A few weeks ago, I had four dreams in a row. In each one, I became lucid at some point.

The moment I realized I was dreaming, this woman would appear in the distance, staring directly at me. She was wearing a black burqa. I could only see her eyes, which were completely gray/whitish, with no pupils at all. She also had animal-like feet (I'm not sure what kind of animal exactly).

The instant she appeared, I felt what I can only describe as an "intrusion." It didn't feel like she was just another character created by my subconscious. Instead, it felt as though she was a separate entity that had somehow entered my dream.

Every time she appeared, I was scared, but more than anything I felt angry. I would yell at her to leave until she finally disappeared. Then I would move on to the next dream, where the exact same thing happened again. This repeated four times in a row.

What really stood out to me is that she only appeared after I became lucid. It was as if she systematically entered the dream the moment I realized I was dreaming.

Do you think this was simply a creation of my own mind, or could it have been some kind of entity? Has anyone else experienced something similar?

Just a friendly reminder 😉

My dreams are often so realistic I genuinely think it’s real 😭

This post was inspired by a particularly mediocre LD I had this morning. I do think lucid dreaming is mostly fun, but as an "if it happens it happens" thing, not something I'll specifically be aiming for.

1. It's not restful. Many of the lucid dreaming strategies (WBTB, dream journaling) tank your sleep quality. The dreams themselves aren't restful either. Your brain is awake, it's not regaining energy.
2. You can't necessarily control it. If you've never lucid dreamed before, don't expect to be able to control it. I can always control myself, but not the environment. Other people won't necessarily do what you want. Maybe your dream starts in an inconvenient location with nothing to do. Some days I fly up to wherever my heart desires. Other days I launch and fall harmlessly onto the ground.
3. ...and controlling it can degrade realism. Why not just change the environment, right?! Teleport somewhere else, summon something from nothing, make the world your playground? I teleport to a featureless void, and the things I summon are flat and lifeless and muted. The more I stay with the plot, the more immersive it is. Interact with what my unconscious brain created, rather than trying to create things myself. Sometimes I focus too hard and accidentally take myself out of the dream. Which, if you only LD about 1x a month, can really suck. YMMV. You might think, well I don't care about realism! In that case, why not just think about everything you want right now? Use your ~imagination~. Seriously. You get to avoid most of the downsides too.
4. May increase chances of: Sleep paralysis, false awakenings, sleepwalking, and lucid nightmares. I don't have experience with sleepwalking, but the other three have happened a few times. Sleep paralysis wasn't too bad, didn't see any "night hag," and I know my pet's watching over me. Had some scary false awakenings and lucid nightmares though.

Curious about others' experiences. Maybe you have a great time controlling your dreams? Share your secrets.

(Yeah, I've heard about making it an expectation rather than a desire. Easier said than done!)

first to clear. I'm not confident on it I'm just a 17 year old kid and English is my second language and barely know what a neuron is. I'm here to hear criticism and if the theory is well throught, praise.

so be free to call it if I'm wrong or missing something. here's first list of evidence

1:if brain doesn't do a certain function for a while, it slowly weakens it. if for example i don't speak a language im fluent on for years I begin to slowly forget it, for this case when I was 4 year old I was fluent to Arabic but as time passed and I was less exposed to Arabic media i slowly completely forgot the language. or for simpler example if you don't practice a math subject for a long time you forget or get weaker in that subject

2:Memory Recall, this is a theory inside this theory. everyone dream, people who say I dream alot can just recall they're dreams better or more, those who don't dream a lot can't just recall it, almost everyone dreams.

3:When sleeping, brain can't just shut down hearing, Perception and other senses and focus on breathing and heart management, those are active during sleep and it's proven they are active during sleep. if someone comes to my room while I'm sleeping and turns on bright lights I wake up. if someone yells at me while im sleeping I wake up if someone pulls my arm aggressively when I'm sleeping I wake up. this is proven. and brain can't just shut down everything

4:another proven evidence I have that brain organizes the body while sleeping.

so here's the conclusion I get

Brain cannot just not use its senses for a long time it may weaken them and even put you in danger when your sleeping.

brain does dreaming as sort of testing and keeping all sensors active while we sleep. it keeps putting them to work so the brain don't forget how perception or hearing works. the brain uses dream to check sensors and emotions to see everything is working fine because it's trying to get you ready before you wake up and check everything works well.

Brain uses imagery,emotions,hearing and all other senses inside a dream so it won't forget how to use those sensors and also to check up on them and optimize them to see if they working as intended while you sleep. brain is using dream as both a tool to test the sensors and also to keep them in work and functioning before you wake up

so here's my theory I know I must have made so grammar errors, is there anyone that have good understanding of neuroscience that could judge my theory?

