Cyclic Lucid Nightmares?

[413notadream]

Hello all,

I am new to dream forums and am hoping someone has come across something like this before (or not?).

It starts when I notice I am dreaming during the last moments of a nightmare; I know it is not real, but cannot wake myself until whatever antagonist present has done its deed. When I wake, I am relieved and life is normal... until it isn't. It's another nightmare and I realize only slightly earlier this time the circumstances are not actually occuring. I wake the same way, in the same place, believing it to be reality, and the cycle continues, noticing earlier each time. Eventually I am aware of the entire process throughout, and there the real nightmare begins. I wake time and time again into the most horrid experiences my mind can possibly conceive, regardless of whether or not I fell asleep in my own bed or a strange place.

It happens for so many cycles for so subjectively long that every time this has occured I have begun to contemplate various scenarios within, such as: I died in my sleep, and hell is real, and I am there, reliving the last possible day of my life in the worst possible ways; I am dying in my sleep, and the mixed excitement of electrical signals in my brain are causing my experiences because of a survival mechanism to keep my body fighting; exc.

I lose all hope of ever waking, or experiencing happiness again.

Then one time, an hour or so into my freshest "dream", nothing has come to devour my soul, and I begin to regain faith I am in the waking world.

Any thoughts?