@dreamwellbewell What are false awakening dreams? These are dreams that are dreams within dreams. However with false awakenings you will wake up, go about your daily routine, but then realize you are in dream. #dreams #dreamtok #luciddreams #sleep #sleepscience #neuroscience #science ♬ original sound – DreamWell
False awakening dreams are dreams in which you have the experience of waking and going about your daily routine.
These are different from having a dream within a dream. In a dream within a dream, you wake up within the dream into another dream-like dream. In false awakening dreams you will have the sensation of waking up and going about your daily routine as if you were awake.
There are two types of false awakening dreams. The first type is more common and the experience is just like waking life. Things feel normal. In the second second type there may be a feeling of being unsettled, of things being not quite right.
False awakening dreams can happen repeatedly such that you wake up, go about your daily routine, realize that you are dreaming, wake up, go about your daily routine, wake up, and so on. This experience can be confusing and sometimes create anxiety.
One particularly nice way of summarizing it is that false awakenings are “wrong waking up”.
How common are false awakening dreams?
In a recent survey of people on the streets of Moscow, research found that false awakening dreams are more common than you would think. While 53% of people responding said that they never experience a false awakening, 28% said that they sometimes experience false awakenings, and 7% of people experience false awakenings often. In other words 1 out of every 3 people experience false awakenings sometimes.
Another survey found the rates of false awakenings even higher, however this was in a survey done specifically on lucid dreamers! Lucid dreams are dreams in which you are aware that you are dreaming. 41% of these lucid dreamers reported experiencing a false awakening at least monthly.
Unfortunately, false awakenings are not well studied and these are about the best estimates that there are for the frequency of the occurrence of false awakening dreams?
False awakenings are related to lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis
As seen in the studies discussed above, false awakenings are clearly related to sleep paralysis, which is waking up but being unable to move, and lucid dreaming, which is being aware that you are dreaming while you are dreaming.
In the same survey on false awakenings, the authors also asked people about lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis, and out of body experiences. Their conclusions were “once again, we see that all these states are very common among the human population, and they are strongly cross-correlated to each other. “
False awakenings might be cause by hyperarousal
One potential reason for false awakening is hyperarousal during REM sleep. Hyperarousal simply means that sleep is fragmented and of poor quality. There is some face validity to this concept. Imagine entering REM sleep, only to briefly wake up, and return to REM sleep again. You can imagine that your dreams will take on strange qualities.
As the authors of the study state, “That a hyper-aroused sleep state probably underlies FAs [false awakenings] is also suggested by the observation that FAs can be prompted in situations of high anticipation, for example, when a sleep disturbance is expected (Hearne, 1982). It has
been suggested that, in these situations, “the sleeping mind becomes somewhat fixated on the coming event” (Hearne, 1982).”
What happens in dreams of false awakening?
In a survey of lucid dreamers about false awakenings, it was found that 34% of false awakenings were quite realistic. The dreamers started their day as if they were in waking life.
24% of the reports included “wandering or exploration”. This type of false awakening dream seems to be unique to habitual lucid dreams. The examples given for this plot are “often I wander around trying to see if I’m actually awake” and “if I can maintain dreaming in this state I will try to explore as much as possible”.
The neuroscience of false awakening
There have been very few neuroimaging studies on false awakening. The graphs above are from the single EEG study I was able to find on false awakenings. Their conclusion is interesting, which is ”The predominant theta electroencephalography rhythm during sleep paralysis and false awakenings (with rare and lower alpha rhythm) suggests that the brain during sleep paralysis is not in an awake but in a dreaming state.” This isn’t a surprising conclusion for false awakenings, but it is surprising for sleep paralysis.
Regardless, this EEG studies shows the relationships between sleep paralysis, lucid dreaming, and false awakening.
False awakening dreams are very bizarre
False awakening dreams capture the imagination. They are embedded in and frequently discussed in culture and film. But they are strange. Giorgio Buzzi states many reasons why false awakening dreams are so bizarre.
First, false awakening dreams are explicitly about the waking world. Most dreams are dream-like. They operate within a constructed dream world. False awakening dreams occur within the waking world, even though it is constructed within the dream.
Second, false awakening dreams are continuous. They lack the break of actions and plots that typical dreams contain.
Third, false awakening dreams are realistic and vivid. Buzzi highlights a quotation from a survey that states “… I awoke. Really awake. I questioned it for so long that I must have been in bed for five minutes trying to gather enough courage to walk down the hall and see if I was really awake”.
Fourth, explicit memories of the waking world are accessible during false awakening dreams. Take a moment to think about a dream you may have had. Generally, it is unlikely that during this dream you thought about your waking life concerns. Your waking life concerns and activities may have been present, but in a highly symbolic way. During false awakening dreams you are able to fully recall your waking life concerns. This is especially interesting as dreams may have their own specific memory systems
Fifth, there is realism in the state of mind of the dreamer.
