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Recently, I've been having very realistic nightmares. Pain and everything, just like it was real. But at the end, I usually become lucid, but the nightmare is so frightning that I just want to get out of it. However, in those nightmares, it becomes nearly impossible to get out of. When I try to wake up, usually by opening my eyes, it feels like I'm trying to move my body through a barrier of some sort. As if I was trying to move through molasses or something thick like that. And even when I finnally open my eyes and see my room, the dream still lingers for a while and it's still hard to move my body.
Any thoughts on what to do in this situation? One of my ideas is to try to stay in the dream despite the terror. Most ideas involving control won't work(or won't work reliably) since I don't have direct control over my dreams.
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Try dream spinning. It forces a scene reset, and might cancel the nightmare. Be mindful of false awakenings, however.
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It forces a dream reset for some people. My dreams seem to be more stable that other peoples, and dream spinning won't work.
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Try spinning longer if needed, and focus on something different then the dream at hand. Even if your dreams tend to be stabler then most, it is very hard for a dream to remain intact when deprived of sensory input about itself. The problem might be that you try to frantically get out of the nightmare, thus making the error of thinking that you do NOT want to see the nightmare when you stop spinning, which makes you think of the nightmare, which allows that dream to stay in your mind. Try to think of anything else, doesn't matter what, and just let the imagery form. Then, immediatly just go with the flow of whatever imagery has formed, without thinking about the nightmare. The downside is that I think you might have a fair chance of losing lucidity when using this technique, but after it has happened a couple of times, you might get better at retaining your lucidity. And, what I've noticed about recurring nightmares is, beat them once, and they never come back.
If this still doesn't work, I'd be happy to think of something else that might work. For now, though, I'd try a spin while focussing on something, anything, that's different from the nightmare. It may even be an object inside the nightmare, just so long as it's not the nightmare itself. Did you just see a lamp? A desk? Fine, focus on that while spinning.
