# False awakenings suck **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 14, 2012, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-awakenings-suck/615799 "2012-03-14T22:58:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CheeseDonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@CheeseDonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CheeseDonkey)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2012, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-awakenings-suck/615799/1 "2012-03-14T22:58:02Z")
You know what annoys me? When you’re having a dream and then you think you wake up but you are really still dreaming. It’s especially bad when you’re having a nightmare and you know you gotta wake up to end the nightmare, and when you think you’ve finally woken up you realize you’re still dreaming because it is still going on. That happens to me slightly more frequently that “every once in a while.” It always takes multiple efforts to actually wake up out of the dream state. It ties into the whole “lucid dreaming” thing, which is also annoying…I never have a lucid dream about anything _good_ or _pleasant_ or\* fun\*…it’s always about something stressful or even nightmarish. That is all. ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2012, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-awakenings-suck/615799/2 "2012-03-14T23:41:25Z")
This didn’t start happening to me on a regular basis until I watched Inception. I agree, it really sucks. ---
**Author:** ![FloatyGimpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/floatygimpy/32/7750_2.png) [@FloatyGimpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FloatyGimpy)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2012, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-awakenings-suck/615799/3 "2012-03-14T23:56:06Z")
Have you ever tried changing something in the dream? If you’re in the dream and you know you’re dreaming, try changing something you don’t like. I usually do this in dreams where I’m dreaming of some guy I’m dating. I’ll decide I want him to have dark hair or be a different age or something, so I just change it. Once you know you can change things, then you can have awesome dreams, doing anything you want including flying or being able to breath under water. It’s really fun! ---
**Author:** ![CheeseDonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@CheeseDonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CheeseDonkey)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2012, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-awakenings-suck/615799/4 "2012-03-15T00:03:03Z")
> [@FloatyGimpy](#): > > Have you ever tried changing something in the dream? If you’re in the dream and you know you’re dreaming, try changing something you don’t like. Yes I have and it always turns out poorly. It’s like my brain intentionally likes to scare and mess with me (which, therefore, is itself). When I know I’m having a dream and I know I can seize the opportunity to change something, my mind always changes it to something undesirable–even if what is changed is what I intend, it always ends up “messing up” on me later on. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2012, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-awakenings-suck/615799/5 "2012-03-15T00:20:21Z")
I have had it happen only “every once in a while.” But once there were several “layers” of the dream which definitely made it weird. To make it worse (in a way), the dreams were about getting up and it wasn’t really any different from my normal routine, except that I was actually asleep. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2012, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-awakenings-suck/615799/6 "2012-03-15T01:26:10Z")
> [@FloatyGimpy](#): > > Have you ever tried changing something in the dream? If you’re in the dream and you know you’re dreaming, try changing something you don’t like. . . . YEAH! It’s wonderful! I don’t have nightmares, and haven’t for many, many years. I learned how to sense a nightmare approaching, before it actually got there, and how to change directions to go away from it, or around it. Like having a radio tuned to the traffic station: “Big jam on the 8 at the 15…” So I don’t go there! I know people who have much more detailed control over their dreams, and can edit in, or edit out, all sorts of things. I envy them, but I’m very, very happy with this minimal level of nightmare-avoidance navigation. And…yeah, I have “false awakening” dreams fairly often. Once a month, maybe. I find them vaguely entertaining. It’s like a cute “trick ending” in a story or a movie. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Girlfriend](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.girlfriend/32/193_2.png) [@Dr.Girlfriend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Girlfriend)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2012, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-awakenings-suck/615799/7 "2012-03-15T01:31:30Z")
I hate it when that happens. I get them once in a while. I’ll dream that I’ve woken up, gotten out of bed, gotten dressed and started on my day. Then I’ll see something that looks wrong, like my cat will be the wrong color or I have a different car. I realize I’m dreaming and wake up. Then I have to get up all over again! ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2012, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-awakenings-suck/615799/8 "2012-03-15T01:47:08Z")
I can only recall one dream when I was aware that I was dreaming. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter how outlandish the dream is, it still seems real. Like just a couple of days ago there was an alien invasion, and I was running around trying to hide from the aliens, and the cast of Roseanne who were in league with the aliens, only to be interupted by a friend wanting to plan a trip for her nephew and some other wee little kids. Did that seem strange? Nope, instead I was just “okay, but can we bring them somewhere inside instead of to Disney? There are _aliens_ out there.” ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2012, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-awakenings-suck/615799/9 "2012-03-15T02:57:24Z")
The funny thing is, it’s always spiders. The reason it’s funny is that in waking life I am the opposite of afraid of spiders. Spiders are cool and interesting! But let that dream spider crawl over my face just once… ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2012, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-awakenings-suck/615799/10 "2012-03-15T03:03:53Z")
> [@Dr.Girlfriend](#): > > I hate it when that happens. I get them once in a while. I’ll dream that I’ve woken up, gotten out of bed, gotten dressed and started on my day. Then I’ll see something that looks wrong, like my cat will be the wrong color or I have a different car. I realize I’m dreaming and wake up. Then I have to get up all over again! Lately I’ve been having those sort of dreams in my nap at lunchtime (living a block away from work has its perks). I’m playing a board game or video game and something egregiously breaks the rules and then I realize I’m dreaming. But yesterday’s was not gaming: I dreamt I was in a store picking up a 12-pack of Mountain Dew. I walked away from the display for some reason, then I walked back and it was a rack of Coke instead. Must be dreaming. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2012, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-awakenings-suck/615799/11 "2012-03-15T05:12:44Z")
**CheeseDonkey** You are still asleep. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2012, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/false-awakenings-suck/615799/12 "2012-03-15T10:05:55Z")
Yeah, I can (slightly) “relate” to some of the above posts. I’ve had those “dream within a dream” thingies only a few times in my life that I can recall . . . and now come to think of it, like **CheeseDonkey** says, they’ve always been vaguely unpleasant – usually when I’ve had a toothache. ETA: And they’re something like **Dr. Girlfriend** described, where I’ll “wake up” and look around and everything in my room will be different than usual and weird. I get a different kind of weird vaguely unpleasant dream when I’ve had a fever or severe headache that I was (fitfully) sleeping through. In those cases, I get a sort of delerious dream where I’m sort of slightly asleep and slightly awake and having a dream that’s kinda like a scratched record where some strange scene keeps re-playing over and over and over and over and over, often where I find myself in the role of some inanimate object in that dream. Once I dreamed I was a Fortran compiler trying to compile a line of code with a syntax error, and every time I returned from the error-recovery function I found myself trying to compile the same line over again, over and over.