My entire sentient life I have been prone to nightmares, usually at least one a week. I am in my 30s now and “eh it’ll probably sort itself out” has proven an ineffective strategy.
There is obviously the kumbaya “mediate and reduce your stress” stuff but obviously I live in the real world where time that there is any useful level of executive function is pretty full.
So aside from general “wellness” stuff are there specific interventions for making sleeping brains be less garbage reliably? Missing sleep/fitfull sleep blows.
In your situation I’d say it’s worth a shot, but I still feel compelled to weigh in and say that when I first began to successfully lucid dream is also when I first started to experience sleep paralysis.
I’ve had that happen a handful of times. It never really bothered me aside from the waking up. My experience is basically you quickly realise what’s happening, ignore the sensation of not being able to breath and don’t try control it, then enjoy the spooky hallucinations of walls becoming spikes and demons dancing.
I took a lot of drugs in my youth though, and got practiced at “Yep that’s fucking weird, well let’s watch the show and wait”.
Fair enough, then hell yeah give lucid dreaming a go. I was able to get it to start working within about a week of trying, hopefully you’ll get it about as quickly.