Oversleeping & Willing Yourself Back In Time

[Timothy]

When I was a kid I used to consistently have this happen to me - I'd wake up, look at the clock and realize it was kinda late. So i'd go back to sleep and say "I'll just wake up earlier" and... it would work.

I would assume it was a dream but i still remember it and I remember it happening regularly. So maybe I had the same dream over and over but I don't think so... Wish I could still do that!

 

[EnolaGaia]

Did you have any sense of how long you were able to sleep between the first and second apparent wakings?

 

[Schrodinger's Zebra]

When I was a kid I used to consistently have this happen to me - I'd wake up, look at the clock and realize it was kinda late. So i'd go back to sleep and say "I'll just wake up earlier" and... it would work.

I would assume it was a dream but i still remember it and I remember it happening regularly. So maybe I had the same dream over and over but I don't think so... Wish I could still do that!

When you woke up the second time, was this of your own accord or as a result of an alarm clock? If it was of your own accord, then the initial 'waking up' sounds like a dream designed to make sure you woke up when you (finally) did; making you think it was late so that you wouldn't stay asleep much longer. Perhaps.

Was it always at the same time that you (a) looked at the clock and (b) woke up, or did it vary?

 

[Naughty_Felid]

I sort of get where he is coming from. During childhood the ability to push a little, particularly during waking.

I'm not saying he or I was a time traveler I just wonder if it's another example of the malleable nature of a child's brain.

Time, after all, isn't as straight forward, (no pun intended), as it seems.

 

[Timothy]

Whenever I think back on it I think it must have been a dream. But it would have been a series of relatively identical dreams over a period of about 2 years and it still didn't seem like a dream... No alarms were involved and I can't figure out why my younger brain would have been so worried about it. I mean, I would get why I'd be worried about it nowadays since waking up on time is the difference between me and the cat eating or not but back when I was that young (Say 10-ish) I doubt I was that massively worried. Just a bit of weirdness in an otherwise normal life.

 

[catseye]

This reminds me a bit of my son's 'long blink.'

I'd called him to get up and get ready for school. He shouted back to say he was awake and getting up. Then silence. About half an hour later he appeared, late, rushed and rumpled. Apparently, he'd 'done a long blink' and suddenly half an hour had passed.

He'd clearly fallen back asleep, but from his perspective all he'd done was close his eyes and then open them again.

 

[ChasFink]

This reminds me a bit of my son's 'long blink.'

I'd called him to get up and get ready for school. He shouted back to say he was awake and getting up. Then silence. About half an hour later he appeared, late, rushed and rumpled. Apparently, he'd 'done a long blink' and suddenly half an hour had passed.

He'd clearly fallen back asleep, but from his perspective all he'd done was close his eyes and then open them again.

I'm 62 and do this on a regular basis.

When I was a kid I could usually wake up at almost exactly the desired time without the need for an alarm. I remember seeing a comic strip (Peanuts?) where a character claimed the same ability, along with the same complication: I had to adjust for Daylight Saving Time by telling myself to get up an hour earlier.

Even today, if I'm not over-tired, I can sometimes stop an early alarm (which I set as a kind of super-long snooze), go back to sleep, and get up only a minute or two before the second alarm.

 

[Naughty_Felid]

I'm 62 and do this on a regular basis.

When I was a kid I could usually wake up at almost exactly the desired time without the need for an alarm. I remember seeing a comic strip (Peanuts?) where a character claimed the same ability, along with the same complication: I had to adjust for Daylight Saving Time by telling myself to get up an hour earlier.

Even today, if I'm not over-tired, I can sometimes stop an early alarm (which I set as a kind of super-long snooze), go back to sleep, and get up only a minute or two before the second alarm.

I think everyone should read Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep? (2017)

In chapter 3 he talks about the brain's ability to accurately autonomically track time during sleep which results in our ability to wake up a couple of minutes before the alarm goes off, but that ability is not accessible consciously as you are asleep.

Also, he mentions that studies in sleeping rats suggest that during REM sleep their brains replayed memories much slower than when the events took place. He summarizes this may be why there is a time dilation between perceived time passing during dreaming and being awake. Hence we feel we've been in the land of dreams for hours rather than minutes.

Cateyes son consciously has told himself he only just closed his eyes for a second but neurologically his brain's perception of time had slowed as it does during sleep. He was therefore not able to consciously gauge the passage of time as he was asleep.

The best explanation for the OP is that he was still dreaming. Dreams can be frighteningly realistic and he and I to a lesser extent mistakingly believed we woke and checked the clock when in fact we didn't.

Although I still like to believe we've pushed time a little.

 

[catseye]

When I was young and living at home, the airing cupboard was in my bedroom. My mother used to come in quite late at night, after I was asleep, to fetch clothes for the next day.

Apparently I often used to sit up in bed and ask her what time it was (no clocks in the room). She'd answer and I would lie back down again, apparently satisfied. But I don't remember EVER waking up to do this. I was asking in my sleep. Apparently I could carry on quite a conversation with her, whilst still asleep.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Apparently I often used to sit up in bed and ask her what time it was (no clocks in the room). She'd answer and I would lie back down again, apparently satisfied. But I don't remember EVER waking up to do this. I was asking in my sleep. Apparently I could carry on quite a conversation with her, whilst still asleep.

My sister could do this too.

 

[madmath]

When you young lot get older you will no longer have a choice about when you get up.

I do sometimes half-dream I'm awake and gotten up, even as I realize I'm still asleep and in bed. Some of those times I'm certain it's later than it truly is.

 

[Victory]

Just after waking, our perception of time is not the same as it is the rest of the day.
I would say this covers the first 15 minutes after waking.

I can set an alarm, wake, then spend what feels like an age lying there, only for it to actually be 15 minutes.

Or I can set an alarm, fall asleep again, then wake an hour later for it to feel like 1 minute.

If we consider that dreams can feel as if they take place over a number of hours, when they actually take place during a short period of time, then perhaps the time just after waking acts as a transition between the two states.
A vital transition, to cushion the sharp contrast between two very different modes of consciousness.

P.S. Too many feature films have non realistic characters waking up, then three seconds later they are fully awake, talking to someone else as if they have been awake for a couple of hours.

 

[Ermintruder]

perhaps the time just after waking acts as a transition between the two states.

I think this is sometimes referred to as a liminal stage of consciousness.

Like the certain (yet seemingly-unsure) rising of the sun itself each day, the diurnal reemergence of wakefulness is at most a semi-linear process; a frontierland of perceptual ambiguity and infinite possibility.

The nightly discontinuity of consciousness (perhaps in some ways even also personality and personhood in their absolute senses) is more of a mystery than the existence of consciousness itself- le éveillé mort elicits from us all reintroductions, salutations and slurred interrogatives (voiced, dreamed, or maybe only half-intended).

How are we today? Indeed, who are we today?