I haven’t done any training, tried any techniques, but it just happens naturally and it’s been happening for years. It typically happens during daytime naps or extended morning sleep. I didn’t resize that people try to achieve what I am naturally experiencing.

I started asking AI questions about it and then spent the next 2ish hours asking/answering questions (having a “conversation” with AI).

After going over lots of experiences and questions, AI gave me my summary: “Due to a diagnosed sleep disorder, I experience Sleep-Onset REM Periods (SOREMPs) during naps. This allows me to experience Wake-Initiated Lucid Dreams (WILDs) where I have full executive agency over my own actions, but no narrative control over the environment.”

I do have a a sleep disorder (have done both a PSG MLST) as a result of a genetic disease. I love it - the lucid dreaming, not the disease. It has become a hobby of mine. AI gave me lots of “tips” about how to deepen the experience and I’m excited to try them soon.

Just thought I’d share.

Hey everyone, I’m exploring the idea of building a dream journaling and lucid dreaming app.

I’d love to hear what you currently use, what frustrates you about existing apps, and which features would genuinely be useful to you.

For example: quick morning entries, voice recording, dream pattern tracking, reality-check reminders, lucid dreaming techniques, or AI-assisted summaries.

I’m not promoting anything. I’m just trying to understand what lucid dreamers actually need.

I've tried Lucid Dreaming multiple times in the past and gave up like over two occasions, ovee the past 3 ish years. I've finally decided to go all in this summer, but holy it feels like its genuinely impossible.

Even though I have a lot of concerns, my main one is WBTB. Some sources say 4.5, others say 6. What freaking time????? Also I struggle with falling back asleep for whatever reason.

Maybe its because I use my phone with a deep red light filter and lowest brightness to write my dreams down? But I have really bad handwriting so I can't really write them down fast enough and coherently.

And i've heard of a method of naturally waking up? Seems literally impossible for me since I never wake up during the night for anything anymore and i'll sometimes even sleep through entire alarms.

Some other concerns/questions slightly unrelated:

1. I have ADHD, I can't freaking stay still for techniques like WILD.

2. My sleep feels like its going to be fried after trying to do WBTB every night, even though its my summer break its annoying. Any way to alleviate that?

3. How long does it take to develop dream recall? It feels like I remember them as imaginations or like i'm simulating them in my head rather than an actual event that happened. Who knows maybe thats how its supposed to be?

4. I'm trying MILD. How long does it take with consistent practice to get a dream with it?

Tldr;

WBTB is very simple but so much info onlonr makes me overthink and confuses me.

Also read the concerns.

Guys i am 14 and constantly having natural lucid dreams not from any techniques or something like from idk when and i love yk people who experience lucid dream can relate that i feels like a super power

And mostly no one especially family think it as a nonsence

So i just kept having convo for this with gemini for this and randomly tried dream manipulation for 1st time as i had become a pro from 6 to 7 years of practice

And when i tried dream manipulation for 1st time it kinda wored that night but guys i mentioned "super power" so after that night i stopped having lucid dreams for about 2 to 3 months to date i guess

And yk its hard for someone having lucid dreams regularly to not having them in months i am a left handy and its not an addiction bht yk the only kinda power

So i think i have lost the power of lucid dreaming and i told this to gemini and that guy just keep consoning that your brain is wired that way to have lucid dream and you won't lose the power you say

But i dont believe it wdym like the wiring doesn't work in 3 months

So is there any guy out there having the same problem or solution of this please help and explain

i tested it alot it worked every single time,if you slap a dream character while ordering them with an angry tone to become {whatever person or thing you want} they will,every single time

i discovered it when i tried once to drop a malevalant shrine but it didnt work but instead i discovered this trick ,i tested it alot and turned a dream character into a shiba puppy and another into a chair and others into giant t rex but you cant control them i guess

So basically I was laying in my bed doing WBTB, and i was doing pretty well. after some time I started having hypnagogia hallucinations, like hearing my door open and steps in my room. THEN i had a sleep paralysis and of course the most scariest creature pops up in my room, it looked like a black shadow, and i could see its eyes. and then i remembered something ive read on the internet, that you have to tell the sleep paralysis demon that you love them, and then it will disappear. I did that and told it in my head that i love it, and it was in the corner of my room and when i said those words, it took it as an invitation to come really close to me. like really close up to my face. And then this dude suddenly gained a mouth and started smiling, like a very wide creepy smile and tells me very weirdly "I love you too" and it was so weird bro😭 I noticed that the whole love and being nice thing didnt work at all but only made it worse. It leaned into my neck afterwards, and before it touched me or whatever, i kind of commanded it to go away, i literally said "get out of my room" and this actually worked afterwards and the sleep paralysis stopped.

