#its normal for me to be low energy but usually i cant fall asleep during the day even if i try | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vincent-frankenstein · 5 years

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different anon, but heck yeah u should definitely infodump about lucid dreaming!! im really interested in it

aaaaa okay !!! uh hold onto ur ears yall im abt to talk em off lmao

so !! if u didnt know, lucid dreaming is basically when you become aware that you’re dreaming while youre in a dream. once you’re aware, you can take control of the dream in literally any way u want — u can do anything, go anywhere, meet anyone, all with the knowledge that nothing can hurt u and nothing can stop u

its a fascinating concept and, the feeling when u actually become lucid for the first time? its better than anything else in the world. its the most invigorating thing u can ever feel, i think. but actually becoming lucid is, ,, , , hm. a time and a half.

putting the rest under a cut bc, hooooo boy this is gonna get long

first things first! you absolutely have to keep a dream journal. forgetting ur dreams is all well and good when ur not trying to accomplish anything in them, but if you become lucid and then wake up with only the vaguest memory of what you actually did? thats painful.

u can either go all out and get a fancy journal and write them down physically each morning, or u can do what i do and just download an app. i personally use the app Dream Catcher, which lets u tag ur dreams for easy organization. just get in the habit of writing down your dreams every morning, and if you really, really cant remember anything, just write down that you didnt dream anything that day. you’ll train your brain to remember your dreams better

secondly! reality checks! are absolutely imperative! the idea behind them is that, if you do something throughout the day that “proves” your reality, eventually you’ll start doing it in your dreams as well. for example, a common thing in my dreams is that i’ll have extra fingers, so i check my hands a lot throughout the day.

it can’t just be a casual thing, too. if all you do is glance at your hands and b like “yo looks normal, we gucci”, then you’ll do the same in your dreams even if you have Weird hands. trust me, Dream-You is an idiot, you gotta be obvious with this stuff. take a few moments, look at your hands, count out your fingers, and really think to yourself “am i dreaming?”

try to get in the habit of doing that at least 15 times a day, and eventually you’ll start doing it in your dreams too.

now, if you just stick with doing those two things — which is what i’m doing right now — your chances of becoming lucid will raise astronomically. even just those two tiny things can train your brain into realizing when the world around you is real and when it isnt. you can also attempt something really easy called a MILD — a mnemonic-induced-lucid-dream — which can help your chances even more without upping the effort

whenever you go to bed, just take a few moments — even just five minutes can help — and just. lay there. and think to urself, again and again “the next scene will be a dream” or “i will become lucid in my dreams tonight” or something similar. get ur brain really focused on lucid dreaming right before you fall asleep and chances are, those Vibes will bleed over into ur dreams and you’ll become lucid

practice those three things consistently, every day, and pretty soon you’ll start becoming lucid. it takes time, though! dont be discouraged if you end up not becoming lucid for the first few weeks, or even months. sometimes your brain just needs a bit of extra training

that’s what ive been doing for the past year or so — bc damn do i Not have the energy to actually put in too much effort — but!!! there are other techniques!!

my personal favorite is the WBTB, or wake-back-to-bed method. with this technique, you set your alarm for roughly 5-6 hours after you go to sleep so you’ll wake up inside of one of your REM cycles, specifically one where your dreams will be the most vivid. dont do anything, just roll over and go right back to sleep.

you can even use a MILD along with this, repeat whatever mantra u usually use as you fall back asleep. you should start to see hypnagogic imagery — blobs of color and vague shapes floating before your eyes. just observe them. at one point, they’ll start forming more familiar shapes, and places, and maybe even people — and there should be a moment, a snap, where you go from observing these images to actually being in the scene. you literally build the dream around yourself, its magical

i have read that WBTB can cause sleep paralysis, but i’ve never personally experienced any problems with it, aside from the fact that im always tired the next day.

another thing that could severely increase your chances of being lucid but also involves Effort — meditation. specifically mindfulness meditation. the act of bringing full awareness to your Existence, honing in on just Your body, Your mind, Your breath, will make you a more aware, mindful person, which in turn makes you more perceptive of dream signs. also, the ability to clear your mind and center yourself with a moment’s notice really comes in handy when the dream becomes destabilized and you have to take control

if ur an adhd lad like me — or neurodivergent in any way, really — the idea of meditation can be,,,, terrifying. honestly, i havent meditated in like six months now, because it really wasnt?? doing anything for me?? mostly because im absolutely incapable of sitting still for that long without Something to stimulate me

so! loophole! guided meditations. having someone else guide you through the process can make it a bit easier to focus. just find one that works for u on youtube. there are even guided meditations made specifically to prime ur brain for lucid dreaming!

