Occasionally I dream that that I’m awake and can’t get to sleep. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does I wake up exhausted.
It typically follows this pattern:
I’m awake and want to sleep because I need to go to work.
I roam from room to room with a blanket and pillow, but as soon as I get settled someone else comes into the room and starts making noise.
I transfer to another room.
That room gets infiltrated with people making noise.
And on, and on it goes until I wake up and realise I was dreaming. But I’m exhausted because in my mind I’ve been awake the whole time.
I occasionally dream that I’m wandering around the house looking for something very important because I can’t go to bed until I do. Then I wake up in bed, totally confused. then I spend way too much time trying to remember what the thing I was supposed to find was so I’m up the rest of the night brooding about it. :mad:
No, but I probably will tonight. I once read (on the internet of course) that people never dream about money. So I went to bed that night and dreamt about money and got up the next day and said “There!”
insomnia? not me. I do sometimes have those dreams where you need to wake up NOW and move, because the house is on fire or there’s a monster about to eat you, and I can’t move, which actually has a real name (sleep paralysis).
Apparently dreaming about insomnia also has a real name, it’s called sleep state misperception. Some people who think they have insomnia actually get plenty of sleep, but they spend a lot of time dreaming that they are awake, which is exhausting and confusing.
Yes! God, it’s awful. Usually my insomnia dreams closely reflect my actual insomnia - I am not moving from room to room, but rather tossing and turning in bed. Maybe getting up for a bit, but then coming back to a sleepless bed. And then I wake up!
One particular disturbing dream, I dreamed that I woke up, only to realize I was still dreaming (because scary, impossible shit was happening) then I continued to dream I woke up again, again, and again.
And in between each interval I would convince myself I was awake by carefully observing everything in the room I was in, (my bedroom) touching objects, only to have my reality smashed again because more scary shit would happen.
Which was basically, every time I tried to leave my bedroom, the door would slam shut on me. And when I tried to push the door open, some unseen force would push back, preventing me from leaving the room. At one point, this unseen force actually picked me up and slammed me against the ceiling.
Wow, I came in to post this exact thing, and you said it word-for-word.
The worst night I ever had was exactly that, and you gave me flashbacks to it by touching things and doing things to “prove” I was awake…only to realize I was still asleep.
As a related question: Is there scientific proof (or at least speculation) that dreaming like that actually prevents you from feeling rested? I mean, you’re still asleep right? Shouldn’t you feel the positive effects regardless?
