At a certain point in my life i realized life shouldn’t be lived with fear, or at least the view most people have on fear. to be afraid of a certain something, an act, is to limit your experience of existence. it was not that i felt scared of every little thing, but each of us has his/her own things they do feel fear from in a certain amount. if one desires to live life fully one must confront his fears.
in the part of the process of this decision i became interested in lucid dreaming and more into dreams in general.
if facing the fears is my way to overcome them and live a fuller life then it seemed that confronting fears in dreams would be a great idea!
i figured the things in dreams can become so bizarre that it is a great chance to use it to my advantage, after all its not like youll ever get to face a three headed monster in ordinary life, and it does seem like if youll be able to handle the much bigger fears it will shrink the so called “power” of the lesser ones.
since i was already with the idea of confronting fears outside dreams, what i would simply do in everyday life is every time im in a situation that there is something i feel the slightest fear of - I do it. i used fear as the sign that tells me i need to do that thing im afraid of.
this goes from the smallest of things, like talking to a girl you dont know, staying in the dark since youre afraid of the dark and so on to the bigger fears.
this actually works perfectly when youre using dreams to face fears.
what happens is that dreams are actually your thoughts in visualized form (for the most part at least). if you sit down and relax and just follow your train of thoughts, rolling with it, youll very easily see how weird and odd they can get which would explain some of those weird dreams which make no sense at all, like why i just had a dream i was playing soccer on a grass field filled with rice - yeah, no sense.
but our thoughts do tend to bend over and get carried away just like dreams.
knowing that dreams are our thoughts in a visualized form you can understand that creating a thought pattern in real life will carry on in the dream.
if you continuously address and face your fears in real life you will develop that thought pattern, that habit and thus it would show through your behavior in dreams as well.
this is also why reality checks work, preforming a singular action with a singular intention which becomes a thought habit and all of a sudden you find yourself doing something of the same line in the dream.
there are a few parts to facing fears in dreams.
the first part would be doing so in lucid dreams. this is the easy one, since you know it is a dream you become more confident you wont get hurt so its much easier to intentionally look for something scary to face, or perhaps even summon a long time fear which you have in the waking life in which you can now deal in a safe environment.
yet dont be deluded to think its that easy even though you know its a dream. if your lucidity is high enough and you experience the dream so much as real as waking life, or even more, facing a fear might not be that easy even though you know its a dream.
but honestly, i think that one of the most important things is actually the second part which is facing the fears in None-Lucid dreams, since that is the true recognition you get for really developing that thought pattern. when you instinctively choose to face the demons, to stop running and turn towards the gang thats chasing you with knifes, when you hold your ground even though you dont know its a dream!
you take the chance… and then… something happens, something very interesting.
you see, every time i faced my fears naturally through a dream without being lucid, after doing so i suddenly got lucidity and realized i am dreaming!
it is like you get a reward! a gift for good behavior, for a hard endeavor.
it really couldnt get more magical then that 
and all of a sudden you have nightmares in which you actively address, overcome. to the point where you hardly get nightmares at all, to the point where (and this might sound strange for some of you) you WANT to have nightmares so you can overcome them, grow from them. Everyday dreams start to seem like kitty cats next to a good all fashioned Nightmare!
some of my nightmares i couldnt face, waking up feeling bad that i didnt. every time that happened i would go back to sleep with the intention of going back to that nightmare, sometimes it didnt work, other times it did! and i was able to go back and face the Nightmare and put it in its place.
TAKING THIS FURTHER
Where else can we take this?
dreams/lucid dreams and waking life. what about the point that is between?
some of you might have came across this place, the area between sleeping and waking, the intermediate state.
the place where SP takes place and where hallucinations can be seen and felt.
an experience some wish to avoid is one others know to enjoy.
take hold, use it. many times i have had a lot of “scary” situations from this state, of course i feared some of them but in time, as the process moved on, i learned to be stable in the state, to use it to confront fears too.
from a young girl looking at me and suddenly turning to a scary face coming at me to other beings that seem to want to grab me.
if you remain confidant. strong, dont look away and face the fear, they just fade away and you transition to waking, you dont even need to attack them or do any movement at all in this state, all that is required is for you to remain calm, understanding, stable in your state of being, and instead of waking up shivering in fear you will wake up anew, stronger, more confident than before.
take hold, change your life.