so thats how you get lucid. now for when youre lucid

at first, lucid dreaming is going to be extremely hard. dreams fall apart very easily — if you get too overexcited or if a dream-character looks at you the wrong way or if you cant seem to do what you want to do, your lucidity can fade and you’ll either go back to being your normal dream self or you’ll wake up. dreams are volatile and hard to control, and even harder to master

thats where meditation comes in handy. youll have a much easier time controlling your dreams if you can look at the world around you, take a breath, center yourself, and know that you can control it. that being said, you can absolutely learn to take control without ever having meditated a day in your life. its all about your mindset!

you have to go into it with confidence. the key to controlling your dreams is knowing that they’re your dreams. you cant forget that you’re in control. thats why i feel like learning to lucid dream doubles as a lesson in self-confidence — you have to learn to trust yourself, trust that you can handle any scenario thrown at you and come out on top.

if you can achieve this mindset, you can literally do anything. ive had maybe 50 lucid dreams since i started learning about them — which… is honestly a really low amount, but. i havent really had the time/energy to really throw myself into it as much as i want to. but just in those dreams, ive flown, ive shapeshifted, ive met my sides, ive teleported to vast, gorgeous lands and seen some of the most beautiful things ive ever seen. anything is possible in a lucid dream; thats why its so worth it to put in the effort

but when youre first starting out, itll be extremely hard to maintain that mindset. like i said, Dream-you is dumb as shit — you’ll forget youre dreaming, you’ll be unable to control anything, you’ll wake up before you manage to accomplish anything. more often than not, the dream will destabilize, which is Not Fun

if the dream starts to destabilize — basically, if things start going fuzzy or vague, if you suddenly cant see, if you can feel ur body in bed, basically anything that points towards you waking up — there are ways to fix it. literally just spinning around helps for some reason? spin around, fall down, run ur hands along anything u can find and feel the texture, or just demand that the dream stabilize itself. most of the time, thatll work

and if it doesnt, dont be discouraged. theres always another night to dream

so basically: start a dream journal, do reality checks, mmmmaybe meditate if youre up for it, and your dreams will become like. at least 10x more interesting. trust me, try flying: its literally the best feeling in the entire world

its just !!! such a huge, incredible thing, and its so fascinating to learn about too. all the different ways you can train your brain, all the different things you can do, all the studies done on the subject. i suggest reading about Steven LaBerge or keith hearne. hearne led the study that proved lucid dreaming existed in the first place! he got a lucid dreamer to signal to him that he was conscious while asleep using REM (rapid-eye movement), because lucid dreaming happens during the REM state. also, robert waggoner’s book Gateway to the Inner Self is really fascinating too!

hm wow i really went ham here lmao

thanku for giving me a chance to infodump im very happy rn

#me: /spends a full half-hour infodumping abt something most people havent even heard of/#now if only i could remember this much when it comes to schoolwork lmaooooo #ty for the Infodump Permission im !! vibin rn #lowkey highkey this makes me wanna get back into it. . . might do a wbtb tonight...#personal #logan talks #lucid dreaming #Anonymous

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xollos · 7 years

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can i just bitch about my health for a second? i don’t want attention or sympathy, i just want to bitch. because this past year has been a bitch for me. here’s where i’m at right now.

i’ve never been a great sleeper, but april 2016 saw me hitting some new lows. since then, with very, very few exceptions, i lie awake for hours when i go to bed. it doesn’t matter what time it is, what time i need to wake up, how much sleep i got the night before, how much melatonin i try to take, what i’ve eaten, how active i am, anything. i don’t like caffeinated drinks, even. there’s no fucking good reason for it. it’s just me in my bed, tossing and turning for hours.

sometimes there’s just nothing i can do about it. sometimes changing just the right thing can do the trick. for a month straight i literally couldn’t sleep unless i was laying with my head at the foot of my bed. by the next month i had habitually started sleeping at the foot of my bed, until this particular sleep habit reversed. it’s fitful sleep, with vivid and often disturbing dreams. i wake up a lot.

i never get enough sleep. right now its just before 2 am. i anticipate it will be at least another 2 hours before i actually drift off. i went to bed at 12:30.

i still set an alarm for class. i prepare for the day ahead, packing my bags and setting things out so i can grab them quickly in the morning. i put my phone across the room so i have to get up to turn off the alarm. it never works. even waking up at 1 pm is difficult and exhausting.

that’s another thing- i have never been one for naps, ever. for most of my life i would have on average 1 nap a year, and only after a very late night or a very early morning. but last september, that changed. i started falling asleep in the middle of the day. i started missing class, something i never did except for the very occasional mental health day. but i started missing classes left and right.

it’s hard when i first wake up. my body feels like it’s made of cement, like someone turned the gravity all the way up. i can’t move. all i can do is shuffle across the room, turn the alarm off, and flop back into bed. i want to go to class. i want to learn, and be productive, and get feedback, and see my classmates, and stay on track, and get good grades, and graduate on time. every morning i would mentally scream at myself to get up and go to class. it stopped working a long time ago.

