Table 3.

Paraphrased negative theme examples

Negative theme	Representative post excerpts
Lucid dysphoria	My lucid dreams become nightmares, can anyone help!? I get a chill down my spine whenever I recognize the dream. It’s scary Once lucid, it’s like the harder I attempt to change the dream, the wilder they become. Sometimes they change into nightmares, like the time I tried to influence the dream but instead the zombie apocalypse began One time, while lucid, I wanted to know what death would feel like. At some point, a nuclear blast hit. My vision stopped and I was awash in a horrible smell from the other dead people. I started to suffocate but could not wake up
Poor sleep	I have daily vivid lucid dreams that are so intense I feel exhausted when I wake up. I am more restless in the morning than I was before I went to sleep the night before After waking up for MILD, I just stayed awake despite efforts to become lucid After a while, all the lucidity becomes tiring and I just want to relax
Reality confusion	I just perform a reality check whenever I wake up because I get false awakenings a lot I had a long and scary series of false awakening recently. I repeatedly woke up and noticed something dream-like to trigger lucidity I feel like I looped for more than an hour, but eventually I woke up for real But I didn’t really wake up. I had only awoke in my dream At this point, I struggle to determine whether I’m dreaming or awake. It’s bad and making me feel strange
Sleep paralysis	Scared and immobilized. Not even able to scream. So then I figure I’m likely in sleep paralysis But as soon as I am close to sleeping, an odd sound makes me think something is crawling towards me There are still demons around me during sleep paralysis, but they don’t bother me anymore I won’t try to lucid dream just because I’m nervous about getting sleep paralysis When I try to MILD I hear strange noises, like a ringing
Unwanted lucid dreams	How can I stop lucid-dreaming?? They’re great, but sometimes it’s too much Once I was lucid-dreaming long enough that I became bored and just wanted to have a non-lucid dream. I woke myself up but fell back into another lucid dream. Eventually I lost lucidity, but it took a bit too long