Depression Talk

Lucid dreams can greatly benefit someone with major depression. However, lucid dreams are not an overnight cure.

(Sorry. Runs and ducks for cover.)

Anyway

Lucid dreams are special dreams when you realize that you are dreaming. Some people describe it as “waking up” while still in the dream. Some people are born being able to lucid dream, others need to learn it. Some others (like me) were born with it, forgot how to do it as I got older and had ro re-learn the process all over again.

The Benefits

There are many benefits for a depressive to learn the art of lucid dreaming. Here are just a few:

• They’re fun. In my lucid dreams, I’ve been able to fly, talk to God (who was drunk at the time, so it wasn’t much of a conversation), ride wild horses and have romantic encounters with Peter Gabriel.
• They’re cheap therapy. Antidepressants and other medications for mental illness alone will not make you feel reasonably normal. In order for the antidepressants to help do the voodoo they do, you need to be very aware of your thinking and if you constantly beat yourself up in your thoughts or go to extremes.
• They help give you a sense of perception. It’s very hard to get an overall picture of how your life is because depression puts all these painful bits in the way. It’s like trying to get around at night with dark sunglasses on. Alll you see is the darkness.
• You can safely confront your nightmares. And see that they’re not so bad. I’ve even died in my dreams — no big deal.

Recognizing Dreams

Unless you have a really good memory, you need to keep a dream diary or journal for a couple of months. In this way, you get to recognize certain patterns in your dreams. These will be people, objects or situations that come up again and again. For example, many people report that words on a written page blur and change each time you look at it. For others, they may see clocks running backwards or suddenly leaping ahead hours when only seconds have gone by.

It can be hard to distinquish lucid dreams from real life. But if the laws of physics go out the window, I know it’s a dream (or really good drugs). For example, in the waking world, if I unplug a television, it stops working. But in the dream world, I unplug a television and it still keeps on working. Sometimes I then become fixated on how to turn the damn telly off, missing the fact that the telly is not importnat because I’m dreaming.

In this way, we can see the unplugged tellys in our waking life and realize that they are only distractions from the big picture.