now i wake up at 1 or 1:30 or so and try to force myself to not go back to sleep. my body is heavy. my muscles ache, like i ran a race the day before or something. i can’t move. i stare at the dumb ceiling or scroll through tumblr. i usually have to go to the bathroom. it usually takes an hour to summon enough energy to actually go and do it. i brush my teeth. i take my medicine. the energy i’ve worked up is expended. i flop back into bed, exhausted. my day has begun. it’s almost 3pm.

the last thing i ate was probably about 10pm at the very latest the night before, but i’m not hungry. i’ll eat a bowl of cereal or something in a little while.

even if going to class is about as doable for me as running all the way to pluto, i still want to be productive, and do at least something. finals are here. i have 2 portfolios to organize, a powerpoint, a test, and a very long email full of the work i’ve had to do outside of class because i haven’t been in weeks. i hope it’s enough to be able to not fail. i know what i want to do. i know what i need to include, the details, everything. i’ve got it all planned. there are some personal pieces i’ve been wanting to make. i could at least do that.

but i can’t. my mind is hazy. it’s all static. i dumbly scroll through tumblr all day long. the whole time i’m going through my to do list. i want to complete it and to not have to worry about it anymore. i can’t summon the energy, mental clarity, or motivation. this is new. i was able to do at least something up until last week. i heard that the symptoms of bpd, add, and autism often overlap one another. i thought i had bpd (i’m not so sure now), i was tested (inconclusively) for add, and people have told me i could be autistic. i don’t know what to do to fix my mental state.

i lie in bed all day. i have a couch but it’s uncomfortable when i’m like this. i get up to use the bathroom, but that’s about it. i take a shower automatically at night, so at least there’s that. if i had to think about it, i probably wouldn’t do it. i sweep the floor to at least do something. my muscles still ache with every movement.

i had a seizure back in september. i had a few fainting spells last spring and summer. the first neurologist i went to said it was epilepsy. the second isn’t so sure. he thought it could be something to do with my heart. i had a tilt table test. i fainted 3 minutes into it. they said i was dehydrated. when you faint, your brain is deprived of blood, and your body twitches. did i have a seizure last september? i was sitting down, getting my hair cut. it seems odd that i would faint like that. i had had wine the night before the test. was i hung over? i’ve never been hungover before, and i’ve had way more wine with way less food. i got a headache and puked. hangover or because i fainted? both? i screwed up the test for myself.

it feels like i’ve been sabotaging myself a lot lately, what with me wanting to get things done and not being able to do it. i have the pleasure of being deprived of the opportunity to be in the senior art show because the students organizing it put the announcements for it on the facebook page for the department, which got buried under links to artists i don’t particularly care about made by professors, which is why i don’t look at the facebook page to begin with. if i wasn’t sick, i would have been able to go to class, and maybe my teachers would have talked about it. its so, so hard to do anything but i also feel like i’m not trying hard enough. how hard do you have to try to accomplish the impossible?

my parents are angry that i’m not going to class. i tell them i can’t physically move, and all they say is that i just have to Do It. if it worked like that, i would have Done It.

over the winter i slept up to 15 hours a day. even now it’s hard not to drift off to sleep in the middle of the afternoon, but i try to keep myself awake. i can’t think of a way it would be beneficial, otherwise it would be so easy to stop fighting it off.

the only time it’s hard to sleep now is when i’m actually trying to. all day i lie in bed, comfortable. my mattress is soft, and i have a mattress topper to soften it even more. at night, i might as well be sleeping on a boulder. it becomes so hard and unforgiving. my left leg, which is fine during the day, starts aching, so i can’t sleep on my left side. after a while my right side starts aching, since all my weight is rested on it and i cant roll over onto my left side because of my stupid left leg. for a while propping it up on a couch cushion helped, and it’s still better than nothing, but it’s not enough to prevent pain. i don’t sleep on my back or stomach. my right arm and shoulder especially start to hurt. i wish i could pop my arms off like a barbie doll, because anything past the shoulder isn’t compatible with whatever sleeping configuration my body needs. it still hurts.

i sleep with two pillows. sometimes i can only get to sleep when i have only one, and sometimes i can’t sleep unless my head is sandwiched between both of them. they’re soft pillows, but at night they’re hard as rocks. one time i was only able to get to sleep when i had thrown one pillow off the bed and set the other one diagonally instead of horizontally. one night i stayed awake until i played lindsey stirling’s crystallize on loop. no other song but that one would work, for some reason. it hasn’t worked since.

i’m so tired, and my body hurts so much, but everything is so uncomfortable. i hate it so much. how am i supposed to get a job and keep it like this? i’m about to graduate college, and i’m going to be on my own financially. i have no idea how i’m going to provide for myself. i’m not looking for people to tell me that it sucks and they’re sorry. i just want to complain to someone without making them feel bad for me. i would also like for things to go back to normal.

#no1curr

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