Facing your fears through lucid dreaming may help you overcome a phobia, study suggests

 A recent study offers evidence that lucid dreaming may be an effective tool for overcoming irrational phobias. Just under half of participants who confronted a fear through lucid dreaming reported a reduction in fear after awakening. The findings are set to be published in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.

During a lucid dream, a person becomes aware that they are dreaming and may even be able to influence the course of their dream. Lucid dreaming has been scientifically studied in the lab and tends to occur during REM sleep, the stage of the sleep cycle associated with rapid eye movements and vivid dreaming.

Psychology studies have suggested that this type of dreaming can be used for therapeutic purposes, for example, to reduce the occurrence of nightmares and improve sleep quality. The researchers behind the new study wanted to investigate whether lucid dreaming might be helpful for treating fears and phobias that are unrelated to dreams. Within a lucid dream, a person can explore a frightening situation from the physical world while remaining in a safe environment.

"We study everything related to phase states like sleep paralysis, lucid dreams, false awakenings, etc," said study author Michael Raduga, the founder of the Phase Research Center. "One of the main goals is to research its application opportunities. Many lucid dreaming practitioners report overcoming fears and even phobias due to their practice, and we decided to know more about it.

For their study, Raduga and his co-authors recruited an online sample of 76 people who were familiar with lucid dreaming. These subjects were asked to induce a lucid dream and then to confront an object of their fear within the dream. The participants reported their level of fear before the dream and during the dream. After waking up, they indicated whether their level of fear increased, decreased, or stayed the same compared to before their lucid dream.

The researchers were able to analyze reports from 55 participants. These results indicated that most participants' initial fear levels were high, with 71% reporting strong fear before the lucid dreaming. Upon waking up, 51% of participants reported that their fear stayed the same, and 49% reported that their fear decreased. Notably, none of the participants said that their fear had increased after the dreaming...<<<Read More>>>...