False awakening: when you dream you have woken up

What a false awakening feels like

Your alarm goes off. You turn it off, get up, shower, maybe make coffee and start getting dressed. Then you wake up, in bed, with the alarm still ringing. Everything you just did was a dream. Some people go through this several times in a row, each "waking" as convincing as the last, until they are not sure whether they are awake now.

False awakenings are disorienting because the dream recreates your most familiar place in detail. You have woken in that bedroom hundreds of times, so the brain has an excellent model of it. Small things are often off, though: a light switch that does nothing, a window in the wrong place, a clock that will not settle, a room slightly too dark.

The two types of false awakening

The researcher Celia Green, who wrote one of the first books on lucid dreams, described two kinds of false awakening.

Why false awakenings happen

The likeliest explanation is anticipation. When part of your mind is focused on waking, because you have an early flight, an exam, a new job or a baby who might cry, the dreaming brain stages the waking it is expecting. It is the same mechanism that makes you dream of being late on the night before something important.

False awakenings also happen at the borders of sleep, when you are drifting in and out, which is why they cluster in the morning and during broken sleep. They are more common in people who have lucid dreams, perhaps because those dreamers are more aware of their sleep and their waking. And they can come in loops: one false awakening, then another, until real waking finally arrives.

• ✦Anxiety about oversleeping or an important day ahead.
• ✦Broken or light sleep, such as a night with several alarms.
• ✦Practicing lucid dreaming, including the wake back to bed method.
• ✦Stress, which makes sleep lighter and dreams more vigilant.
• ✦Sleeping somewhere new, where part of the mind stays alert.

Dream within a dream meaning

A dream within a dream is the broader version: inside one dream, you fall asleep, or wake into another dream, or realize the scene you were in was only a dream, while still dreaming. Edgar Allan Poe's poem A Dream Within a Dream and the film Inception both play with the unsettling question it raises, whether waking life is as solid as it seems.

In dream interpretation, a dream within a dream is often read as layers of awareness. The inner dream can show something you are not ready to look at directly, so the mind wraps it in another layer. Waking from the inner dream into the outer one can mean you are beginning to see through a situation, or that you have only half-faced something. Many spiritual readers see it as a sign of growing awareness, a sense that you are waking up in your life step by step.

What a false awakening says about your waking life

Because a false awakening copies your morning so closely, the details you do get wrong are worth a look. If you dreamed you woke up late and rushed out, the dream sits close to the classic dream about being late: a worry about missing something or not being ready. If you dreamed you woke and finished all your chores, only to find them undone, the mind may be telling you how heavy your to-do list feels. If you dreamed of waking beside someone who is not in your life, read that figure as you would any person in a dream.

A run of false awakenings over weeks often means you are carrying tomorrow to bed with you. A simple evening ritual, writing down the next day's first three tasks and setting one alarm you trust, gives the mind permission to stop rehearsing the morning.

How to tell if you are really awake

If you get false awakenings often, a quick reality check on waking can save you a confusing morning, and it can turn a false awakening into a lucid dream.

1. 1.Try to push a finger through your palm; in a dream it may pass through.
2. 2.Pinch your nose and try to breathe; in a dream you often still can.
3. 3.Look at a clock or text twice; in a dream it usually changes.
4. 4.Flip the light switch; dream lights often do not work properly.

False awakenings and lucid dreaming

For people learning lucid dreaming, false awakenings are an opportunity. You are already in a familiar scene, and a reality check there often brings lucidity. Lucid dreamers also report more false awakenings simply because they pay more attention to the edges of sleep. If you are practicing, record them in your dream journal: they are among the clearest dream signs you can have.

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