When navigating someone else's nightmare, it's important not to internalize the topography. It's tempting, because you want to pick a route, know what's around every corner. But get too exact and it's too easy to confuse the map for your own terrain. Dark terrain.

That's why we use encryption. One time codes, totally personal to the nightmare spelunker. You work only with the encrypted version itself, kind of like driving a car in reverse with a funhouse mirror. You've got to protect yourself.

Getting dragged into a nightmare as a team has its advantages. If you know each other--great, you're lucky. But even if you're strangers, you can still learn to work together on account of your mutual peril.

Number one rule is to trust each other. Those that don't will get dragged down pretty quick so it's better not to tie on anyway.

When you find yourself entering someone else's nightmare, there are three things you need:

A small tactical flashlight
Grappling hooks
A lifeline

The first two you can get at any psychic surplus store. The third one you've got to make yourself.

I've got a nasty habit of getting dragged into other people's nightmares.