Therapies focused on lucid dreaming could be useful for treating various sleep disorders and other conditions. Still, one major roadblock is the paucity of systematic information on the consequences of attempting these sorts of dreams. The current study sought to quantify positive and negative aspects of seeking lucid dreams, describe their phenomenology in detail, and identify features associated with positive or negative experiences. Observational data from a massive lucid-dream discussion forum were analyzed to capture lucid-dreaming themes. Forum posts were independently rated on multiple dimensions hypothesized to contribute to the valence of lucidity-related phenomena. Our results revealed that lucid dreams can end nightmares and prevent their recurrence, but they can also induce harrowing dysphoric dreams. The realization of dreaming (lucidity) and dreams with high control were both associated with positive experiences. We translated our results into a process model that describes the progression from lucid-dream induction to waking benefit, identifying potential areas of concern. Our results and model suggest that negative outcomes primarily result from failed induction attempts or lucid dreams with low dream control, and that successfully inducing high-control lucid dreams poses low risk for negative outcomes. Lucid dreaming has valuable therapeutic and recreational potential, but a better understanding of the risks is required. Our findings provide new insights into possible negative repercussions and how to avoid them in future applications.

Nightmares disrupt sleep health and predict future psychiatric diagnosis, yet reliable population estimates and their fluctuations over time are difficult to obtain. Here, we observe an increase in dysphoric dreaming shared on Reddit immediately following the World Health Organization's declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. This "digital dream surveillance" approach might offer the field of sleep medicine a low-cost and real-time system for monitoring population sleep health.

The application of lucid-dreaming therapy as a treatment for sleep disorders is hampered by a lack of information about the variable consequences of attempting these sorts of dreams. The current study sought to quantify positive and negative aspects of seeking lucid dreams, describe their phenomenology in detail, and identify features associated with positive or negative experiences. Observational data from a massive lucid-dream discussion forum was analyzed to capture lucid-dreaming themes. Forum posts were independently rated on multiple dimensions hypothesized to contribute to the valence of lucidity-related phenomena. Our results revealed that lucid dreams can end recurring nightmares, but they can also induce harrowing dysphoric dreams. The realization of dreaming was less likely to be associated with negative experiences, and dreams with high control were associated with positive experiences. We translated our results into a process model that describes the progression from lucid-dream induction to waking benefit, identifying potential areas of concern. Our results and model suggest that successfully inducing high-control lucid dreams poses low risk for negative outcomes, and that negative outcomes primarily result from failed induction attempts or lucid dreams with low dream control. Whereas lucid dreaming has valuable therapeutic and recreational potential, our findings provide critical insight into its negative associations, with recommendations for how to avoid them in future applications.

No abstract

Introduction Nightmares are a critical component of multidimensional sleep health. Frequent nightmare recallers suffer reduced sleep length, depressed mood, and are more likely to be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder in the future. Reliable population estimates of nightmare frequency are difficult to obtain and often restricted to rigid timepoints (e.g., once per year). Thus, there is a need for low-cost methods to track population levels of nightmare frequency and their dynamic changes over time. In the current study, we tracked dream content and nightmare frequency using a popular new approach – digital health surveillance – that analyzes language of public and freely-accessible social media posts to track population characteristics. Methods To evaluate whether social media could detect known changes in population sleep health, we extracted posts from r/Dreaming, a popular subreddit dedicated to dream sharing. Prior survey studies have shown a reliable increase in nightmare frequency during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, we quantified the amount of nightmares posted on Reddit surrounding the World Health Organization’s (WHO) declaration of a COVID-19 as a global pandemic. Nightmares were identified using a word-search algorithm that identified nightmare-related words in a post title. Nightmare frequency was compared before and after the WHO declaration using a chi-squared analysis. Results The percentage of dreams posted on Reddit that were identified as nightmares was higher after the WHO declaration than before (p < .05). Additionally, the amount of anxiety in all dreams posted on Reddit was higher after the WHO declaration than before (p < .05). Weekly change in dream anxiety was positively correlated with the percentage of COVID-19 news headlines (p < .05). Conclusion We observed an increase in nightmares shared on Reddit immediately following the WHO’s declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. This novel approach to tracking nightmares might offer the field of sleep medicine a low-cost and real-time system for monitoring population sleep health. Other recent work suggests this method might be viable for tracking other components of sleep health. Support (if any)