Lucid dreaming is the ability where you can control your dreams by remaining sentient while asleep. Lucid dreams are often touted as the perfect ensemble of helping you enjoy your dreams while reducing nightmares and anxiety. However, individuals looking to learn always have the same question: “is lucid dreaming bad for you?”

Well, the grass is always greener on the other side, and there are both pros and cons of lucid dreaming. So, sit tight, get your dreaming journal ready, and let’s address the benefits and risks of lucid dream

The Benefits of Lucid Dreaming

Lucid Dreams Are Your Canvass, and You’re the Artist

In a lucid dream, you’ll get to be the artist of your mind. For instance, you’re a fiction writer experiencing writer’s block that stops you from writing. By exploring your subconscious creativity in a lucid dream, you’ll get to expand your creativity and imagination by experiencing true omnipotence in your dream. Everything will be under your control. If you want to experience the sensation of flight without its risk, you can. The sky’s the limit, after all.

Moreover, once you wake up, you can get valuable insights you have retained from your dream and use them to increase real-world productivity and creativity. You’ll learn how to tackle mental blocks into bursts of creativity or turn bad situations into good ones.

Lucid Dreaming Helps You Decrease Nightmar

We all dread waking up with beads of sweat all over the body, all because of a nightmare. After all, who would want to experience the terrible feeling of being helpless in an uncontrollable situation? Thankfully, by learning how to control your dreams, you can realize that you’re having a nightmare and mitigate the dream from spiraling further.

Individuals who are constantly stressed, anxious, depressed, or sleep-deprived often suffer from nightmares. Thankfully, lucid dreams are beneficial when you’re suffering from those problems. By learning how to banish nightmares, you can reduce nightmare-related anxiety. Plus, lucid dreaming can also help relieve PTSD-induced anxiety..

Lucid Dreams Help You Reflect on Your Personality

Lucid dreaming gives you full access to your subconscious mind that is otherwise unavailable when awake. You get to feel enveloped in your own personal sanctum for personal reflection—which is the best place for deep meditation. By accessing the full potential of your subconscious, you can gain remarkable hidden aspects of your psyche that you aren’t fully aware of.

Furthermore, lucid dreaming lets you feel more aware of yourself. You’ll no longer feel helpless and let yourself be the victim of your own emotion and psyche. After all, lucid dreaming teaches you how to control your mind. By continuously lucid dreaming, your newly found control of the mind will aid future decisions in life.

Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that you can do everything in your dream by the time you wake up. You’ll still be limited by the waking world. Nonetheless, you can use valuable insights gained from a lucid dream to find motivation in improving yourself.

Lucid Dreaming Will Improve Your Real-World Awareness

One of the best benefits you’ll gain from lucid dreaming is increasing your attentiveness and comprehension in all situations. Like astrology, to successfully experience lucid dreaming, you need to be fully aware that you’re dreaming. This heightened sense of awareness helps you explore your subconscious and negate opposing thoughts. In doing so, you become more mindful of the contents of your dreams which in turn lets you create opportunities for lucid living and in the real world.

What’s more is that by cultivating your awareness in lucid dreams, you’ll learn to be more aware of yourself around others while awake. You’ll get to compose your thoughts first before communicating with others, and you can relate to others further, both of which are essential in improving relationships with loved ones..

The Dangers of Lucid Dreamin

Derealization

Escapism, the act of running away from real problems and distracting oneself with entertainment, is one of the two most significant risks of lucid dreaming. This particular risk arises when you become too attached to the world you create in your dreams and negate the waking world. Furthermore, individuals who aren’t used to facing problems head-on might exacerbate escapism through lucid dreams.

Keep in mind, though, that escapism doesn’t affect everyone. If you find yourself looking forward to a lucid dream rather than finishing work, chances you’re using lucid dreaming to escape reality. If you’re prone to suffering from escapism, it’s essential to realize that lucid dreams aren’t real and won’t help you solve your problems. After all, lucid dreaming tends to bury reality deep in your subconscious and lets you substitute reality to your liking.

Dissociation

Similar to maladaptive dreaming, memory dissociation can potentially be your biggest problem in lucid dreaming. Since lucid dreaming blurs reality and dreams, you might experience disconnection from the real world and your surroundings. This risk is hazardous since you might recall crafted conversations with friends that never happened. In doing so, you might get into uncalled arguments due to memory dissociation.

If you’re having trouble separating dreams from reality, you should momentarily stop lucid dreaming. After all, if you’ve dreamt of a favorable situation and later realize that all of it didn’t happen, you might spiral into depression or experience anxiety.

Should You Try Lucid Dreaming?

Lucid dreaming comes with a sack full of benefits with a handful of risk alongside it. The benefits you’ll get from lucid dreaming helps you discover your subconscious and sharpen your mind. Furthermore, by learning how to control your mind in lucid dreams, you gain the advantage of learning how to transform your waking life.

However, if you’re suffering from mental health disorders, lucid dreaming might not be best for you. Consider talking to a sleep specialist or a therapist before trying lucid dreaming. All in all, it’s up to you if you want to try lucid dreaming for yourself. You never know; you might find out something within you that you aren’t aware of.