Reading the amount of dreams

Hi, new member with my 2nd post - the 1st was to a thread on flying styles.
I’ve been having lucid dreams for many years without having to try - they just happened and I never gave it much thought until lately.
I guess I thought everyone was like this, but now I see that so many people are trying hard to do what had always come to me so easily, although I’ve never had control of them or tried to.
They are the repeats where I say, “Oh no, no this one again!” and the ones where I see myself in bed, dreaming the dream I’m in, or being able to feel what happens in them while I’m lying there…a touch or something hot, cold or wet.
The problem for me is all the non-lucid ones that come every night as full length motion pictures and nightmares, all in color with extreme detail.
I would love to have just one night off from those! So, while everyone here seems to want more dream activity, I want to have less.
Does anyone else have that problem or know of a way to reduce hyper dream activity?

I guess it can work the same way with trying to become lucid or trying to remember dreams, but then the other way around. Your subconscious needs to know that dreams are irrelevant. Tell yourself that you don’t care about dreams. When you remember dreams, dont give them any more attention, you just dont care anymore. Dont think about dreams when you are trying to sleep, or actually, never think about them. You really need to think about them as irrelevant. Wake up fast and immediately go on with your life, instead of thinking about your sleep and staying in bed for a while. Focus your goals etc. in real life, dont be busy with your sleeping life. Delete you account on this forum xd. (just joking for the last one, but in fact, if you do it right you won’t come here anymore because dreams have become irrelevant for you).

I don’t know if trying to eradicate dreaming together is going to work… everyone has at least a few dreams every night, whether they remember them or not, and from your descriptions it seems that many of these nightmares may involve SP, which generally can’t be “forgotten” the way dreams can because it happens when your mind is technically “awake.” Your best bet is to try to use fear as a trigger to do a RC, especially given that you seem to realize you’re dreaming whenever you get one of the recurring nightmares. I used to have semi-frequent nightmares; using the fear to become lucid just about eliminated them. Remember: Once you know you’re dreaming, you can do whatever you want to the dream if you just believe you can.

Many thanks for the helpful suggestions; I still have so much to learn about this.
What is SP & RC?

SP (Sleep Paralysis): A part of your brain stem called the pons is responsible for paralyzing your body while you’re asleep so you don’t start “acting out” your dreams in real life. Sometimes it gets a little out of alignment and keeps you paralyzed for a few minutes after your mind wakes up. Oftentimes residual sensations from the dream you just woke up from persist into this state, which seems to match your description of “being able to feel what happens in [the nightmares] while I’m lying there.”

RC (Reality Check): Doing something that will have one result in waking life but a different one while dreaming. One of the most effective is pinching your nose shut; if you’re awake, this will block your nose and make you unable to breathe, but if you’re dreaming, your physical nose will continue to take in air and you won’t feel any difference. Because of this property, reality checks can be used to become lucid.

SP, or “sleep paralysis”, is when you’re sort of awake, like you can kind of feel yourself in bed and maybe are aware of the room around you, but you can’t move your body, and you may feel strange sensations like hot and cold, or your skin crawling, or pressure on your chest, etc. This can be really scary, because you can’t move, and you may be sort of dreaming, so you might see frightening creatures or people in your bedroom or that sort of thing. However, this is actually a much-desired state by a lot of experienced lucid dreamers, because it’s one of the easiest states to pass into a lucid dream from. It’s a very good state to do WILD in, if you’re familiar with that.

RC stands for “reality check” and is one of the popular techniques people use to have lucid dreams. The goal is to train yourself to question whether or not you’re dreaming while you’re in the middle of the dream. Usually, people get in the habit of ask themselves “Is this a dream?” or similar while they’re awake, so that the habit carries over into their dreams. For example, they may have their watch go off every hour and ask themselves then. They may also ask themselves every time they see something that’s common in their dreams.

I think to do what Lisez Lelui described, you could try to get in the habit of asking yourself “Am I dreaming?” whenever you feel scared or nervous in your waking life, so that you associate that emotion with asking the question. That way, when you have nightmares and feel afraid, you may stop and ask yourself what’s really going on. Also, if you tend to have nightmares about the same thing and it’s something you encounter in your waking life, you can practice asking yourself if you’re dreaming every time you encounter it. For example, if you tended to have nightmares about being attacked by dogs, you could train yourself to ask if you were dreaming every time you saw a dog. Or if your nightmares were about drowning, you could check if you were dreaming whenever you saw a large body of water. Other people may have other ideas for good ways you could use that technique.

