oHi guys, I was wondering whether you guys feel like you're more likely to get lucid within a postive or negative themed dream, or whether it has no influence?
In my own experience, most of the dreams I have tend to be neutral, although I dream about things that COULD be construed as negative, I very rarely have a strong emotional reaction to them, so I consider the overall theme neutral. However, the emotionally themed lucid dreams I can remember tend to be negatively themed. Of course, that could just be a bias because our dream content tends to be more negative anyway.
In addition to this, from most of the reports I've seen from "natural" lucid dreamers or people that started learning to lucid dream from a young age, it's usually as a way to overcome nightmares.
So, I wonder if negative dreams are more likely to produce lucid dreams compared to postive dreams, or whether it just seems that way due to the fact that our dreams are more likely to be negative.
A
I'm not sure, if I have had enough lucid experiences to really identify a pattern, but one thing that often happens in negative dreams is, that I wish I was dreaming at a point where I notice things to be going real bad haha. Before I got into lucid dreaming, it would just result im me waking up, but the last time it happened a reality check was triggered (still woke up, before I knew the result though 😶). For the raw data, I got lucid 2 times in negative themed dreams, where 1 was by far the worst nightmare I've had in a while and 2 times in positive themed dreams. The majority of my dreams are neutral and I have about the same amount of really negative and really positive dreams :)
For me the negative themed dreams are definitely the ones that get me lucid most of the time. If something negative happens my first thoughts are often 'I wish this was only a dream' and 'Oh no did this actually just happen?'. This leads me to do a dream test and therefore I get lucid. I did get lucid in positive themed dreams too a few times, but I tend to stick to the plot if it is pleasant.
I have gotten lucid in negative, positive and neutral dreams but I don't have a lot or negative dreams. Like you, some of the ones I classify as neutral, others may classify as negative though, from the outside looking in. I definitely prefer getting lucid from positive dreams and I have done so plenty of times, so that is where I would personally put my focus, perhaps even if that may not end up being the most productive path. I'm currently off my game and not getting lucid as much as I'd like.
BTW, I look forward to hear more about your experiment mentioned in chat. I hope you continue to have positive results. Even if you do not every night, that could be chalked up to the way that there are so many variables as to whether we get lucid as well as to what affects the content of our dreams. If there's anything we can do to push or even nudge it in one direction, that is welcome for sure!