How to Prevent False Awakenings
May 4, 2010 by Ryan Hurd
Filed under Nightmares & Dream Terrors
False awakenings are dreams that seem like waking life… until you get out of bed and fall down a bottomless chasm. True story. False awakenings can be frustrating, terrifying, and may even begin to impact your daily life, especially when they occur 5 or more times in a row.
The good news is that false awakenings can be managed with a few cognitive tricks and practices. FAs are basically lucid dreams, except the dreamer actually cannot figure out if she is dreaming or not. Until the world is revealed to be an illusion!
It is our ability to think clearly in a false awakening that causes us to assume we’re awake. We’re not awake, we’re aware. So dealing with false awakenings necessitates a crash course in lucid dreaming.
Three Ways to Confirm You’re Dreaming
- If you doubt it, you’re dreaming. If you don’t know if you’re dreaming or not, especially after getting out of bed, you’re probably dreaming. Usually, we’re pretty good at discerning this kind of thing. So if you catch yourself wondering “Is this a dream?”, the answer is yes.
- Test your memory. Try to remember the address of your current location, or your cell phone number. If you can’t come up with these details, you’re probably dreaming. Long term memory activation in REM sleep makes these details hard to get to. Some people suggest doing a “reality check” in the dream by confirming that “everything is in order.” I find this unreliable. We often do not notice incongruities, and assume we’re awake when we are in a dream version of our bedroom. That’s how I fell down the bottomless chasm. Sometimes there are incongruities but sometimes not. The lucid dream world is just as real as waking life to the brain.
- The threshold test. This is a caveat to the reality check method. Often, walking through a threshold can break the spell of a false awakening because the next room will turn out not to be the bathroom or the hallway, but another bizarre room or a place from your past.
How to Wake up From a False Awakening
Many people are alarmed when they realize they are dreaming. This fear can bring on the manifestation of whatever we think is the scariest thing in the world. So it’s good to have some methods for waking up from the dream. This works for waking up from nightmares too when you realize you’re dreaming and want to get out.
1. Try opening and closing your eyes repeatedly …. eventually your real eyes will crack open and break the dream.
2. Stare at one object with focus… it may morph and change, but usually the focus wakes up the part of the brain (the forebrain) that moves us into the waking state.
3. In the dream, lay down as if going to bed. Just lay on the floor, don’t start the search for “your” bed. Close your eyes, and then try to move your pinky finger (or toe, or whatever extremity you choose!) Just as in waking up from sleep paralysis, this can help synchronize the dreambody and the physical body, allowing you to wake up.
How to Prevent More False Awakenings
1. Exercise. Get out of bed and do 10 minutes of light to moderate exercise. Yoga, stretches, calisthenics, stairmaster… whatever is easy. Warning: for some, exercise may make it difficult to get back to sleep. However, this is better than a 100% chance of not getting back to sleep because you’re too emotionally exhausted and scared.
2. The Nap Snack. Have a small carb-heavy snack before going back to bed. Warm milk still does the trick too. But don’t have a nightcap; alcohol disrupts sleep patterns and can lead to more weird sleep occurrences.
3. Relax before going to bed. False awakenings seem to be related to hyper-vigilance. So do what you need to do to feel safe and emotionally secure while falling asleep. We all have our little rituals. Time to bring out the teddy bear.
4. Stop partying so hard. In general, refrain from alcohol before bed, and stay away from caffeine anytime after lunch. If you’re prone to FAs, these substances affect your REM sleep more than others. Also, getting good sleep at regular intervals will help. This is why FAs are common with college students and those who work night-shifts, swing-shifts or don’t sleep much in general.
Turn False Awakenings into a Lucid Dream
Of course, if you are feeling adventurous, you can use the false awakening as a chance to explore the dream world consciously. Instead of scrabbling to wake up, take a look around. Explore the house. Walk through a wall and see what’s on the other side. Spin around and marvel at what happens next. In this way, false awakenings can be blessings in disguise.
If you’re having multiple false awakenings, this is a good move psychologically too. Sometimes, these spontaneous lucid dreams may be caused by some emotional material that wants to be confronted. So confront it.
I’ve noticed that, at first, my false awakening dreams are devoid of other characters. But if I wait around, or walk into the next room, often I’ll find some one who wants to interact. Often, there’s drama involved. Usually, though, an angry dream figure is looking for a chance to say some peace, to be heard. Most of a nightmare’s energy is the resistance to whatever needs to be expressed. That’s what makes a nightmare scary — the fact that are being faced with something we don’t want to see. Once you face it, with bravery and with love in your heart, the nightmare figure usually transforms and becomes more communicative. It may never come back, taking those false awakenings with them.
Image credit: “Dream on” by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³
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KMG (13 comments.) on Wed, 5th May 2010 4:55 pm
I agree–reality checks are seldom as good as memory checks. The one reality check that I find reliable is “can I fly?” Regrettably, I’ve never flown during waking life
The threshold aspect is a good tip. Looking back at my false awakenings, walking through doors is when things change and when people show up.
