Night Terrors and Lucid Dreaming

Hello all,

My boyfriend experiences severe night terrors and has an interesting way of dealing with it. He consciously wakes himself up every hour on the hour to prevent his night terrors form becoming too extreme. He still has them but he says this lessens the severity.

This made me curious. I thought that if he could consciously do this, he could probably become lucid fairly easily. I know people, especially small children, use lucid dreaming either intentionally or naturally to deal with nightmares. Because of this, I wondered if he could possibly use this to deal with his night terrors, although these are on a whole other level.

He said that this probably wasn’t a good idea; night terrors aren’t something you mess with. However, my curiosity was sparked and so was his. I promised him I would look into the idea and report back to him.

Does anyone have any personal experience or even any insight on this? Any ideas or input would be greatly appreciated.

I’ve heard many exerts say that this is a very good way of dealing with night terrors. In fact, I have conquered 2 “bad guys” in my LD’s. It was quite fun killing them, actually :happy: .

A technicue Ive used as a child (it shouldnt be that hard) to “wake up” as it gets bad is to focus on blinking. blinking hard will awaken you, while small, slow blinking will help you become lucid.
Hope this helps. If you need anymore advice, PM me and I will respond.
c:

The research is well established. While this concept isn’t’t something that a conventional doctor would tell you about (lucid dreaming doesn’t effectively fall into the category of medicine :razz:), it is a well commented on approach to settling nightmares. It is a skill he will have to learn, but if the way he’s waking himself up is natural, then his skill in autosuggestion is definitely a step forward. With lucidity you can’t “mess” with nightmares in a negative way, in that you can’t do anything to aggravate them. But if the episodes are truely severe, you may want to ask a psychologist what the best option is to take.

Committing suicide is always the best way for me to wake up.

Something else, whenever I am falling into a DEEP pit or cliff or falling to death I always know that I am dreaming so I become lucid a second before I wake xD

In the book “Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming” by Stephen LaBerge, he says becoming lucid in nightmares and confronting them head on and making peace with them is the best way to get rid of them and feel at ease with yourself. In one nightmare someone had, they became lucid and a tornado was wrecking everything, the person decided to confront it and hopped inside of the tornado but inside the tornado was a beautiful landscape and the person felt a feeling of blissfulness and happiness wash over themselves. I highly recommend you tell him to start lucid dreaming.

These are night terrors, not just normal night mares and that’s why he feels he shouldn’t mess with them. He’s been to psychiatrists about it and it stems from certain psychological trauma. I will definitely show him this discussion and hopefully he can formulate a technique based of suggestions that can truly help him.

The binking really does help, as a ki I was able to get away from monsters and control the dreams.

While night terrors may be different from nightmares, I do feel as though embracing them and making peace with them is a very good thing to do but it’s up to him

I agree that embracing them would be helpful, but I understand why he’s reluctant. It would be difficult to face something face something so terrifying.

I will mention the blinking method to him. That seems like something he might be interested in trying.

Another good method for waking up in a Nightmare is to start breathing rapidly. Rapid breaths will cause an oxygen rush to the blood and will wake you up. Usually when one is in a Nightmare they are more aware that they are asleep and are therefore more aware of their real body than in a regular dream. Tell him to focus on his breathing and if he wants to wake up he should just breath faster.
This however is simply avoiding the problem, not solving it.

If he has nightmares every day and they are that severe, this means the subconscious is traumatized and it wishes to avoid any similar mental/physical damage it has encountered. The subconscious reminds the conscious to avoid the events that can lead to this damage through these nightmares. To solve this problem, your boyfriend needs to prove to his subconscious that he is safe, that he is in control, and the fact that the only thing that matters is the present.

Dreams are a direct representation of the world as it is seen by our most basic mind, basics are hard to change. But I believe it is possible. If your boyfriend learns to become aware of the fact that he is dreaming when he sleeps, he would no longer have to follow the choices that the subconscious has set for him. But this is all up to him, he has to face his fears by himself, he has to realize that the nightmares are not really real and that they are an incorrect representation of the present. If he does come to the point where he realizes he is dreaming, he will enter his conscious mind into the dream projected by his subconscious. If he himself faces his fears, realizing that he does not need them any longer, they will go away. He must realize that in a dream, he is the one who actually has more power. Tell him to go ahead and punch whatever is chasing after him, right in the gut. Good luck.

I think he does realize he’s in a dream, but he chooses to wake up instead of trying to face it head on. He’s one to deal with things in a more physical way rather than a mental one. His night terrors tend to center around physical fighting and they are often times very angry. It would be helpful if punching whatever is chasing him (a method that I know is wonderful for non-violent nightmares) could be beneficial.

The rapid breathing might be a wonderful way for him to avoid it if he wants to experiment with different physical solutions. I personally think (although i do not have experiences with night terrors) that facing the mind with the mind is the best method. However, his thoughts on the matter are different, and it would not be beneficial to try to force him to do a more mental method. His auto suggestion is very developed, however, so perhaps I can suggest to him something based off of that. This would avoid the idea of lucidity as a solution, one that he doesn’t really want to mess with. Any thoughts on this? Does anyone think that well trained auto suggestion could lessen the effects of these night terrors?

p.s. I appreciate all of the input. This is the first time I’ve posted on this forum since I joined and it is very nice to see how helpful and open this community is. :smile:

I think it definitely would help, it’s a great idea. I believe that therapists use autosuggestion a lot, for example in the form of hypnosis. He could use autosuggestion as well to help him remembering whatever he wants to do to fight those night terrors, or that there is nothing to be afraid of. However this requires that he is convinced by his autosuggestions, but when you say it’s very developed then this shouldn’t be a problem. He can at least try it, it can’t hurt to try. :smile:

If he is predisposed to physical rationality, explain to him that once he has his sub-concious trained to fight back during the episodes, it will probably give him a newer sense of enpowerment. He could wake up feeling like he could take on the world :smile: and even on a more concious level, he can recognize that he is now in control, even to the point where he can command his unconcious to do exactly what he wills it to do. That’s a particularely accomplished skill that our community often strives for.

Does he like action movies? Lol, it may sound quite silly, but an acomplished lucid dreamer (if intended to) could throw the bad guys into a wall with a wave of his hand like Neo in the matrix. Silly suggestion, but with the way his personality seems it might appear to be quite entertaining and engaging for him. Also makes me actually look forward to sleeping :smile:

*but if he wants to avoid lucid dreaming, my 1st paragraph should suffice.

I think if he wanted to he could probably train his mind and get that “taking on the world” feeling. Empowerment is definitely a good thing in this case.

And he loves action movies. That’s an interesting idea to associate it with that. Maybe if he comes around to the idea of lucidity he’ll try something like that.

It would seem your bf has a great motivation for working on becoming lucid in the dream.

Reoccurring nightmares or “terrors” don’t happen without a reason. It is either a fear or something more that is trying to be communicated.

There is also the chance that he crossed paths with something ‘real’ that is tormenting him, either another person’s non-physical self, other entities, etc.

Regardless who or what it is, I can attest that there is near limitless power available to those who practice and become lucid in their dreams. I have personally dealt with all kinds of attacks in my dreams. To say that the other entity was destroyed is putting it lightly. :wink: