Hi Liz, Thanks for noticing my lonely thread
Yes we are talking about different things. Lucid dreaming is being aware you are dreaming while you are dreaming. It happens naturally infrequently, but you can train yourself to become lucid. It is mostly a recreation, but it can has been used to diffuse the emotion from nightmares. It takes about four weeks to learn to do it frequently. Lucidipedia has a lot of information on it.