While the lucid dreaming comments may work, there is a lot of trial/error/luck to it, I think.

I had accidental lucid dreaming as a kid but have failed to do so as an adult. I have tried numerous times, even with considering suggestions from people online. Therefore, I will come at this from experiences I have had without intentional lucid dreaming. (Possible that I reached a point of accidental lucid dreaming during these, but hope it helps, nonetheless!)

Finding “perfect” hiding places after/during a chase.

Recognizing that waking up from a similar/the same situation very recently (eg the movie Inception) is basically impossible. Even if you have brain damage, the duration of a day and night are fairly difficult to ignore. Brain damage or medicine/drug use is more like losing chunks of time that feel lost vs waking up repeatededly and/or in short order.

I (at least once recently) had a scare that felt like sleep paralysis and/or attempted demonic possession. Basically, I was sleeping but “felt” awake but couldn’t move/make sound and felt like darkness was “hunting” me. It was scary af. I just kept trying to scream or yell “ahhh”. I think I tried it about 8+ times before I woke up finally. Each time I screamed, it got louder…slowly. I knew I was breaking free slowly, but it was extremely scary and I felt like if I didn’t escape, I would be trapped/taken forever.

Depending on the feeling of the dream, you can sometimes play in/with it. This touches on the accidental side of lucid dreaming, I think, but I have had variations of feeling afraid and then treating it as a game, such as hide’n’seek or even flipping it to start finding/hunting the thing that feels like the agressor. Not sure I recall enough details to explain specific examples, but hope this general explanation helps!

Edit: typo

So id caution against resorting to extreme measures, especially if you are unsure of what is reality. That can have very permanent consequences.

It sounds like you’re close to being aware its a dream when its happening. You can start to recognize the signs and when that happens you should be able to assert control over your dream. Check out lucid dreaming, spinning around in the dream is a popular technique.

When I was young until about 16 I had night terrors. ID walk around my house seeing demons trying to get in. Would wake my parents up by slamming doors and putting sticks in the windows to stop them from opening. Spooky shit would crawl down the walls, dead ghost girls would climb into my bed. Grim reaper would stand in the middle of the room imperceptibly moving to stare at me with hollow sockets. They were terrifying ordeals and I feel you. My dreams went away when I started smoking pot honestly. Once I was done with that the horror movie dreams came back but not the night terrors. I write the real fucked up ones down as outlines to short stories. Maybe one day I will write a book thats a collection of them. Helps me cope.

As someone who has suffered from night terrors and other disturbingly vivid dreams, I would recommend starting to do “wake checks”.

Set an alarm on your phone to go off every few hours at random times during the day. When the alarm goes off, do something that produces a reliable result, like turning a light on/off, turning on a faucet, checking the time on a clock, or pinching yourself. Make your checks as varied as possible, and do them in a different order from day to day, because you don’t want the results to become part of a pattern.

Once you are in the habit of doing that, start doing those checks any time something ‘out of the norm’ happens. What ‘out of the norm’ means is up to you, but essentially any time you think that something is weird or out of place, do a check. What you are doing is training yourself to check whether you are in reality or not.

Once you start doing that, you will probably continue that habit when you end up in a dream. However, these checks will not produce reliable results when you do them in a dream. Turning on the faucet won’t make it give water, the time will change drastically, lights won’t turn on when you flip the switch, etc. These are now your cues to see if you are awake or not. If one of these things ever DOES start to give reliable results in a dream, stop using it immediately and substitute a different one.

Once you have a way of determining if you are awake or not, you have a way to wake up. Most people wake up after realizing they are in a dream, and even if you don’t, realizing you are dreaming should result in a massive shift in what is happening in the dream.

One warning though: if you have night terrors where you end up paralyzed, you will want to have a contingency plan. My night terrors usually started in a situation where I was unable to move, and that is the main reason I struggled with them for over a decade. The only thing that helped there was meditation where I would focus on “feeling” my fingers and toes and how they moved, and then getting myself in the habit of using that meditation as an anxiety response. Doing that in a dream will usually end up waking me up because it forces my brain to focus and eventually move my body irl.

I don’t quite understand. Do you attain lucidity? You should be able to alter reality in a lucid dream.

lucid dreaming would be my recommendation… its a little hard to do, but a great way is to ask yourself ‘how did I get here’ every time you cross a threshold like a doorway or hallway. eventually you’ll start asking yourself this in your sleep, and if you have no idea, you’re dreaming… this is normally when i fly away.

