Thread: Does this happen to anyone else?

I think it's the hypnopompic state. It's a state of consciousness after you wake but still have lingering REM-like brain activity. It happens to me all the time. I'm not sure if I'm thinking, daydreaming, falling back to sleep and dreaming, or maybe it's all a false awakening. It might be different each time or some gray area in between. I find that if I recognize I might be dreaming and just be patient, I can sometimes will myself into a deeper dream state that becomes more stable like a full on WILD.

I'm not sure if it's what you mean, but sometimes after waking up, I have sort of light hallucinations where I can visualize things very easy. A couple of times I used it to get back into a dream state, although usually I wake up (mostly because of I have to) after a couple of minutes of having this sort of hallucinations.

I just went through the exact thing but I could kinda control mine. Someone told me these were just hypnopompic imagery that you have. it's basically just the start of dreams but aren't dreams themselves.

I sometimes wake up in the morning when my mom goes to work, then fall asleep for another 3 or 4 hours, in this time I got dreams a lot of times. Is that it? Or is it WILD?

Originally Posted by majeric

I sometimes wake up in the morning when my mom goes to work, then fall asleep for another 3 or 4 hours, in this time I got dreams a lot of times. Is that it? Or is it WILD?

That's a bit different. Hypnopompic state happens for just a few minutes after waking, when you are very drowsy and don't move. If you wake up fully or if you go back to sleep, the hypnopompic state ends. What you are experiencing is a combination of two things: First, later in the night (that is, closer to the morning), you spend more time of the sleep cycle in REM sleep, which means more dreams and more likely lucid dreams. Second, because you're being awakened in the middle of the night, you're basically doing an accidental WBTB (wake-back-to-bed) which can also increase dreaming. WBTB slightly shifts the REM cycles and gives your mind some stimulation, but not too much and that results in more dream activity and recall.