The creative sweet spot of dreaming | Hacker News Reader

The creative sweet spot of dreaming

nautil.us

83 pointsdnetesn12 comments

I vividly hallucinate for a few minutes before falling asleep (sometimes 10+ minutes). It got so weird that I had to Google it a few years ago to make sure I wasn't going insane. I'd actually dread falling asleep because it wasn't always the most fun thing to have happening.

It used to manifest as people being in the room, loud talking, having conversations with people. I'd even tell people to shut up so I could sleep.

This was more common when I was drinking alcohol for whatever reason, and since being sober it doesn't happen as frequently. Being very sleep deprived is an easy way to trigger it though.

I still occasionally have to remind myself when it's happening that I'm not crazy.

I often wake up in the middle of the night and go full visual hallucinations for a couple seconds. Sometimes the walls are covered in faces, sometimes a small chinese dragon flies slowly across the room. They only ever last the two-three seconds. I’ve managed to condition myself to expect the hallucinations even in the half-asleep state during which they come.

I expect it’s just that my brain is still in REM even though my body is no longer paralyzed.

I have the same and I quite like it, when it happens. Very rarely am I able to "catch" the dream and somehow become semi conscious inside it in brief flashes. When this happens, I am not exactly able to control anything, but I can sort of observe things with my "normal" state of mind. Its really difficult to explain with words though.

As you also describe, this usually happens, when I am sleep deprived.

I occasionally hear my mother yelling at me to get up and get ready for school, just as I'm falling asleep. She hasn't had to do that in real life for...a while (and indeed, she passed on some years ago).

Some things just get deeply imbedded in the brain, I guess.

I went through a period where I aspirationally set my alarm for 7am but actually slept in for a few hours after that every day. I had the most free and creative internal dialogues during these half asleep half awake times,

Personal Experience: I am pretty sure this state of mind is similar to what is induced by ASMR. There is this idea of a braingasm, that I learned to self induce when I was around 10. Euphoria is the best way to describe it. I have noticed it to be similar to what people describe with ASMR, although I have not experimented with ASMR at all so I am not certain. I have also noticed it to be extremely similar to the transitory state into and out of sleep. I haven't tried using it for brainstorming, I guess I've got some more experimenting to do.

I can do that too! It's like a euphoric wave that goes through my body.

You guys are bringing back memories. I used to do this all the time when younger, actively phasing between what felt like sleep and consciousness, and even being able to hold and stay in the state inbetween. Felt like balancing

Are you able to share any details on how you did it, or is it not something that can really be explained in instructional format?

Can’t explain it, it was akin to clenching or focusing my sight but with my brain, which I know is not helpful.

I haven’t done it in decades and honestly not sure if I can do it still

Interesting but why do you think this would be close to ASMR? For me it sounds cognitively like very different processes. Isn’t ASMR closer to something like synesthesia. With dreaming and falling in and out of sleep we are talking about different states of consciousness.

As someone for whom "ASMR" fell into place as a term for something I'd experienced my whole life: you're being very kind to GP. It's not close to anything related to sleep, more like a pleasant sensation of hairs standing on end. I'm pretty sure (not sure if I got this from somewhere or came up with it TBH) that it's a grooming-related response to someone being very near to you, hence the focus on things that sound like they're right next to your ears. (For me it also triggers on things like being measured for clothes, or seeing someone else be measured for clothes. It's flipping weird.)

OTOH, as someone who has also stayed away from ASMR-related media but hears bits about it: I get the impression it has, uh, spread away from its initial purpose, and gotten more generic. Drawing conclusions from what labels itself ASMR today is likely fruitless in much the same way you should be skeptical of anything that calls itself "Agile".

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