Just searched for what I've been experiencing, and Hypnopompic States seems like a possibility, but doesn't completely match up.

I don't know if this is common or not, it's something I've only experienced around ten times or so in the last year or two (I've gotten in the habit of not opening my eyes when waking, so that I can fall back to sleep again if needed, especially when waking up in the middle of the night).

No matter how vivid, the memory of them does become vague much like a dream, so I don't remember much, but here are some details.

The last few times when I've realized I'm experiencing one of these, I've been able to concentrate on them and notice how beautiful they seem, how detailed they are. They only take up a portion of my vision, the latest one to the upper right. They seem backlit or projected, not like a lifelike dream. I believe there is movement as far as images go, but it is like a timelapse or has missing frames, not one continuous image. There is no sound as far as I remember.

When I've concentrated on them, they last twenty seconds or less, then fade to black and I become fully awake.

The last one depicted the Berenstain Bears for some reason, I can only assume because of my fascination with Mandela effects which often bring up the BBs.

I only got like 6 hours of sleep Sunday night and I still feel bad despite sleeping 8-8.5 the last couple days. I actually feel worse today. I don’t understand why I’m so sensitive to sleep changes.

Symptoms are drowsiness, difficulty concentrating, brain fog. Just being mentally exhausted.

I’ve be been tested and I have very mild sleep apnea on my back which I sleep on my side. Also a history of migraines.

Is one 5mg melatonin gummy safe to take every night as a 17 year old safe?

I struggle with falling asleep, it takes a hour or more every night, but with this it knocks me out immediately at the price of giving me horrible and vivid nightmares every time.

This kind of lamp really helps. I can take a shower right before bed or go to the toilet at night, and the bright light in the bathroom won't interfere with melanin production.
Or when I'm using my laptop, the lamp can just serve as background lighting. So useful

It has happened to me [M22] twice in my life. Once when I was a kid (although I don’t have much memory of it) and once again about 2 months ago. It was the stereotypical “laying in bed, can’t move, dark and creepy silhouette crawling up at me” experience.

This time it was different, and I’d appreciate if someone helped me identify what’s going on and how to avoid having similar experiences again, since it felt awful.

Here’s what happened: I feel like I spent all night in a chain of dozens of different dreams (many of which were nightmares), and between them I always would snap back to the same POV of the position I went to sleep, trying my best to move or wake up, but without much success. Happened many times in the same night, sometimes within what felt like a few minutes.

I also recall being able to kind of get up and trying to reach out for my family and a couple friends in the dream to get some help in trying to break the chain, but with a blink I’d repeatedly go back to the same position, just laying there paralyzed.

It was awfully real and even after waking up I still couldn’t properly tell if I was still sleeping or not, hence why I don’t think it was just any bad dream. The wake up part felt much like the last sleep paralysis episode I had. What’s going on, and how do I avoid having these experiences again? It’s been the second time in two months, and it always feels scary as hell.

PS: I’ve recently lost a close relative in a tragic incident (5 months ago), and I wonder if it has something to do with the recurring episodes and nightmares. My sleep has been very bad for the entirety of my life, but a few months ago I started to get some proper sleep hygiene + some supplements prescribed by a reliable doctor.
Also, I’ve been doing a low carb/high fat diet for about 8 months. Don’t know if any of this is relevant, but I guess it’s worth mentioning.

Edit: I can’t even tell if the episode could have been a lucid dream, since I was too worried about trying to get up. Although it felt awfully real, I couldn’t voluntarily wake up as in a normal lucid dream.

I'm tracking my sleep. Usually the first thing I do when I wake up is check my Garmin watch and see the sleep data: how much deep sleep, REM sleep, and stuff like that I got through the night.

I know there are a lot of studies that say to avoid any screens for at least 1 hour after waking up to stabilise your dopamine system and crave less dopamine throughout the day. I'm curious: would checking the watch first thing in the morning have the same effect as picking up the phone and checking email or social network and stuff like that?

Thank you for your answers.