You could look through the FAQs and Tutorials and Article Space sections of the forum for more information on things like this.

Also, I think Lisez Lelui is right about getting rid of dreams, in that you’re probably going to dream no matter what; you need REM sleep for your brain to work properly, as far as I know. What’s more, I think you’re more likely to remember nightmares than boring dreams, because of their intense content. Since you’re already able to have lucid dreams frequently, it may not be too hard for you to to turn your nightmares into lucid dreams and thus make them not scary. That might be the best solution for you; if you can become lucid during your unpleasant dreams, you can change them in ways that make them nicer.

EDIT: Oh, I didn’t realize Lisez Lelui had already responded while I was in the middle of writing this. XD Maybe having two different explanations will be helpful or something.

I believe I have experienced SP, lying there slightly awake but unsure if I was still dreaming. I’ve also been fully awake, sitting up on the edge of the bed after the alarm went off and the dream was still playing in my head for a few moments.
This all comes and goes of it’s own accord without any control and there have been times when I thought someone somewhere was sending me a message, but that seemed to be really reaching for an explanation.
This site has been a blessing and I wonder if there are any support groups for Lucid dreaming?

I had this problem a lot more as a kid in elementary school. I have nightmares almost nightly if I would dream at all. After a while I had my focus set before sleep “I’m not going to dream.”
To me, it was setting you subconscious attention enough to one concept or practice until you could do it in your sleep. In this case, focus on not dreaming.
Its required that when you are in a dream state to recognize you are dreaming, and pretty much say “no. Not right now.” And I guess… focus on… absence.

Sorry for the delay in my response - has a small fire at home due to a down power line, but no-one was hurt and I’m back online.
Thanks for the suggestions on controlling my dream output - I’ll give it a try!

I have had no luck in reducing my dream output and last night’s was the weirdest one yet!
I wake up in the year 1969 and no-one believes me when I tell them I’m from 2019.
I wander through several neighborhoods trying to figure out why I’m there and end up in a theater watching a movie about the story of my life and the choices I’ve made.
The is a wedding procession (my own) and I’m crying for the love of my life, who I let slip through my fingers in real life (she married someone else and we’re still friends).
I don’t recognize any of the bride’s family in the procession and when it’s time for her to appear there is only a puff of smoke and a name: “Nancy B”.
Is this someone I haven’t met yet and will marry? I don’t know and have never met anyone by that name. Have I just had a vision of my future?

Hi, I am sorry you had no luck in reducing your dream output.

But what an interesting dream!

Dreams can tell you a lot about yourself because they are made from your subconscious. Because of this, you may interpret your dreams in terms of your deepest desires, fears, motivations, dealing with past events. But I don’t believe in future predictions or visions in dreams. There is absolutely no evidence for these things.

I will try to interpret things in this dream as if this dream happened to me, but this is only guesswork because I don’t know you!!

I would interpret the setting of the dream as a deeper wish to get married or be with someone. This seems to be the main point of the dream. The movie of your life may be a way to deal with the choices you have made in the past (including the ‘love of your life’ situation). Or just set an emphasis on how deep the wish is to get married/ be with someone.

The name Nancy B. can mean something if you know someone in real life that is called Nancy. Maybe you value some properties/values the real Nancy has. But since you haven’t met a Nancy this is not the case, and I would interpret it as just a random name. Dreams are made from a lot of random stuff after all…

Actually, because the name doesn’t mean anything to you, it could be that your subconscious doesn’t know what kind of person you eventually will be with, or doesn’t have a preference (yet). It may also hint that you don’t know exactly what you are looking for in a partner. If this is the case, you should may be work on this. But this may be too far-fetched.

Another possibly far-fetch guess: Maybe your subconscious wants you to be faster with finding someone to be with, therefore already giving it a partial name, but it’s still in smoke/unknown.

It’s hard sometimes to distinguish which part is random and which part has a subconscious meaning. Only you can tell best which is which because you know yourself best. What kind of meaning it has also depends on the setting and emotions during the dream. I hope this helps a bit.

Hello GeneralCoco, thank you for taking the time to look into my dream - your insights are very helpful. I still have a lot to learn about this!

As a follow-up, I was in a grocery store the day after that dream and was browsing the paperback book section when I saw a mystery novel written by an author I’ve never heard of: Nancy Bush…“Nancy B”.

How weird is that??

Do you think in the future you will be married to this Nancy Bush?