This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" by Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Can you really overcome your fears while you sleep? What happens if you become lucid during a nightmare?
According to the authors of Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, becoming lucid during a nightmare poses many benefits. While nightmares can be frightening, they also provide chances for personal growth.
Here’s how to overcome your fears through lucid nightmares.
Overcome Your Fears
Lucid dreaming can help you face and overcome your fears. Because no actual harm can come to you in a dream, lucid dreams give you a valuable opportunity to safely confront challenging and frightening situations rather than avoid them. When you face your fears in a safe environment like a dream, you learn to recognize when fear is unfounded, build confidence, tap into your strengths and resilience, and eliminate the fears altogether. To do this, right before you fall asleep, decide to dream about what you’re afraid of. The object of your fear will then manifest itself for you to confront.
(Shortform note: Facing your fears in the safe environment of lucid dreams is essentially a method psychologists call exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy that helps you confront your fears or anxieties in a controlled, safe environment by gradually exposing you to the source of your fear. It allows your brain to learn that the perceived threat isn’t as dangerous as you initially believed. Through repeated exposure to your fears in environments like lucid dreams, you can reduce your fear response and learn new ways of coping with fear.)
But what if the dream you’re in is already a nightmare? The authors say that when you become lucid in a nightmare, you can transform it into a meaningful and valuable experience. A lucid nightmare gives you an opportunity to face what you fear most. You can choose to wake up from nightmares, but escaping from them will leave you with unresolved internal conflicts that will likely revisit you in your sleep soon. It’s better to stay in the dream and face the fear.
(Shortform note: If you choose to escape from a lucid nightmare by waking up, you’re avoiding what you fear. Psychology experts caution against using avoidance as a coping strategy because avoiding things teaches your brain to be more afraid of them. When you avoid what you fear, you reinforce to the fear centers of your brain that the object or situation is dangerous. Facing your fears can calm your brain down by providing it with new, corrective information that helps it reevaluate the perceived threat, leading to a reduction in fear over time.)
Nightmares often feature a frightening figure—a person, animal, or entity that’s threatening in some way. The authors say you can confront a hostile dream figure in several ways: You can fight it, change it into something non-threatening, or face it and calmly interact with it. Of these choices, the authors recommend the third option in most cases. This is because when you turn to face a frightening figure with an attitude of peace and reconciliation, the figure may offer you valuable insights and naturally transform into something friendly.
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Here's what you'll find in our full Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming summary:
- Ways to prepare for lucid dreaming
- How to purposefully “wake up” in your dreams
- The many ways lucid dreaming can improve your waking life
