Controlling Dreams - Is It Possible?

Lucid Dreams and Nightmares

Can really lucid dreams help us to cotrol what we dream about?  A lucid dream is one in which the lucid dreamer logically assumed that he or she is dreaming.

It begins usually as a normal dream, and the dreamer concludes during the course of the dream that it is a dream and at that point, he or she is awakened usually for all intents and purposes.

Lucid dreaming has been well researched by several psychologists and psychiatrists as well as other researchers who thought to prove it false in the beginning.  Lucid dreaming is now established as being a very real scientific entity.

Study of nightmares

A nightmare is essentially a disturbing dream from which one has difficulty awaking or a dream that will force some level of awakening. Emotional aspects of nightmares may be feelings of anger, sadness, depression or guilt. The most common outstanding feature of any nightmare is fear.

Nightmares are much more common in children than in adult population.
Nightmare scenarios will vary quite diversely from one person to another. Nightmares seem to follow a certain scenario more than other however. The most common is that of being chased or trapped in some way.

Nightmares may at times be related to intense stress or deep emotional conflict which needs to be resolved before the nightmares will cease. This holds true in the case of post-traumatic stress where dreams come into play after a particularly stressful or injurious event such as the terrorist attacks. Even though nightmares mostly resulting from traumatic experiences, pretty often people have nightmares totally unrelated to their lives.

Nightmare and Dream Analysis

No one truly understands nightmare activity or where it originates in the brain. No significant amount of research has been accomplished to permit us to know how to treat nightmares in most cases, although there has been an attempt made to find a method of treating nightmares.

Although nightmares themselves have not been specifically studied to find meanings for them, researchers determined that those who suffered from nightmares could benefit in many ways from controlling dreams; in other words being able to change nightmare to lucid dream type dreaming.

The researchers performed a pilot study late last year that showed a lucid dream treatment could be successful in lowering the frequency of a nightmare which persisted for days.

The treatment they proposed consisted of being exposed to mastery of lucid dreaming and lucidity exercises. No one was able to determine what reason the treatment succeeded or what part of the treatment actually worked; however, the experiment itself was billed as a success.

Possible causes of nightmares

• Fears and obstacles of daily existence.
• Loss of family member or other close person
• Traumatic experience such as an accident or assault
• Stress at work place or in school
• Some type of medications especially hypnotics
• Alcohol
• Withdrawal from alcohol and some drugs
• Physical condition (illness)