arms first and your legs afterwards so its easier to focus. Once you spread the warmto to your toes and fingertips you focus on the weight of your limbs again. Imagine everytime you exhale some of the lead is liftet and replaced by light air. Start with your fingertips/toes and imagine the heavy feeling slowly retreats towards the center of your body and your limbs fell light and free of weight. only the warm and light feeling remains. Now you should be able to move again start by moving your fingers and hands then the rest.

The not moving sounds exactly like SP, but personally, I think you shouldn't choose to wake up from your bad dream. If you have a lucid nightmare, ask the nightmare directly why it's bothering you, because the best way to get your attention is to scare you. I feel like it may have to do with what is troubling you, but that is just the impression I got from reading your list.