The 'important truths' I only 'remember' when half sleep

[alias_sqbr]

Does anyone else have this? I've had it since I was a kid but only as an adult have I started being able to remember any of the 'truth' while awake.

The two times it happens are when I'm just about to fall asleep, and when I'm just waking up, especially if it's in the middle of the night. Either way, I suddenly 'remember' something VERY IMPORTANT that I had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN, and know I only remember when I'm half-asleep, so it's important I wake up and deal with it!!!

...and then either I fall fully asleep, or I wake up enough to go "wtf that's not a thing" and then it generally evaporates and I forget I was even worried about it.

(I think I might have posted about this before? I can't remember, lol)

As a kid, I would remember having remembered something important, but not what it was, which was very unsettling.

The first time I can remember being able to hold onto the thought once awake was in my mid-twenties, when I'd just started my first real job after my Phd. There were a bunch of procedures etc to learn, and while half-asleep I would 'remember' a bunch more VERY IMPORTANT WORK THINGS that I had TOTALLY NOT BEING DOING and was GOING TO GET INTO TROUBLE OVER. It was so convincing it actually lasted through to me being awake, and I spent some time going "Oh god, have I forgotten some work procedures??" until convincing myself I hadn't.

And from then on, I've been much better at being able to remember the 'important thing' when I'm awake, though it's still patchy. Which has helped me realise that it is never actually real, even though it feels 100% convincing in the moment.

Around that time I also had what has continued to be a very common 'memory': that I had forgotten my 'night pills'. At that point I only took one pill, in the morning, and had pretty much never taken pills at night at any point in my life, with the very occasional brief exception when I was on antibiotics or something. These days I do take actual night pills, but my Night Pills Memory is very definitely about different night pills.

A few years later I kept waking up knowing I'd 'remembered' something important but not what, so kept a pad of paper by the bed to write it down before I forgot again. Eventually I managed to capture it...and woke to the word PILLS scrawled in huge jagged letters diagonally across the pad. Cam found this absolutely hilarious, and it's become a running joke between us, especially since in the years since he's sometimes happened to talk to me while I'm half awake and I've actually tried to explain to him earnestly about the VERY IMPORTANT FORGOTTEN PILLS for a little while before waking up more and going "wait, oh no, that's not a thing". Now I can say "So last night I was all PILLS!!!" and he knows what I mean.

There have been a few other times I stayed in PILLS space while awake long enough to actually act on my Very Important Memory. Like if I happened to be near a computer I've opened up a text document to type something, or a web browser to look something up, only for my brain to wake up a bit more and go whoa wtf am I doing. It's very unsettling, like waking from a delusion or being mind-controlled.

While asleep on the couch yesterday I became convinced of a VERY IMPORTANT LIST OF THINGS TO DO written in a specific pad of paper next to the couch, and I woke up enough to grab the pad and put it on top of my laptop so I'd be reminded later, and then fell back asleep.

So then when I woke up properly I stared at the pad for a moment in confusion and then went "Dumbass PILLS!brain. The only plans in there is my design for a rainbow of flowers in Animal Crossing."

So yeah! It's a weird thing my brain does! Not as dangerous as sleep walking or as scary as sleep terrors, but it feels like it's in the same sort of general space of half-asleep behaviours, and is definitely weird to experience.

Based on some brief googling it's probably confusional arousal, which is indeed in the same category of 'parasomnia' as sleep walking. Looking at the various ways it can manifest, I'm glad I don't get violent or sexual and just worry about pills! I'd say I've also experienced the amazingly named Exploding Head Syndrome, though it's hard to separate from my pre-meds-and-therapy general paranoia about Bugs In The Walls, Deadly Health Problems etc, which got worse when I was falling asleep because I was too tired to repress it all.

BRAINS, MAN.

Comments

BRAINS

[jesse_the_k]

are weird as fuck.

I too have had PILLS! certainties on awakening. Thanks for posting; I'd never even imagined anyone else experienced this.

(Former night terrors to the point I'd kick MyGuy. Did not want. Now controlled -- thank heavens for psych meds which work.)

Re: BRAINS

[alias_sqbr]

Ouch, that sounds difficult. Hooray for meds which work, indeed!

[naraht]

Either way, I suddenly 'remember' something VERY IMPORTANT that I had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN, and know I only remember when I'm half-asleep, so it's important I wake up and deal with it!!!

Oh yes this is me! There are particular client projects I only 'remember' when I'm half asleep... because of course they don't exist.

[alias_sqbr]

Glad to know it's not just me!

[lea_hazel]

I do experience some weirdness on the edges of sleep, but I'm never really sure how to categorize it. But it's more of a curio than a matter of actual concern, so I don't swell on it. I recognize the feeling of my sleeping self being very convinced of something absolutely false. My dream-self often refers to a job I never had, for example.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes the things I'm convinced of when half asleep are nothing to the DEEPLY WEIRD things I'm sure of in dreams.

[pedanther]

I've had experiences like that, although I don't recall at the moment what kind of things I've 'remembered'.

When I was in my teens, it would sometimes go far enough that I'd get out of bed to deal with whatever it was, and then usually I'd turn the light on and the light would wake me up enough to realise that the situation wasn't real. That seems to have stopped happening as I got older.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes it seems to be something people tend to grow out of. I think I had it more often in my youth, too.

[polyfrazzlemented]

I don't really get this, but I have "discovered important truths" in dreams and then woken up to realize they're ridiculous. (I once had a dream where I'd discovered an important idea that was supposed to revolutionize linguistics, math, and computer science. It was "We map letters to colors. We need to map colors to letters.")

[alias_sqbr]

Ha yes I definitely have that too.

[lilacsigil]

I sometimes wake up having "remembered" (usually quite mundane) things that didn't actually happen, but could have. For example, I "remembered" my brother's best friend's family winning a small prize in the lottery and buying a really big washing machine. I "remembered" hearing that Arya Stark in Game of Thrones had her tongue cut out a few episodes ahead of where I was up to and I was quite disturbed by this and stopped watching the show, but it turned out that it never happened!

[eccentric_hat]

I write every day on 750words.com and have for years now. Sometimes I go through a phase where every night I wake up with a jolt convinced I forgot to write my words and I broke my streak. This is almost never true.

[alias_sqbr]

But the few times it is make you paranoid the rest of the time? That's how it works for me, anyway :)

[eccentric_hat]

Yes, exactly! I broke a thousand-day streak this summer and was supremely irritated with myself. But I had kept it up for over a thousand days beforehand and there were times, five or six hundred days in, when I woke up convinced I'd forgotten even though I did my words right before bed.