Hi there!
I’m having some trouble and this is kind of my last ditch effort. I figured I would ask if someone has dealt with something similar and what helped or if at this point I need to push doctors more to get involved—but I don’t know if they can even help me with this? (TLDR section at the end. I know this is long, sorry bout it)
I’m a 26 year old female who has ALWAYS dealt with bad sleep since I was a kid: trouble falling asleep, night terrors, sleep paralysis, general difficulty staying asleep. As an adult, I have insomnia if I’m “not tired enough” (I don’t know what tired enough is, but it seems like trouble getting to sleep if I’m not at a point if exhaustion, which is not healthy either). Once I finally do fall asleep, I often wake up on my own in 30 minute-1 hour intervals, OR—I have screaming/crying night terrors and my boyfriend has to wake me up. If I am at a level where I am just exhausted, like after a long week of work or 3+ days in a row of bad sleep, I can easily fall asleep. I am so tired that my body/brain does try to wake me up throughout the night, but can’t. When this happens, I almost feel like I’ve been drugged—so groggy that I am technically awake (I think), but my eyes physically cannot stay open and i fall back to sleep. Now, that sounds fine, but this is usually coupled with horrible sleep paralysis. It used to be that I would have scary dreams, like someone breaking into the house or the house is on fire and I can’t get up. Most of the time, I know I am dreaming and I can fight through it at that point. But recently I have developed a dream pattern where I can’t breathe. I can truly feel myself suffocating, choking almost, and I am “conscious” in my dream state trying to convince my body to take a breath. When i finally do, I “wake up” gasping for air, hit that groggy/drugged feeling, fall asleep against my will, and it all happens again. I sometimes feel I have hit that cycle of not breathing-waking up-not breathing again upwards of 40+ times in a sleep state. It is extremely exhausting. On top of already not sleeping good, I then keep waking up scared all night, I’m not getting a good sleep and would rather have night terrors.
Now, with that whole not breathing sleep paralysis thing, I was VERY scared when it first happened. I was panicking almost every time I would wake up for the final time, or I was avoiding going to bed at all because I didn’t want it to keep happening. My boyfriend watched me sleep one time (per my request) when I felt so tired I knew it was going to happen. And he says that I did not stop breathing AT ALL. I wasn’t holding my breath, but I would randomly keep waking up every 3-5 minutes or so gasping for air. I usually feel the suffocating sensation pretty quickly after falling asleep, so I know that it’s not even long enough to truly be suffocating if I were actually holding my breath, if that makes sense.
I have tried some things in the past. Melatonin seems to worsen my sleep paralysis quite a bit, so I no longer use it. Smoking weed before bed gives me more terrors, although it does help me to fall asleep easier than usual. I’ve tried various supplements through the years as suggested by my primary care doctor, but otherwise he says I should do a sleep study. I have also seen multiple therapists throughout like 15 years. I know a lot of this is anxiety related, but therapy and different anxiety medications either have no change or make it worse. At this point, I have anxiety every time I get ready for bed because I know I’m going to have a scary experience.
I am not against a sleep study and will do it if that’s my last option. But my thing is what is the point of doing a sleep study if I can’t take the sleep aids they prescribe? With my experience with the melatonin and anti anxiety medications, will these have the same effect on me and just make it harder for me to wake up in an episode?
If anyone has some advice, I’m at my wits end and will basically do anything. TIA

TLDR; I have night terrors and bad sleep paralysis almost every night. I have tried medications and it has made it worse. I also see a therapist and am on anti anxiety meds with no improvement. Do I need a sleep study, or will the meds they prescribe make it worse like the others I have tried?

Heys guys so in summer i used to have really terrible sleep issues and sleep anxiety. While it was a terrible period i learnt alot of things about how sleep works. Through experimenting with different things, i have now made a method of sleeping which works incredibly well and feel like some of you would benefit

1. (Optional) put on a sleep audiobook of a book you know very well. Being a massive harry potter fan i used those books to fall asleep to. The reason a familiar book is better is because your mind will easily be able to decode and imagine what the people are saying, allowing your mind to easily visualise the book without putting loads of effort into understanding.
2. parasympathetic breathing: when in bed, deep inhale for 4, hold for 4, exhale with pursed lips for 8 seconds. Repeat 3x
3. Lateral eye movement: close eyes, slowly and controlled move eyes from left to right, right to left, up down, down up, clockwise/anticlockwise repeat 2x
4. Take a word "apple". Then use each letter as a starting letter for another word. Repeat this again with the word you end on using the "e". This can be repeated as many times as you like. No need to strain to create a word, you can also just use gibberish if you like

cycle 2,3,4

1. You don't need to do these exercises very fast or intensely repeat them. Just do them in a relaxed way and tune out to an audiobook

I hope this helps you guys and would encourage trying if you struggle with sleep given it is completely free. Would be interested to know if it works for you

Due to the pressure of work, I often toss and turn for 2 hours and can't fall asleep, which leads to my poor state the next day. I can't concentrate on my work and have been sleepy.

To fix this, I bought a sleep supplement that promises faster sleep. Last night, I got into bed at 10:30 PM. I could feel my brain getting quiet, and according to my Apple Watch, I was asleep by 10:35 PM. I fell asleep in just 5 minutes! I was thrilled.

