Dream Manipulating: A “How To”
People say that lucid dreaming is possible! I don’t know about that, but I do have some tips on how to manipulate your dreamscape and perhaps remember those dreams better too!
This piece was originally written by me for a friend about a year ago. He had lamented to me how he wished he could remember his dreams better. He knew I remember mine almost every night and that I can also change the direction my dreams are going and sometimes even “do what I want.” I had also been wanting to share my experience with dreams and their manipulation, and had just been waiting for an excuse to write a little D.I.Y. list. So, I wrote this little ditty up.
Now, below I have a little disclaimer about my prowess, but I would like to further expound upon my background, so you know where I come from and why my brain may work the way it does.
I am a 23 year old, female empath who is also an introvert. For the Meyer’s Briggs I took my sophomore year of college, I came up INFP. I have also been blessed with the gift/curse of an overactive imagination. So as a young child, ever since I can remember, I was plagued by night terrors.
I feared sleeping and darkness — both places where my imaginations ran unrestrained into the depths of my weird and often creepy mind. I hated sleeping, and as such, did my best to stay in the realm of the conscious as long as I possibly could. I didn’t take naps. I couldn’t sleep in. And falling asleep took over an hour every night, much to my parents chagrin.
It used to embarrass me that I was so overly fond of being conscious, because it didn’t seem like anyone shared my sentiments or my problems. My best friends growing up could fall asleep on a dime during sleepovers — while I laid awake trying to keep the creepy images that lurked in my subconscious at bay. Even within a large group of kids all sleeping together, I felt terrified. My aunt and uncle used to mock me for waking up earlier than their children or my brothers, and act like it was a burden to give me something to do while we waited for the others to awaken for breakfast.
I used to be much more quiet and often kept to myself as a child. I’m observant and don’t engage with other people until I know I have a reason to (aka I have something in common with someone else), and I often kept my problems and thoughts to myself. Other people liked sleeping and were good at it, so I didn’t tell them I was afraid of sleeping and sucked at it too.
Up until I was in middle school, I needed to fall asleep with the lights on, all the closet doors closed, my door cracked open, and one of my parents (usually my dad) present. Until middle school! I tried so hard to not be afraid, but it had control over my life, although I was/am strangely a positive and fun-loving, goofy individual. I say all of this just to explain my relationship to my subconscious and other consciouses. I have a very close relationship and bond to my mind — it has been both my greatest enemy and my greatest friend, as I believe it is for all people.
I knew I could use my imagination for great and wonderful things, as well as bad. I had a great mind for play-acting and story-telling, and always wanted to be writer; weaving narratives in my head. It has only been in my adulthood that I have come to more positive conclusions about my mind and my dreams. I truly believe that my brain — that knows more about me than even I do — has been training me my whole life. I think it knew I needed to be able to harness all aspects of my consciousness, something that I am still working towards.
As a child, our minds can’t handle the things our brains already know about being a human. It seems to me, that it almost puts things on reserve for us — till we’re ready. But I also believe that, as a child, we simply interpret data and experiences differently. I couldn’t understand the evil and seemingly terrifying things of the world — they made no sense to me. The grotesque was so foreign, it hurt me and my mind ran with the images it saw and my dreams splashed violence like pictures all over my mindscape, searching for an answer to the madness.
My childmind couldn’t take it, but I think it made my mind, and me as both human and a goddess, better for it. I have a strong mind and, honestly, function at a high output of consciouness. My sleep is light and short and I still cannot really nap to this day. My mind loves to be awake and thinking, and now that I am older, it loves dreaming as well. To be fair, I have always loved dreaming! But I think that’s why I was confused and hurt about and by my mind as well.
Once again, all of this exposé is all just so you, the reader can get to know me better, and then hopefully yourselves better too! I really do love dreaming, and I am a very active participant in the many stages of my dreams. I also want to give hope to those that feel stuck in the cycle of stressful or terror-inducing dreams — you can love your mind again! I still have the stress-dreams every once in a while, but that makes sense with all the stress we humans have in our lives. We’ve got to sort it all out sometime.
I also occasionally still have the creepy or gory dream, but I am much better now at recognizing when a dream is about to go sour, and can usually turn it around without waking up. Below, in my orignal ‘how to’ piece, I try to help you learn to recognize that your dreaming and how to manipulate your dream. I think active participation in anything, even in dreams, can help you better remember the thing, it just makes it stick when you’re conscious about what you’re doing. Thus, I also try to give you some tips on how to better remember your wacky dreams upon waking up.
This is by no means a comprehensive list, or the only way to go about dream and consciousness exploring. This works for me, but it will not work for everyone, everytime — it doesn’t even work 100% for me! But I just hope it helps, and thanks for reading ❤
Dream Manipulating/Remembering Tips & How To
Ally Christofferson
Disclosure: I have been sub/unconsciously training my dream self for almost 23 years. Because most of what I do is in the dream world, and wasn’t the direct conscious effort of my ‘awake’ self, I am not positive the results they can yield. I just hope any of it helps!
