I got interested in lucid dreaming several decades ago, and one of the things you learn is techniques that help you tell whether you're dreaming or not. In my experience, the most powerful technique is looking at writing, looking away, and then looking back at it. Writing rarely remains stable in dreams, so if you're dreaming the writing will usually have changed the second time you look at it; if it stays the same, you're probably awake.
As soon as I learned this technique, I began doing it everywhere. I'd check license plates, road signs, storefronts, books--just about anything around me that featured writing. I even unwisely did it a few times while driving. I did it so often my eyes became sore and bloodshot. My mom once saw me doing it and thought I'd developed a tic. It isn't a tic, but it is a compulsion. I didn't explain to her why I did it. I've avoided explaining it to a lot of people, partly because the entire topic of lucid dreaming is often seen as flaky, and partly because OCD is hard to explain to most people beyond stereotypical stuff like excessive hand-washing or wanting everything to be symmetrical. (For one thing, I'm an absolute slob, and a lot of people don't realize that OCD doesn't necessarily mean being a neat freak.)
I'm still unwilling to totally give up the habit because it really does work (even as I've been sitting here writing this post, I paused to do the technique using some of the writing on screen), though I only have lucid dreams on occasion. It seems a lot of effort for very little, and I definitely have done it way more than I need to. Yet I feel it does have benefits, and I haven't been able to "let go" of the uncertainty I would feel if I ever abandoned reality-checking altogether.
03 Aug 2025, 5:53 pm