But why am I still tired and awake? After trying this product for half a month, I still feel sleepy in my office, which makes me feel that the money is wasted, because it doesn't give me a restorative rest, but just makes me faint!

Do you have similar experiences?

When I eat before bed, especially a heavy meal, I wake up completely not rested and slightly constipated. Is this normal or could it point to a digestive problem? And is this a real thing? I read that it can impact sleep quality but I don’t see many examples to this level where it destroys it completely. Thank you so much in advance.

i always tell myself i'll get off at 11 and then it's 2am and i'm wrecked the next day.

been like this for about 6 months. usually in bed around 2, up at 11 or 12. no alcohol, just the occasional red bull or starbucks mocha. tried alarms and timers but i just turn them off

anyone who fixed this, what actually got you to stop and go to bed

Idk how to say this. M28 need someone to fall asleep on the phone with just can’t be myself. Dealing with a lot, we don’t have to talk I just don’t want to be alone

I'm a College student, I go to bed around 11pm-12am at the latest and am supposed to wake up around 730am. I can't keep my door closed because I have a cat who needs to get in and out for litter and his water. My room is in the basement at the bottom of the stairs from the main living area.

My family wakes up and has to get ready for work at 5am. I've told them multiple times how often they wake me up, but nothing is changing. I've been thinking about getting some kind of white noise machine or headphones or something, but I'm just not getting a good enough sleep. Earbuds/plugs hurt my ears so I can't wear those.

If anyone has recommendations on devices or advice on how to tolerate/deal with this I'd really appreciate it.

(ETA: I have a disorder and tube in my ear that prevents the fluid from properly draining so Earplugs are really last on the list of things I'd like.)

So I’m asking this to see if anyone else is in the same boat and if there’s any better fixes. For added info I’m on blood pressure and high cholesterol medication as well as Metformin and I’ve been using a cpap for about 2 months. I work 3pm-11pm and cannot fall asleep before 4-5 am without the olly 3mg gummies. I used to love waking up early, heading to work and getting off early afternoon cause it felt so much more productive and I’d have the entire rest of the afternoon/evening to get my own day to day stuff done. Now that I’ve been on this shift for a few years I can’t seem to do anything productive before work without feeling stressed and rushed and can’t do too much after work as to not wake everyone else in the house up. I think it’s more of a mental thing in all honesty but my sleep schedule feels so out of wack. I usually can’t wake up any earlier than 8-9 am without feeling rough and dragging up until I go into work. With the gummies ( I only take one of the recommended two) I gradually get tired within about an hour or two and fall asleep if I take one as soon as I get home. I know they’re not recommended for long term use so I’m mainly asking what other “remedies” I could use to improve my sleeping habits without possible health side effects. Thanks in advance.

I’ve been struggling to maintain a consistent sleep schedule, and I’m looking for advice from people who have actually managed to fix theirs.
I often end up going to bed later than I’d like(around 1 to 2am), which makes it harder to wake up early and feel productive during the day.
Even when I get 8–9 hours of sleep, I don’t always feel rested.
I’d really like to reset my body clock and build a routine where I naturally fall asleep and wake up at consistent times.
For those of you who successfully fixed your sleep schedule:

What actually worked for you?
Did you gradually shift your bedtime or force yourself to wake up early?
How long did it take before your body adjusted?
What habits made the biggest difference?
How do you avoid falling back into your old routine?

I’m especially interested in real experiences rather than generic advice like “just put your phone away.”
Thanks!

I am female, 29 years old, height around 162m, weight around 54kg. But didn't measure in long time.

Hey so, in the past few days I've been suffering from a problem that is making me really worse. In the past few days 'd fall asleep on my sleep time, only two wakeup again an hour or two later, at max 3 hours, then if I l' d try to fall asleep again to get longer hours of sleep, I'd wakeup again less than an hour later. I'm so unwell lately, I can't function well on days I sleep less than 5 hours, let alone when they are fragmented.

Too unwell to leave the house and visit a doctor, and no good tele health or home visits available. Today I only slept less than 4 hours in total, and 3 days ago slept 2 hours in total. Last day I got a good 8 hour sleep was 4 days ago.

This happened to me for 3 days last week then I went back to sleeping well but this time it's lasting longer. ​

In the past I had normal sleep and no sleep issues.

Googling I read about scary things like fatal insomnia and so. I'm worried. I have bad brain fog and I feel weak. I don't wannaa go to ER as they were never helpful to me and it has risk of getting more tired for nothing.

I don't eat or drink anything that has caffeine by the way. I don't take any medications OR supplements. And I don't smoke and don't drink alcohol. issue is with staying asleep not falling asleep. I don't wakeup gasping for air.

