I would not believe this if there had not been a witness.
Thanksgiving morning I woke up in the guest bedroom of my brother’s home. My gf was next to me and we smiled at each other. She told me it was 6 am and I could go back to sleep, which I did.
I immediately entered a dream/nightmare. Because I whimpered in my sleep, my gf shook and woke me. I could remember the dream in great detail, but my gf confirmed my eyes were closed less than thirty seconds total.
Any sleep experts here? How did this happen? I thought REM sleep took a while to reach.
It happens to me all the time. My cell phone is my alarm clock and the snooze feature is only 5 minutes instead of the customary 9 for some reason. I usually hit snooze three times every morning and have a different dream each time starting within seconds of laying my head back down. It feels like the most restful part of sleep for me which is why I don’t just set my alarm 15 minutes later.
I started noticing this a lot when I set my alarm clock earlier to allow myself more time to snooze in the morning. My snooze period gets shorter and shorter until I finally get out of bed, but I am still quite capable of falling asleep and dreaming within multiple 1-2 minute intervals every day.
I don’t think you have to be sleep deprived to reenter REM quickly after being startled awake, possibly by the dream itself. At least, it seems to happen that way for me.
Late at night (early the next morning), falling back to sleep and immediately dreaming is common. What is rarer is starting to dream right away when first falling asleep at night. I do that a lot. (Wake up from a powerful dream. Look at clock. “Hey, I just climbed into bed 5 minutes ago!”)
If it was early morning, for someone who suffers regularly interrupted sleep, after a long drive?
Yea, very possible. Maybe even more likely than not.
Known causes for nearly immediate REM onset are:
Sleep deprivation
REM deprivation specifically (which is fucked up, but hey - research!)
Jacked up sleep patterns (not the official term, but you get the drift)
Early-morning “wakings” when you don’t actually wake all the way up because your brain’s restart button only half-worked.
Of all the weird sleep/waking things that could screw up, I think the instaREM isn’t too bad actually - alternate options include sleep paralysis (feeling “pinned” or held down or paralyzed) or that freaky weird thing where your brain makes up nasty black threatening figures standing over you while you desperately try to work out why there’s a grim reaper in your room when you’re most assuredly awake (except you aren’t quite, exactly).
Trying to relax enough to fall back asleep and wake properly isn’t precisely an easy trick under those two conditions, at least not for me.
This and related bizarre sleep experiences can also be symptoms of narcolepsy. Not only might REM sleep occur very quickly upon falling asleep, but some aspects of REM sleep might even begin before you fall asleep.
Have you ever had the experience of starting to dream while you’re still awake?
Yep - this can be a symptom of narcolepsy; in fact it was one of the things they looked for when I did a multiple sleep latency test a couple years back: they wire you up, then have you lie down for 20 minutes and see if you fall asleep and if you think you did, whether you thought you started to dream. In my case, I generally thought I was awake but the brainwave readings said I was starting to fall asleep; however, I did not go into REM sleep.
However, with what the OP describes, this sounds more like a combination of having been briefly awakened and slipping back into whatever sleep study he was ready to go into anyway. I’ve had the same sort of thing happen myself on numerous occasions.
So - nope, no brain tumor and you’re not a mutant, either.
I’m actually more surprised this hasn’t happened to you earlier. I remember noticing it as a teenager. It was how, when I took a nap, I knew I’d really needed the sleep.
I’m not sure this is relevant to your situation, but the idea that you only dream in REM sleep is not correct, although usually said dreams are less distinct and fuzzy. Hypnogogic hallucinations are also possible near the beginning of the sleep cycle.
BTW, thirty seconds is even faster than my dad who does indeed have narcolepsy. His was more like five minutes or so.