Quite often before my alarm goes off, I will lay there- awake, but with closed eyes- for maybe ten or twenty minutes. Often I’ve got quite a lot of thought going on in my head, just processing the day and thinking about the next day.
Sometimes I think about getting up, but somehow the idea just never seems compelling enough. Indeed, sometimes I actually do want to get up, but I always find excuses. I often wonder why I am up so far before the alarm rings.
I’m always quite surprised when my alarm goes off, because it pulls me through the process of waking up. Suddenly, I realize, I was asleep after all! And it’s not some sort of half-asleep drowsy state. It’s the real thing. That’s why I couldn’t get up, I was sleeping. Completely, utterly, totally asleep.
But thinking.
It makes me wonder, am I sleeping poorly? Or is this normal? Through most of my childhood, I was a lucid dreamer. And I do have a pretty strong internal timer- I’m sure I know on some level that wake up time is coming. But it doesn’t seem like I’m half asleep- the alarm is just as much of a jolt as it’d be if I were deeply asleep.
even sven,
Though I don’t know if it’s normal (as my sleep issues have caused my husband to threaten to start a website to document the hilarity…) I do something similar. And, yes, it always happens in the mornings.
It may be that you actually had woken up and then went back into sleep, therefore changing the ‘setting’ of your dream to reflect the reality of you in bed/it being morning etc…?
That’s what happens with me. I’ll sort of wake up and skitter between awake and asleep and then dream that I’m lying on my bed trying to get up. And, yes, it’s usually hard to get up, like the blankets are too heavy and I can’t move.
If I slip further into the dream though - actually falling back to sleep fully - I’ll be able to get up and dream I’m making breakfast or playing with the dog or dealing with the zombie invasion going on…
It’s a bit disorienting then when you actually wake up!
I think it’s not uncommon for a person to drift in and out of sleep, but be unaware of the sleeping part, so that it seems to them that they were awake for the whole period. I’m pretty sure this happens to me, and it’s usually towards morning… I tend to sleep most soundly when I first go to bed, and more lightly as morning approaches.
Thus, I second the idea that what you’re describing is being awake, then drifting off to sleep without realizing it, and thus being surprised when the alarm awakes you.
If you can remember to do it, that period of time when you’re sort of floating before really waking up is an excellent time to do some really creative, problem-solving thinking.
I used to have dreams that I was getting up. Then I’d notice that I was still in bed in my PJ’s. Then I’d get up and get dressed. Then I’d realize that I was still in bed.
One snow-day morning, I kept getting out of bed and going downstairs to watch the snow. At one point I saw a six-foot snowflake come down.
I haven’t been awakened by my alarm in years. Yet I keep the durned thing religiously set each night, just on the off-chance I sleep past my zero hour time (past which I’ll be late for work).
This happens to me when I go to sleep (but not always cause I usually pass out very quickly) and in the morning. When I transition to actual sleep, I start to dream lucidly/hallucinate and usually think to myself ‘oh, I’m falling asleep’.
It’s tyical for me to spend 1/2 hour to two hours after my alarm (which I always set very early, hopefully) goes off in this state… just thinking about stuff, and debating whether I will get up. I never go back to sleep deeply enough to not know what time it is/be late.
I’ve had some great solutions to problems occur to me in that state. On the other hand, sometimes I’ll be in that half-awake state, get a thought and think, “That’s an awesome idea!” only to wake up and realize that that is a terrible idea and it makes no sense at all.