Back when I was in high school, I had a hell of a schedule due to how competitive it was and extracurricular stuff. It was really stressful and for essentially all of high school I got like 5-6 hours of sleep on average, 3-4 during finals week, and 7-8 on a good/light day.

Now I'm in college and even during my mid terms and after joining clubs and other stuff I would naturally do, I can almost always consistently sleep 8-9 hours a day, if not that at LEAST 7. I remember I unironically cried (from joy) in the semester after like a month when I realized it wasnt gonna turn back into 5 hour sleeping nights after syllabus week.

Anyways, back to my thing. My classes start at 11 and I come home at 5-5:30. Usually I get through any remaining homework or other work/errands, whatever it might be by 8. I usually play video games or do other relaxing stuff like eating/showering/reading from 8:00 pm - 11:00 pm before heading to bed. I wake up at 8:00 am, I can fall asleep fairly quickly in like 15 min so 8-9 hours of sleep.

I remember I used to have this consistent alertness while being tired in high school throughout the entire day and then when I could finally go to bed I would just fall asleep absolutely exhausted in like 30 seconds lol. Nowadays, I start my mornings super alert and it's more like I slowly get more tired in a continuous way. I've tried to stay up till 12 am sometimes and just really couldn't for the most part even though I used to be able to stay up till 4 am if I had to.

I guess I was just wondering why this was happening, idk if tagging this with advice flair was appropriate. I mostly did that cause it weirded me out and I was like "why am I feeling tired?" haha

Literally on my second night of not sleeping A WINK!!! Mind you I’ve been a great sleeper my whole life and nothing has shocked me more than not being able to sleep??

Some context: I’ve started playing games this month til like 4-5am in a comp shop, go home and take a really cold shower, and sleep. More frequently as the days go by so I was def messing my sleep schedule.

So I’ve been sleeping around 6AM alr. But for the first time, I haven’t fallen asleep even beyond 6AM and not sleeping at all. This is my second night and lowkey I think I’m gonna go crazy??

Please tell me the longest time you’ve been awake so I know I’m not alone in this and what I can do!!! I know I need to fix my sleep schedule but right now I don’t really care about it. I just need to sleep.

i slept total 5 hours in the last 3 days!

is it really bad?

anyone else fall into this trap? i got an apple watch and started tracking sleep thinking it would help me improve my habits. instead now i wake up every morning and immediately check my score. if its low i feel like garbage even if i felt perfectly rested before looking at it. its like knowing the number overwrites how i actually feel. my doctor said this is a real thing called orthosomnia where obsessing over sleep data actually causes anxiety that ruins your sleep. great so the tool designed to help me sleep is the thing keeping me up. i want to keep wearing it for the alarm feature but i need to stop seeing that number. has anyone figured out how to hide the sleep data without removing the app entirely? or should i just go back to a regular alarm clock and accept that not everything needs to be tracked

whenever I doze off the top of my feet start tingling as if they’re being tickled and it’s really irritating. they don’t hurt, they just..tickle. this only happens when I’m sitting upright without crossing my legs or feet. it doesn’t happen when I’m trying to sleep lying down at night. only when I’m dozing off. Has anybody ever felt that before or does anybody know why that might happen? to give more context, my feet don’t fall asleep they just tickle..???

Context: I’ve had weird sleep patterns my whole life. I’ve always been able to sleep at least 12 hours if I have nothing to wake up for. I’ve also always been a night owl, as I can imagine many of you can relate.

I’ve noticed recently that I never wake up feeling rested, even if I get a lot of sleep at night. This has led to daytime sleepiness where I’m so tired I’m trying not to nod off in class (college) and when I get home I often nap even if it’s not intended, which is usually the case. The naps can be anywhere from 2-6 hours- so basically a mini sleep rather than a nap.

I was just wondering if any of you have any insight on what could be going on. I tried looking stuff up- but honestly I trust yall and your insight more than google.

I am 30 now. Back in the day I used to be able to sleep anywhere and everywhere. I was still a light sleeper but I could fall asleep with minimal conditions.

Nowadays I have to have a list of things checked before I can do it. I need to have my creams, earplugs, eyemask, right temperature, certain mattress softness (it’s a nightmare sleeping somewhere else), temperature, pyjamas, not an empty stomach…

I have been dealing with insomnia since always but I feel it’s getting worse. Any small disruption and discomfort will make me lay awake for hours.

I hate that I’m like this and i’m a nightmare to travel with. I was wondering if anyone else is experiencing this as you get older? Any other highly sensitive and light sleepers?