Okay, it’s not so much a disorder as an annoyance.
In the morning, I tend to wake up some time between 4:30 and 8:30, not feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I do become fully conscious. If I don’t get up, I fall into a rapid cycle of dozing and dreaming. I have a short, intense dream that I remember really well. Then I partly wake up. At this point, it’s very hard to get up. I’m not fully awake, and I feel very loggy. Sometimes it’s a struggle to even move in this state. Then I fall back asleep, have another dream (possibly connected to the previous one.) Lather, rinse, repeat. Without a compelling reason to force myself to wake up, or irritating stimulus from the outside world, I continue the cycle until ten, or noon, or later, and often get up feeling like crap.
When I’m setting an alarm to get up for a specific purpose, I usually get 10 hours of sleep a night. That’s pretty long, but that’s normal for some people, and if I don’t get 10 hours consistently I feel sleep-deprived. However, the last few hours of sleep are typically the low-quality sleep described above. If I don’t bother to set the alarm, I tend to sleep much longer, without feeling significantly more rested.
I could get up when I first wake up, but that would mean bouncing out of bed at five in the morning some days, which I don’t have the strength of purpose to do most of the time–plus, if I get up so early, by mid-afternoon I need copious caffeine to keep going.
Anybody else have this problem, or know what the cause is, or any suggestions? I’d like to avoid the vicious morning dream-wake cycle so that I can sleep fewer hours and awaken feeling rested. Is there hope for me?
Dunno if it’s a disorder per se. I used to do the dream-cycling thing fairly often, “sleeping” 10-12 hours. Always took a couple hours after finally getting up to actually feel awake. Unfortunately, I can’t point to any compelling reason why I don’t so much anymore.
If you’re fairly sedentary, try to exercise more. Sleep does feel more complete and compact when in better shape (said pot to possible kettle). Also try to only lay down when you’re tired, and not because it’s simply “bedtime”–developing a habit of lying awake in bed (discounting certain activities, which fully qualify as exercise) is a bad thing.
I do the same thing, more or less. If I get out of bed right when I wake up, after the first 5 minutes or so of pure physical and psychic torture, I’m usually fine. But if I indulge myself and hit the “snooze” button every 9 minutes for an hour, I feel like a zombie sometimes for hours after getting up. Caffeine doesn’t seem to help, but then I never drink more than a cup of coffee or so because I hate the feeling when it wears off.
How old are you Podkayne? I’m 20, and I have been led to believe that these sorts of things are par for the course when you’re teens to mid-20s, hormones and whatnot. My mom sends me studies that they do on this all the time, as I’ve had sleep difficulties all my life, or at least as long as I can remember. My natural sleep cycle appears to want to run from about 2 am to 10 am, and when I must violate these natural instincts, I pay. That’s the way I look at it.
Well you could start by giving up caffeine, if you dont mind going through withdrawal which takes a couple days. I can’t take it after 9am usually as it messes up the sleep cycles.
I’m just about to turn 27, so I hope I’m beyond the hormonal tortures of adolsecence. Then again, somebody promised me that my acne would go away, too. ; )
I do notice that I sleep better when I exercise regularly, but it doesn’t seem to help the morning dream-wake thing.
Well, at least I’m not alone. Thanks for your advice/experience!