If you feel like you have no control over your life, maybe you should try controlling your dreams instead.
Perhaps when a dream is just too strange to be real, it can sometimes lead to the dreamer realizing that it's a dream. This special type of dreaming is called lucid dreaming.
"It doesn't happen terribly often," said Erin Dallas, senior in biomedical sciences, "but maybe like 10 percent of the time, where I actually recognize that something is way too weird to be real, 'Ohhh, right--that would be a dream.' Whether or not that leads to my being able to control the dream is variable."
Most lucid dreaming involves some element of control.
According to an article by Stephen LaBerge titled "Lucid Dreaming: Psychophysiological Studies of Consciousness During REM Sleep," lucid dreamers "report being able to freely remember the circumstances of waking life, to think clearly and to act deliberately upon reflection, all while experiencing a dream world that seems vividly real."
Leah Donahue, junior in microbiology, recalled a lucid dream in which her best friend was being attacked by the Loch Ness monster.
"I mean, the Loch Ness monster got her, like it disappeared under the water with her in its mouth," Donahue said.
When Donahue realized it was just a dream, she said that took the pressure off.
Some experts believe it is possible for people to choose to have lucid dreams.
Joshua Carter, freshman in biomedical sciences, has been testing that idea.
"I've always had crazy dreams, and I used to try to control them," Carter said. "Then I did a little research on it in the past few years and found out that what I was actually doing is called dream-induced lucid dream."
According to Laberge's article, dream-initiated lucid dream is the more common form of lucid dreaming.
Another is wake-initiated lucid dream, in which the person stays conscious during the transfer from waking to sleeping.
"You'll be laying there, and you can literally feel your body go to sleep, but you're still having thoughts," Carter said. "And then a dream will form around you." Dallas said she's had lucid dreams that frightened her, as well as dreams that gave her the opportunity to take complete control of certain situations.
"I can remember thinking, 'This is a dream and I can do whatever I want,'" Dallas said. "You're essentially playing God, which you can't do in real life, and I've had a couple of things change from what they otherwise might have been."
Carter said the best lucid dream was when he was a ghost.
"I flew around for a while, and then I went and found all the people I didn't like and haunted them," Carter said. "I had fun with that."
Lucid dreams happen during REM sleep, according to LeBarge's article.
During tests, lucid dreamers were able to perform previously agreed-upon signals, such as rapid breathing or patterns of blinking, to show that they were having a lucid dream.
It can be difficult to stay in a dream once you become lucid.
Carter said you can either rub your hands together or spin in a circle to stabilize the dream.
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