I too think lucid dreaming is the way to go. Maybe there are even some smart watches that can detect the increased heartrate and wake you. I know the Garmin Watches scream loudly af if they detect an irregular heartbeat.

One more thing on Lucid dreaming tho. Go slow and either take full control immediately to wake up or try to do only the smallest corrections if you want to stay in your dream At least for me it feels terrible when your consciousness takes over from your subconscious. It feels like I’m tearing my mind apart, and if I’d had to guess it’s the closest that I will ever feel to going insane.

I have a technique, but I don’t know if it applies to anybody else: whenever I want to wake up from a dream, I shut my eyes and squeeze them tight, then open them really fast/hard. When I do the opening part, I’m always awakened.

Hope it helps…

I suffer night terrors, not horribly frequently, but frequently enough that they are memorable experiences. I wake up screaming and I apparently scream very loudly.

Entertainingly they have a common theme across all the years I’ve been having them (they started in my teens, so over 40 years). The always feature men in black leather trenchcoats (think SS), dogs, concertina razor wire, an cliff’s edges.

I always end up dead either from machine gun fire or going over the cliff.

I blame The Great Escape.

I would love to be able to wake up before the screaming starts.

Any tips on how to wake up during nightmares

I’ve had vivid nightmares for the last 10 years due to antidepressants and on/off cannabis use.

Even if the situation is terrifying, I eventually found peace in knowing I’m getting rest.

Let’s say I wake up now and can’t go back to sleep. It’ll be what, like 2am/3am? Now the rest of my day is fucked. Was it really worth waking up?

I had something similar ptsd and all that jazz i couldn’t wake up but I found learning about lucid dreaming helped me control my dreams to be something I wanted. It was like my own holodeck. It doesn’t always work if i go to bed stressed out but it helps on the nights I can realize I’m dreaming.

I’ve had very similar dreams, especially the part about constantly fake-waking up. One method I’ve found to work is to shut my eyes then open them in a kinda exaggerated / forceful way to wake myself up.

Always have a book by your bed and grab it, because you can’t read when you’re asleep. If you read one paragraph and then go back and re-read it, it will be different each time when you’re dreaming

Did you try being bored by it? “Oh it’s one of those nightmares again, let’s get it over with. Where is the monster chasing me? Ah, there it comes, yes, eat me, I’m so scared, aaaah”

I never had such extreme episodes but enough that I did actually get bored by them.

What’s important to say is that I was a very anxious person, scared of everything. I did decide to start confronting my fears and getting rid of them. Part of it was accepting the fears and just letting myself be scared without the judgement of fear being bad. Accepting the fear as part of myself and my psyche. Getting bored of nightmares definitely coincided somewhere around that time.

So yeah, I would suggest working to solve your issues in waking life.

The practice of Lucid Dreaming has allowed me to redirect nightmares successfully in most cases, there were only few instances that I could not wake up or change the nightmare’s nature. Lucid Dreaming does take practice, though, but thankfully there are a lot of books on the subject. You’ll be able to sift through the many to find the one which you vibe with the most, as the method is very individual in nature.

Secondly, at least two or three hours before bed, I make sure to only read or watch videos that are lighthearted in nature because horror or grim content can affect the dreams or nightmares you’d face during sleep. Let go of any stress or dark thoughts before going to sleep also helps, I find exorcising these thoughts with writing them down helps the most. It allows reason to smooth these thoughts and feelings over, giving them less power to shape a dreamer’s experience!

I rarely realize when I’m dreaming, but when I do, those are some of the BEST dreams! Once I realize that it’s not real, I think “Wait, in THIS world, I’m in charge!” and I take control.

I know you can’t always realize the situation in your dreams, but maybe a perspective change could help.

Instead of trying to escape, embrace it! Pull out your holy hand grenade, count to three (5 is right out), and chuck it at the nightmare!

Before you go to sleep, focus on how excited you are to go in and defeat your monsters! Think about your flaming sword of virtue and how it will cut through anything that dares challenge your power in your own domain! Keep thoughts of victory and power in your mind and when you are in the thick of that nightmare, you will remember that you are in control and you will win that battle!

You created those nightmares, and until you know that you can beat them, you will continue to create them.

I have CPTSD, and suffer from nightmares, and night terrors. I have found a small dose of cannabis (≈3mg) just before bed has practically eliminated their occurrence. Might be worth a try.

As far as waking up, you might want to try jumping, in your dream, which can lead to flying/escaping. Or spinning in a circle, which can lead to teleportation. Either of which may provide escape routes, or lead to waking.