That kind of sounds like a strategy to trigger lucid dreaming. I've heard that if you envision a specific thing while falling asleep, like for example the StarCraft menu screen, then it will appear somewhere in your dream. When it does, it's supposed to sort of jostle you into consciousness but not wake you up.
It seems that what this person's friend did with his free will in dream land is nope right out of there. He could have turned that nightmare into something awesome though!
I just don’t dream… anything. I remember having dreams as a kid, and I remember what it felt like waking up, knowing I’d had a dream, but forgetting it. But anymore, I just don’t have any dreams anymore.
I started lucid dreaming when I was about 8 years old. This was before google, and when I asked my parents about it, they had no idea what I was talking about. So I didn’t know what exactly was happening, but I did know it was super gay to be conscious while sleeping, so I spent a few weeks figuring out how to forget I was dreaming. I eventually succeeded, but ever since I’ve had the ability to think “Oh, this is a nightmare, I need to wake up.” and open my eyes, wide awake.
My nightmares largely stopped after being awake tired af and terrified of sleeping, when I said "damn you nightmares, you can't scare me into sleep deprivation! I'm coming in there and I'm gonna fight back", and then went right back to sleep. I don't know what nightmare I had that drove me to get angry at my nightmares, I didn't even have a plan to fight back. But that's when it stopped, when I stopped being afraid of them.
I remember in middle school I'd always come home with the worst headaches but then I'd just imagine what I did today and select what's important and what's not as if they were files in file manager and drag what I didn't think was important to the recycling bin. It worked too
That's hilarious because I've done the same exact thing before except it was the watch menu from the Goldeneye Nintendo64 James Bond game. It worked for several years as a young lad.
Starcraft 2 is seriously the only game that's ever given me performance anxiety. There were days when I'd sit down to play and I'd already have nerves and just nope right out and watch GSL VODs of pro players instead. Seeing your rating and all that, Platinum to Diamond, then Diamond to Master, that game was rough and you were always at risk of cheese and basically getting harassed to death playing a traditional build order
For some reason, almost all my dreams are lucid, which means I know I'm in a dream. They're stupid, nonsensical, and usually have people I knew, but have not seen, or thought about in a long time. Occasionally I have a vivid one, which means it seems real. You all know this, just stating it for those who may not know what that means.
Most of my vivid dreams are me trying to find something, or someone in some urban environment, with a sense of urgency. Just me searching for something, someone, or trying to get to some undefined place. Sometimes there are other people, sometimes not, but they never end up helping in my search.
In one of the most vivid memorable ones, it was night, and I was outside of a motel, looking into one of the rooms that had glass walls facing outside. The lights in the room were off, but there were blue, purple, and pink neon business advertisement marquee lights behind me, faintly illuminating the room. I could see living room style furniture, a bar, stools, etc.
I walked around to the side of the building, there was a 2 lane highway, that stretched straight ahead as far as I could see, with multiple hills. Along the both sides of the highway, there were buildings, that were illuminated with typical white highway lights, but the dominant light was blue, purple, and pink neon marquee signs. The entire night sky was illuminated with them.
That one is burned into my memory, it was so vivid, and real. It probably represents loneliness. I'm sure it does.
I also manage to annoy TF out of my wife at being able to go from fully asleep to bouncing out of the bed like a piece of toast in under 10 seconds.
About the only thing that can impact this is severe sleep deficit, which - years ago - mean less than 3-4hrs in a night, but these days (in my sixth decade) means anything less than 5hrs of sleep in a night or less than 7 after multiple days of a sleep deficit.
My newest objective is to lessen to the background people and write as much of their conversations down as i can. As soon as I'm lucid I stop and start to lessen. Depending on where I am I turn and get as close as I can to people. I've yet to succeed but I got the idea from someone who said it's one of the biggest trips.
I had sleep paralysis three times in my 43 years. It feels like someone is in the room and you try to scream but nothing comes out. You just have to force yourself back to sleep.
I've woken myself up from several unpleasant dreams and nightmares before by literally just going "fuck this, I'm out."
I think I'm often aware that I'm dreaming, but I don't really lucid dream because my dreams are generally more interesting than anything I could consciously come up with anyway. So more often than not I'm just content to be along for the ride.
I remember the first time I woke myself from a bad dream. I was pretty young, and in my dream I was being chased by a monster and I suddenly realized that it was a dream and I could chase the monster back. So I turned around (in my dream) and started to chase the fucker.