The idea of these false awakening dreams captures the imagination. Everyone is aware that this sort of dream exists. But the actual process of having a false awakening dream is very, very bizarre.
Consider this quotation:
“False awakening contradicts, as does lucid dreaming, the notion of a one-way understanding between dreams and waking consciousness. The false awakening experient is, in a sense, acutely aware of the waking world, actively believing that s/he is in it and, explicitly, out of the dream world. Thus, although the consciousness of false awakening is non-lucid with regard its own status, it is, unlike the conventional dream, implicitly aware of the existence of two worlds. The confusion is simply about which one the experient is in.”
In other words most of our dreams occur within the dream world. False awakening dreams occur within a representation of the waking world. It is worth noting that during waking life our brains receive input from the external world and then creates our conscious experience. Obviously in false awakening dreams there is no input from the external world. Yet, our brains are able to faithfully and believable reconstruct the world.
What can you do to reduce the chance of false awakenings?
Unfortunately there is very little research on how to prevent false awakenings. The best advice is simply to maintain healthy sleep. Specifically, try to obtain between 7 and 9 hours of sleep every night and to sleep at consistent times.
This advice is based upon the science available. It is hypothesized that false awakenings are caused, in part, by hyperarousal during REM sleep. This is simply fragmented sleep. Getting good sleep every night should reduce this state of hyperarousal. Additionally, it would make sense that calming the mind before sleep and establishing a relaxing bedtime routine can help as well.
Additionally, in a survey on false awakening, it was found that getting less than 6 hours of sleep or more than 9 hours of sleep increased the chance of false awakening.
The data of false awakening
The DreamWell Dream Dictionary has collected over publically available 200,000 dreams from a variety of sources. A large majority of dreams within this collection come from Reddit
The subreddit of r/LucidDreaming was not included because this channel explicitly discourages reports of dream stories. Given the fact that lucid dreaming and false awakenings are related, there may be additional information and reports of false awakenings within the subreddit of r/LucidDreaming.
To examine false awakening dreams, we’ll look at several different dream symbols:
- False awakening – dreams identified by the presence of words like “dream loop”, “waking loop”, “false awakening”, and so on. “Dream within a dream” was explicitly excluded from “false awakening” dreams
- Lucid dreams – identified by phrases like “lucid dream”, “reality check”, “lucidity”
- Sleep paralysis – identified by phrases like “sleep paralysis”, “couldn’t move”
- Good dreams (for comparison) – identified by phrases like “good dream” or “great dream”
- Weird dreams (for comparison) – identified by phrases like “weird dream” or “bizarre dream”
The frequency of false awakening dreams
Overall, 6% of the reports are related to lucid dreaming, 2.3% to sleep paralysis, and 0.7% related to false awakenings. It should be noted that 0.7% of the DreamWell Dream Dictionary is 1,471 dream reports.
The frequency here is surprising and requires some discussion. The majority of the dreams within the DreamWell Dream Dictionary are from reddit. As a result, they are not representative of all dreams. Rather, these are dreams in which the dreamer remembers and decides to post online. This likely explains the low prevalence of “good dreams”.
However, given the fact that “false awakening” dreams are generally thought of as atypical and strange, I would have expected a greater proportion of dream reports to reference false awakening.
While not based upon any research or fact, “false awakening” dreams seem to be well known within general culture. On the other hand, “sleep paralysis” dreams are less well known. It is possible that there is a greater frequency of false awakening dreams than this data represents, but it is not shared on social media because people are familiar with this concept.
Word clouds
Word clouds help describe different dream symbols. The methodology of how these are generated is describe here.
The word cloud above shows the words associated with “false awakening” dreams
This shows the word cloud associated with “sleep paralysis”.
This is the word cloud for “dream within a dream”.
Finally, this is the word cloud associated with lucid dreaming.
Highlights of “false awakening” dreams
The graph above shows a summary of how false awakening dreams affect other dream content. Briefly, Higher bars indicate that rage is more related to the specific symbol in the graph. Lower bars indicate that rage is less related to the specific symbol in the graph. This methodology of this graph is described in further detail here.
This shows that false awakening dreams are more related to lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, nightmares, fear, confusion, and health events (because of the mention of paralysis) than most other dream symbols.
However, this graph is surprising. Given the fact that false awakening dreams typically involve getting ready throughout and going about the daily routine, I expected false awakening to relate much more to home, family, friends, school, and so on. As a result, it is best to read examples of the dreams.
Example dreams
False awakening of sleep paralysis
I dreamt I woke up but I was not awake. Instead, I was paralysed but could do this one particular thing. This kept repeating maybe 10+ times. When I finally woke I was not fully convinced until I realised I could move. It honestly kinda fell like I was in my own hell, but on my living room sofa.
This dream describes a variant of false awakenings that hasn’t been described at all in the scientific literature. It seems to be a combination of sleep paralysis and false awakening.