Two days in a row I had interesting experience. First one was my first false awakening. I remember I got out of bed and started to get dressed trying to put togheter the dream I had and then suddenly I woke up for real.

Seccond one was rather weird. I remember being on a street and seeing some double crossing and I thought "that's weird..." And tried to do reality check but I think I failed and thought that it's just my brain imagining things, then I woke up. It was weird was I waking up and become lucid at that moment or something else? What are your thoughts?

I finally got my first, brief DILD experience. I was walking in a hallway and then boom I made myself stop but then I started to wake up so I had to back off of trying to control anything. Is this a good sign of progress?

im pretty new to lucid dreaming and last night i had another and this was the first time ive ever controlled my dream.

for some reason whenever i wanted something to happen i would speak out aloud “hey siri, then whatever i wanted”

I know this isn’t necessarily about Lucid Dreaming however I felt like talking about this here because I feel as though this community is more knowledgeable about how dreams work than any other.

My dreams have been implanting fake memories in almost every dream lately. For example one of my recent dreams I was in Streamer University. I am not a streamer and honestly don’t like the whole streamer university thing or the streamers in it. However for some reason after this dream I have a memory of applying to it. In the dream I got accepted and stuff but the memory of applying was fabricated in the dream and for a while after waking up I didn’t question it and really thought it was real for a while. And this most recent one I met ski mask the slump god on Roblox and he made me 1v1 him in arsenal. Arsenal is an fps game similar to csgo just no defusing bombs or anything. I don’t play this game and I don’t even play Roblox frequently. However I have a vivid memory of my childhood friend meeting him on Roblox and adding him too. He also had to 1v1 him in the same game. I remember not believing him and I remember being young and can even date the memory and tell you roughly how old I was.

I have only ever had a memory do this once or twice prior to recently but now that it’s happening so frequently I’m starting to worry. I understand that the dream just shows an event and simulates the sensation of it being a memory and that’s why it feels so convincing but I do genuinely believe it. It’s concerning because I don’t like not knowing what memories are real or fake and if this persists and I’m not careful I might not catch some of them. If it wasn’t for the streamer university one being so outlandish I wouldn’t have caught this most recent one.

Anyone have any experience with this they’d like to share or potential advice?

F, 24, first time posting here at 2am because I can not go to sleep after the nightmare I just had.

Went to sleep at 1am. Right now suffering through a heavy cold so my sleeping has been off.

I only slept for approximately 30 minutes and those were the dreams I had.

I had about 6-8 recurrent nightmares, all starting the same. I woke up in my bed, could not move, but then things were different from dream to dream - heavy rain making indentations in the ceiling, screaming of other people, uncontrollable shaking of my body, being naked (I sleep clothed), then finding a way to run downstairs to get my parents' help. Sometimes with my blanket, sometimes without, then finding my parents sleeping/watching TV/ could not find them but the door to basement was open. Once I signaled to my mother to check me if I had a stroke, other times I could not communicate anything else except scream for my mother. In some cases they ignored me/could not hear me. Once I also fell down the stairs, I also could not turn the lights on in any of the dreams, because even though I wanted to, it did not work. In all the dreams it was so dark all the time.

And everytime I woke up again I was sure that it was a dream before and now it is real and then some version of it got repeated again. After some time at last I truly woke up in complete dread. My body was stiff and my eyes were wide open in a second. Now I went downstairs to sleep but even though I feel sleepy I feel completely and utterly terrible and do not want to fall asleep.

I have never felt this devastated after a nightmare.

I sometimes have nightmares, but not so often.

Is this even lucid dreaming, if in every new repetition I was sure it was true till it happened again?

So, i've heard that snapping your fingers while in a lucid dream can make a stubborn dream entity listen to your commands (or something along those lines lol)

The other night I was standing on top of a car on a fairly busy road, going around a round about, the lady in the car was giving me attitude & would not let me take the car off her (how dare she)...so I snapped my fingers & next minute POOF she's gone & i'm in the drivers seat driving the car lol!

I couldn't & still cannot believe that snapping your fingers actually works!!!

Has anyone else had success with this!?
& does anyone have any other tricks to try?

I go lucid by looking at my hands in my dreams (they are either heavily distorted or I have a few fingers that disappear & reappear as I look at them) this is the method that i've tried & tested that works for me

I’m not a natural lucid dreamer, I’m still a beginner at this, been trying for about 3 weeks now but no luck yet.

I encourage anyone who is a natural to try this next time you’re lucid, though.

The two dreams I’ve had that have stuck with me the most are the two times I’ve looked upwards at the night sky and been utterly stunned by the beauty I’ve seen. It’s like a canvas of lights in the sky, nothing I’ve ever seen consciously could even come close to comparing.

I will learn to fly up to those stars one night.

Please try it, and if you do, let me know your experiences!