1. Recognition
i. First thing’s first, recognize you are in the dreamworld. This may seem obvious, but most of the time we are dreaming, we are not consciously (or maybe even subconsciously) aware of it. I believe this is why most people don’t “remember” their dreams — they weren’t active participants in them.
ii. To recognize that you are dreaming, see if you can make your dream self pinpoint what is different or off about the dreamscape. (You could try with characters or with sensation, but I find landscape most telling and most obvious.)
iii. If the dream is supposed to be taking place “at home”, what does this “supposed home” look like? Is it your apartment? Is it the house you grew up in? Is it someone’s house you’ve been to once? Or is it a school? Most of my dreams are set at someplace I am supposed to be currently living; however, I usually become aware in the dream that this is NOT actually my apartment, but somewhere that is just acting in its place. Once I become aware of this fact, other discrepancies in the dream are more easily apparent (but still difficult to pinpoint or control, especially for extended periods of dreamtime).
2. Pinpoint
i. This is where things get a little trickier for me, as my conscious actions go in and out of syrupy dreamtime that is certainly anything but linear. The other idiosyncrasy of my talent of dream-awareness is that the awareness is usually sparked by violence or gore that my dream self either receives as a premonition of (which I believe is based on context*) or is suddenly confronted with.
- If it is a premonition, my dreamself usually picks up on context clues, perhaps from or similar to other dreams, and then receives it in the form of tangible vibes. I can then often guess what it going to happen next, or sometimes I even KNOW it (dream deja-vu), but am not directly witnessing it.
- Once I realize this, I will usually forcefully change the dream, look away or change direction from the event or perceived event, or I will force myself awake. This usually depends on severity of feelings in the dreamworld.
- I am often shocked awake, but I have been able to choose to wake up out of emotionally distressing dreams NOT involving violence or spooks. These dreams usually involve Kellen (my husband), a best friend, or family member and a theme of neglect.
ii. It would seem, then, that emotional distress is one of the easier ways to pinpoint dream discrepancies or the parts of the dream you want to change. This suggests to me that we perceive pain and fear with very tangible bodily responses. I believe our dreamworlds are always trying to tell us something, even if it is in the most abstract ways. My dreams forced me every night to confront the dark I shut out in the day. My dreamlife was painful because I resisted and ran from my dreamfears, instead of confronting them or letting me feel them out and then react.
- If you don’t have any subconscious emotional distress or fear, you are very lucky, but then I am not so sure how to help you (or how ‘human’ you are?). I don’t think this fear needs to be as traumatic or negative as mine, but I think that you must start training yourself to be vulnerable with your dream-conscious mind.
- The first couple times of vulnerability may result in resurfacing or in changing the dream too much that that particular dream memory fades into the circular dreamtime. However, I have found resurfacing purposefully can often help cement in the dreamactions in your mind.
3. Interact
i. I basically already discussed this, but once you 1) become aware you’re in the dream and you 2) pinpoint the event you want to change, it is time to 3) interact with your dreamworld consciously.
- Locate an awareness of a feeling toward that dream.
- Once you know the feeling (for example, “I’m creeped out”), decide to change that feeling or to leave it behind.
- This notion of “leaving” a part of the dream is helpful; it can be like exiting a stage or changing scenes.
- I will often attempt to make whatever POV in the dream that is looking at things turn away or I think, “I don’t want to be here”.
ii. IMPORTANT: don’t confuse leaving a dreamscene with waking up. Of course, sometimes my mind and body receive mixed signals, and based on how powerful the emotion of wanting to leave is, I can sometimes wake up from a dream I was simply intending to leave and move on from; however, when this happens, I can usually fall back to sleep quickly and fall back into the same dream.
- For falling back into the same dream, I simply suggest that when you wake up, to not let yourself be too consciously aware that it you are awake. Don’t keep your eyes open, don’t try to think about the dream TOO much (maybe a little, to jog your memory or to tell your brain what you DON’T want to go back to dreaming), but simply get comfortable and fall back to sleep. Or try to.
- So, if you do want to escape the whole landscape of the dream and wake, however, after steps 1 and 2, just think about how you want to wake up. Often, for me, it is just some voice or thought in my head that simply shouts or at least is emphatic about WAKE UP. And then I do.
4. Try it out!
i. I hope these techniques more or less make sense, and if they do, then try them out! You have to understand; most dream manipulation is done in almost exclusively the sub- and un- conscious. Honing these faculties, for me, has been mostly done while in the dream state, or subconsciously in waking life. Only recently (in the last 4 years or so) have I become more aware of my abilities — I am still making progress and discoveries for myself.
Enjoy getting to know your dreamself!