Terrifying false awakenings
This time in my dreams it’s raining hard again, but Im like “awake” and moving compared to before that I was stuck in my bed. The details arrent too clear to me now, but someone in the dark is always running after me then getting me, then I’d “wake up” again, feels relieved then realze that someone is here again to get me.
In this dream, the dreamer describe waking up in the middle of the night, feeling terrified, waking up, and feeling terrified again because it is a false awakening dream.
A strange mix of false awakening and sleep paralysis
Often, I awake falsely and struggle to leave the bed, only able to move certain limbs maybe, and can only see a fraction of what my eye is supposed to see. Moving around is hard, then I get teleported back and ‘awake’ again, only to find that I’m still stuck in the dream with the same symptoms. These awakenings happen several times, until I wake up for real.
This dreamer describes another strange state that somewhere between sleep paralysis and false awakening.
False awakening that turns into a nightmare
so this was a lucid dream some what false awakening type. So In the dream I woke up went to brush my teeth went to the restroom area of my house and as soon I saw my self in the mirror everything was normal then i grabed the brush and opened my mouth when I saw the mirror I was horrified I saw another set of teeth inside my mouth then i saw another jaw line which was moving on its on it was in my mouth above my jaw line then I saw that it was an entire seprate mouth that moved inside my mouth then I felt like it was not just a mouth but it had a head a face a skull it was basically some one or some thing else inside me I woke up immediately after this and was horrified the dream just felt so real just wondering what It could mean
This dreamer describes a false awakening where they started their day and went about their daily routine. As they are brushing their teeth, they see another set of teeth growing.
False awakening, turns lucid with high emotion
on day 2 of trying to record my dreams to increase recall, i had a false awakening. it’s not my first, so midway through i realized what was going on. nevertheless, it seemed to be disturbingly “high emotion”. in order to manage these emotions, i had to act like a deranged lunatic not to give into any kind of nightmarish fear. i frequently tried to turn on my lights and couldn’t, which was pretty scary at first, but even when i knew what was going on and wasn’t rationally afraid anymore, i felt “high emotion”. i spent the remainder of the dream in a lucid state trying to wake up, such as by killing myself with a tidal wave made out of my comforter. and when i wake up, i immediately feel like 95% more calm
This dreamer described realizing a false awakening is a dream, becomes lucid, but is unable to shake feelings of fear.
Multiple days in the dream
This dream started with me waking up, followed by a day of which I will spare you the details. After which I went to sleep, to wake up inside the dream again. During this day some lucidity occurred but faded when I went to bed. Now the third day I woke up, still inside the dream, only to go to bed and find myself truly awakening now.
The entirety of this dream took place in a single night during which i slept around 11 hours.
This dreamer describes a false awakening where the dreamer lived through multiple days within the dream.
Conclusions from example dreams
Overall, relatively few dreams seemed to contain classic examples of “false awakening” in which the dreamer awakes and goes about their daily routine. This might be because false awakenings of this nature are relatively well understood in the greater culture. It is definitely a weird dream experience, but one that can be easily understood and forgotten about.
Additionally, people may be hesitant to describe their daily routines on a social media site like Reddit.
These examples also describe a true mix of sleep paralysis and false awakening. Lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis, and false awakenings have been shown to be related. That is if you have lucid dreams, you will be more likely to experience false awakenings.
This is something that hasn’t been described in the scientific literature and I think highlights the value that DreamWell Dream Dictionary can provide an understanding of how people dream.
Summary of False Awakening
False awakenings are dreams in which the dreamer has the experience of waking up and going about their daily routine while dreaming. Generally, it is thought there are two types of false awakening dreams. Type 1 is when the dream is neutral and realistic. Type 2 is when there is some ominous or scary presence within the dream.
There is little research on false awakening dreams. Overall, the best estimate is that 28% of people experience these “sometimes” and 7% of people experience these “often”. It is thought that false awakenings are related to sleep paralysis and lucid dreams as these phenomena may be caused by “hyperarousal” or fragmented sleep during the REM phase of the sleep cycle.
Within the DreamWell Dream Dictionary, 0.7% of dreams were identified with the “false awakening” dream symbol. This was identified by words like “false awakening”, “dream loop”, and so on. The reports contained a surprisingly lack of description of the daily routines. This may be because false awakenings are relatively well understood in the greater culture or that people are hesitant to describe daily routines within the dream reports.
An examination of example dreams related to false awakenings showed a surprising mix of sleep paralysis, nightmares, and false awakenings. Overall, the actual reports of false awakenings were much less straightforward than “I woke up and went about my daily routine”. Instead, they describe a strange mix of sleep paralysis, nightmares, and false awakenings. They showed varying levels of lucidity within the false awakening reports.
The best advice to prevent false awakening is simply to maintain good sleep. This means sleep between 7 and 9 hours per night, generally at the same time each night.
