Hatrack River Forum: Waking up from dreams

This is topic Waking up from dreams in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :

I'm writing a scene where my character wakes up from a dream.

I have a question.

We see it often enough, but I've never experienced it. Someone still thinks they are in the dream as they wake themselves up. An example is of someone who wakes up clawing and screaming...

There is the jerk to catch yourself from falling dream, but I understand the falling is only a reaction to a twitch that was too large. You know, how you twitch when you enter REM sleep, and sometimes it isn't a twitch but a large jerk.

Having someone wake you up in the middle of a nightmare doesn't count. You are still in your dream, until an alarm or someone wakes you up.

I always have some kind of grey, in between time. Coming to conciousness time as the dream fades and reality happens. Only if I'm in the middle of a dream and reality intrudes: alarm clock for instance, is there some overlap between dream and reality. But it is always the reality overlapping into the dream. Never the dream overlapping into reality.

There is sleepwalking too. But then you are still asleep and dreaming.

You can scream in your sleep too, but I understand that unless you wake up the person they fall silent and don't even remember what made them scream.

Okay, to put it more clearly, does anybody wake up by themselves in the midst of the dream, physically reacting to the dream?

Posted by Erik Slaine (Member # 5583) on :

I have definately woken myself out of a dream purposefully before. Several times. I realize that I'm dreaming (it's usually a boring, repetetive, embarrasing thing), then I force myself awake.

Posted by jeniwren (Member # 2002) on :

Yeah. I have a recurring dream where I'm walking down a set of squeaky stairs. With each step, the groaning of the stair gets louder. After a few steps, the stair breaks under my foot and I jerk awake.

I learned a while ago that what's really happening is that I'm snoring. My snores are getting louder. Until I wake myself up.

Fortunately for my husband, it doesn't happen very often. I don't usually snore.

Is that what you're looking for?

Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :

Once last year I had a dream and didn't like the ending. So I had a "director's cut" of the dream, with a different ending. True story. But now I can't remember what the dream was about, just that I edited it. [Grumble]

Posted by Amka (Member # 690) on :

I think that is why people like to keep dream journals, Morbo.

One of the clues in your dream, jeni, is that you jerked awake. This would probably be part of the twitching that is part of the REM transition both into and out of deep sleep.

Do people snore in deep sleep?