Overcoming fear

Quest for Lucidity
1

So, after mostly sorting out my dream recall, I’ve started trying for lucid dreams again. Buuuut I haven’t had much success, and I’ve realized that the main reason is fear. You really need to want LDs to have them, and right now a part of me doesn’t.

The thing is, I’ve made many attempts at learning LD, and I’ve had quite a few unpleasant experiences. I’m talking sleep paralysis, seemingly endless chains of false awakenings that get more disturbing every time, my dream recall making me unable to forget nightmares, semi-lucid states where I’m alarmed that my mind isn’t quite functioning like it should while also not realizing what’s happening, …

I’m fully aware that none of these things are harmful and don’t need to be feared, but that kind of rational and smart thought is a lot more convincing now in broad daylight than it is at 4am in pitch black while doing WBTB. And when I’m dreaming and not already lucid, I just won’t remember.

I also know that more lucidity will help with making these things less scary, but that just turns it into a chicken-egg situation. Need to be lucid to not fear, but need to not fear to become lucid.

I did WBTB a couple of recent nights, and I had one where I was just unable to get back to sleep until well after sunrise because of all of this (at least it was on a weekend… :tongue:). Obviously I’d rather avoid repeating that.

Any suggestions on how to attack this? I searched a bit but couldn’t really find anything that seemed applicable.

2

So, for those who might be struggling with similar issues… I’ve gotten better.

What helped was just sticking to journaling for a while. Waking up at night, taking a couple notes and then just going back to sleep, sometimes putting on some podcast as background noise if I was struggling. I was still thinking of my bad experiences, I was still a bit afraid of having to deal with that again. But nothing happened. Night after night, everything was totally uneventful. And after a couple weeks of that, the fears just evaporated.

I’ve managed 3 LDs since then, two of which ended with me waking up in sleep paralysis. And while that’s still not exactly fun, it also turned out to not be a big deal. Just forget it’s happening, relax a bit like I’m sleeping in and it’ll end pretty quick.

So yeah all it really took was patience, not giving up, and to stick to the thing that wasn’t scary (journaling) for a little while, and the problem just fixed itself.

1 Like