I had twelve in a row, once. I was never phased by false awakenings until that day when I finally ended it by shrieking, “I am going to wake up! I am going to wake up NOW!” and screaming and stomping and generally throwing a tantrum. Scary! The bottomless chasm thing had to make you jumpy for a long time when getting out of bed.
Ryan Hurd (177 comments.) on Wed, 5th May 2010 8:55 pm
thanks KMG! especially for backing up the “threshold test.” It certainly isn’t foolproof, because if you have an expectation that the next room will be correct, the dream may abide…
The bottomless chasm thing really did shake me up. I think I was on false awakening #4 at that point. I “woke up”, looked at the alarm clock — the numbers were steady (usually another good indicator of being awake), looked around, sat up, yawned, put my feet on the floor, started thinking about the day ahed of me, and then stood up and WHOOSH!
Kalie Ivey on Thu, 13th May 2010 9:08 am
Hello,
My name is Kalie Ivey. I am a student who is currently writing a term paper on dreams. I believe that dreams open doors to our inner selves. I have so many questions that I hope to find the answers to. If you have time to email me that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Kalie Ivey
1. Some people believe that dreams come from chemical reactions in the brain or an overworked mind, while others believe they are a result of emotions or fate. What are you views on this?
2. In Sigmund Freud’s book, “Interpretation of Dreams” he states a hypotheses that we can control our dreams. Do you believe this to be true?
3. Why do we dream?
4. Can dreams be used as an escape when life becomes too hectic?
5. I’ve come across many websites that give dream interpretations. Do dreams mean the same for everyone?
6. My dreams are not always good, but I feel like they reflect my life and what’s yet to come. Sometimes I wake up feeling relieved while others I feel drained. In your opinion, to what extent do dreams play in our lives?
Nick Atlas (1 comments.) on Fri, 21st May 2010 7:07 pm
Hi Ryan,
I was reading through one of your posts and saw that you came across Conscious Dreaming around the time you were looking for grad. school’s to study dreaming and consciousness… A similar thing just happened to me (synchronistically finding Robert’s book) and I’m looking into schools now–know of Saybrook but wonder if you’ve found any others…
Thanks for any and all advice,
Nick – atlas.nick@gmail.com
Ryan Hurd (177 comments.) on Mon, 24th May 2010 7:11 pm
hi Nick — there are few, most are in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is kind of ground zero for Dream Studies.
1. Saybrook has a dreamstudies certificate that can be linked to a MA or a PhD – but it’s a distance model, classes meet 3 -4 times a year.
2. John F Kennedy University. This is where I got my MA in consciousness studies. they have a lot of dream studies courses, enough to make it a concentration in one of several MAs in the holistic studies department.
3. California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). Similar to JFKU, this school offers several MAs and PhDs in psychology and philosophy with some highly qualified dream studies professors.
4. Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP). More clinical and research focused, but with many top notch methodologists who are familiar with the portal of dreams as a way of knowledge.
5. Pacifica Graduate. This school is actually in Santa Barbara, with foci in depth psychology and mythology studies. excellent for a focus on dreams.
All of these schools are private and accredited by WASC. So it’s a “real” MA or PhD, and afterwards you’ll have the student loans to prove it.
anna on Mon, 6th Sep 2010 12:19 am
I have these false awakenings all the time, and i am so scared when i experience them i try and wake up immediatly, i often think they are trying to show me something i dont want to see but i need to, amy thoughts?
Richard on Mon, 6th Sep 2010 12:51 pm
Don’t try to wake-up! Relax, enjoy the privileged of existing in a virtual reality environment of your own making and explore your new world. The fear and anxiety comes from resistance. If you really want to ‘exit’ which i think is a wasted opportunity, the best thing to do is lay down close your eyes and ‘go to sleep in the dream’.
Ryan Hurd (177 comments.) on Tue, 7th Sep 2010 9:13 am
Anna,
I have also found that false awakenings can lead to confrontational lucid dreams where we can learn something. It’s basically a chance to be open to ways of knowing that are not centered on logical/egoic awareness… but where we may participate and dialogue with autonomous sources of knowledge/perspective.
Ryan Hurd (177 comments.) on Tue, 7th Sep 2010 9:17 am
I agree Richard — but I also would never chide someone for being fearful. sometimes fear is justified. As psychotherapist Scott Sparrow, author of “Lucid Dreaming: dawning of the clear light” has said: fear is the first step towards recognizing a worthy adversary. sometimes the “adversary” is more than resistance to being in the state (or fear of the unknown) but rather fear of unconscious material that more easily comes up in this arena.
But as you say…it’s an opportunity, and if you decide to exit, you can always try again later!
Richard on Tue, 7th Sep 2010 3:09 pm
Hello Ryan/Anna. I certainly did not mean to chide, apologies if this is how my post came over, but as Sparrow also states, confronting the feared symbol/figure often transforms it into something not-threatening, even friendly and very useful in resolving problems, analysands spend thousands of dollars with Jungian psychoanalysts and other therapists to undergo ‘guided imagery’ therapy, whereas the lucid dreamer has this for free, without being encumbered by the therapists own mindset, and in the much more potent and rich environment of the lucid dream.