Can you control your lucid dreams? Advice from a psychoanalyst and dream language specialist

Finding yourself immersed in a dream with the ability to control what happens there is a concept that can seem appealing. However, certain disadvantages exist. The psychoanalyst and specialist in the language of dreams, Tristan Moir, explains that if the desire to control one’s dreams is “in vogue” today, it is a tendency used to “create fantastic universes” and to “escape reality.” As a way of creating an alternative life in your sleep, so to speak. He compares this to a “world of a neurotic child or one on a path of suffering”, recalling Freud’s work, Beyond the pleasure principle. “The psyche is attached to pleasure, or (affective) suffering, in connection with the individual’s parents”.

From an analytical point of view, lucid dreaming is of little interest if it is used for the simple realization of fantasies or everyday desires. According to the psychoanalyst, during spontaneous dreams, “the unconscious suggests themes to the dreamer”, which allows certain information about oneself to be analyzed. Conversely, when the conscious takes over and the dreamer chooses his own themesthe analysis is biased. The return to reality can be complicated for those who have chosen to realize their desires. Fanny, 22, mentions a certain difficulty in identifying “the border between dream and reality”. She explains: “When I control my dream, I know what I’m doing, I’m aware of my actions but I still feel like it’s real. » When she wakes up, she feels a shock: “The next day, I slap myself when I come back to reality, what I thought I had done was not true. » Seen from this angle, dream control can leave the dreamer in a state of frustration. However, knowing how to control your dreams can become rewarding if motivations change.

We can choose to tame our dreams for different reasons. If we do it wisely and supervised by therapeutic monitoring, it is possible to get something interesting out of it. “From the moment we are able to induce images, we can make our unconscious approach specific themes” explains Tristan Moir. As a result, “this theme, often distressing, can be worked on”. For example, in the case of an anxious person wishing to find answers to their worries, the exercise of lucid dreaming becomes enlightening. Master of her dream and on the advice of a therapist, she can invite her fears into her mind in order to face them, understand them and resolve them.

Another example of beneficial contribution? Calming nightmares. For example, “if the individual finds himself in an unpleasant dream, he can then become aware that he is in a dream and change the turn of the situation”. How to achieve this? If it is an innate mechanism for some, it sometimes takes training to achieve this result.

To resolve your anxiety in your sleep, there are a large number of tips. One of them is induction and is done before sleeping. “It is enough to suggest to our brain the theme that we wish to work on in our dreams for a week or two,” according to the psychoanalyst. Induction works, it can take time to bear fruit but you have to be persistent.

Likewise, reality testing is one of the possible techniques that requires daily work. Matteo Perroud, in his work Guide to learning lucid dreamsexplains it as “an action that we perform in order to know whether we are dreaming or not. The goal is to carry out this action within a dream. » This process consists of accustoming the brain to questioning the truth of the world around it.

Awake in reality, ask yourself: “Am I dreaming? » After many repetitions, your brain will get used to asking this question. Thus, you will be able to question yourself, once asleep in your dream and observing the environment around you, the answer will become obvious.

Following this concept, a few simple exercises can help you gain awareness in your dreams. On the same principle, they must be carried out several times in reality in order to reproduce them in the dream and observe the result. For example, practice looking at your hands in real life and counting your fingers. You have 10. Do it several times during the day so that your brain memorizes the action. In this way, once asleep, you will have the reflex to try in your dream and if your hands have more or less than 10 fingers, the answer is clear: you are dreaming and you will be aware of it.

Another recurring test: reading a text or the time. During the day, practice reading a text, or what time it is. Take your eyes off for a few moments, then reread the time which should not have changed, except to move to the next minute. When you repeat this action in your sleep, you will surely find that the time is different or inconsistent, that the text is distorted and blurry. For those most addicted to their smartphone, you will notice a difference in writing an SMS. In the dream, the letters on the keyboard seem blurry and the message becomes complicated to write.

Matteo Perroud also mentions “the jump test” as well as that of “memory”. The first is to try to jump into the air in your dream. The author invites you to question yourself: “Are you landing on your own two feet or hovering ghostly above the ground? » If you realize that you are high, you will know that you are dreaming! The second consists of asking yourself, still in a dream, what you were doing a few minutes before, or if you remember waking up in your room that morning. If nothing comes to mind, you are dreaming.

Just like a competitive sport, learning to control your dreams requires patience and perseverance but with a little practice. The key to dreams is in your hands!

References:

Tristan Moir, psychoanalyst and dream specialist

Freud, Beyond the pleasure principle

Article by Matteo Perroud, REALITY TESTS

Matteo Perroud, Guide to learning lucid dreams