What happened during my nap?

September 24, 2007 1:04 PM

Am I losing it?

I rarely nap, but on a recent afternoon I nodded off on the couch only to (gently) wake up about an hour later completely disoriented. It was like the whole time/space continuum had collapsed. For about 60 seconds I was in a near panic state not being able to get my bearings. Who am I? How did I get here? What time is it? Where is everybody? Then it sorta passed. I am a reasonably healthy 37 year old guy and get 8 hrs of sleep nightly.

Anybody ever experience this? Did I wake up in the middle of REM sleep? WTF?

posted by punkfloyd to health (27 comments total)

You're fine. Relax.
posted by The World Famous at 1:07 PM on September 24, 2007

That's happened to me. Non-clinical opinion: you're not losing it - a long nap in the afternoon is unusual for your body, the light has changed when you wake up and that messes up your time cues, it IS disorienting. But not insane.

I am not a doctor.
posted by bunnycup at 1:08 PM on September 24, 2007

If you were losing it, I think you could expect this kind of thing to happen to you. Therefore, I wouldn't rule it out.
posted by found missing at 1:12 PM on September 24, 2007

I've had this happen to me all my life. Not all the time, I mean. They're rare but not surprising.

I think bunnycup is right. The light is disorienting. The earliest time I recall this happening, I was young, maybe nine or ten years old. I took a nap in the late afternoon, woke up a couple hours later (it must have been summer still) for dinner, and it took me the rest of the day to convince myself that it wasn't tomorrow and I wasn't eating breakfast.

I'm 25 now. It's less disorienting now, when it happens, but still odd.
posted by lou at 1:13 PM on September 24, 2007

I love it when that happens, and wish it would happen every time I took a nap.
posted by iconomy at 1:14 PM on September 24, 2007 [2 favorites]

It's recommended that you limit afternoon naps to 15 or 20 minutes, otherwise you enter into sleep cycles that can make you awake more tired and disoriented than refreshed and alert (the intended result for everyone except iconomy).
posted by hermitosis at 1:19 PM on September 24, 2007

Derealization. I get this as the lead-in to full blown panic attacks. Unnerving, ain't it? Tell you what, drink a big glass of water, that'll help keep your breathing regular and you won't spiral into bad panic. And just try to remind yourself that it will pass.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:20 PM on September 24, 2007

This has been my reaction when waking up from nearly every mid-afternoon nap I've taken my whole life. Not sure what the cause is, but I find it unpleasant enough to avoid naps entirely.
posted by jacobbarssbailey at 1:22 PM on September 24, 2007

Godammit, now I can't even take my annual nap without derealizing myself.
posted by punkfloyd at 1:24 PM on September 24, 2007 [3 favorites]

Yeah, it's like a little vacation from your life where you've forgotten about the mortgage and everything.
posted by luriete at 1:24 PM on September 24, 2007

I get that frequently when waking from a nap soon after having just arrived in a time zone 4+ hours ahead of my "body clock." It's "What room is this? Where am I? Who am I?" It's disconcerting, but passes quickly.
posted by ericb at 1:31 PM on September 24, 2007

Could also be low blood pressure effects, since people tend to get up more quickly from naps than they do from bed in the morning.
posted by xo at 1:40 PM on September 24, 2007

This is everytime I wake up from a nap at dusk. I can't tell whether it's morning or night!
posted by rhizome at 2:11 PM on September 24, 2007

Proust writes about this in Swann's Way:

"...when I awoke in the middle of the night, not knowing where I was, I could not even be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence...I was more destitute than the cave-dweller; but then the memory...would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I should have never escaped by myself."
posted by Ian A.T. at 2:42 PM on September 24, 2007

I've experienced what I can only describe as derealization on a crack cocaine/amphetamine/steroid cocktail once. Not only did I not know who or where I was, I couldn't process visual information. I "saw" out of my eyes perfectly normally, but I was completely unable to discern objects. Nothing I "saw" had any meaning other than variously colored dots. The feeling of my visual cortex snapping back online is one of the most fascinating things I've ever been party to. Nothing changed visually, the colors, shapes and lights were equally visible, they just all *popped* into meaning.
posted by Skorgu at 2:47 PM on September 24, 2007

I'm concerned about the length, though...was it really sixty seconds? When this happens to me it lasts for much less time, more like six seconds. If it ever lasted for a full minute...yeah, I think I'd get around to seeing my doctor about it.

Those of you who have also experienced this: how long did it last?
posted by Ian A.T. at 2:48 PM on September 24, 2007

This happened to me when I was 14, and it lasted at LEAST a minute. I took a nap on Tuesday afternoon and woke up thinking it was Sunday. I hadn't remembered going to school on Monday and Tuesday, and I wandered out of my room and asked my dad, "Where's grandma?" My grandparents had visited on Sunday.

He said, "What?!"

I asked again, "Where's grandma?"

He could clearly see I was suffering from severe nap confusion. He told me to snap out of it, and he still makes fun of me - he claims I was zombie-like, drawling, "Wheeere's graaaandmaaa?"
posted by peep at 2:58 PM on September 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

Once in a period of sleep deprivation I found time for a nap, and woke up thinking it was 12+i3 o'clock and I had to figure out the magnitude to know if I was late or not.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 3:11 PM on September 24, 2007

Not exactly the same thing, but between the ages of 5 and about 12, I suffered from night-terrors, and occasional sleep-walking.

My parents lived directly across the street from my grandparents, and many times during the summer when I couldn't sleep I would ask my Dad if I could spend the night with them (because they stayed up later than my parents) and I would go over and crash out on their couch watching Kojak or something.

I suppose this routine subconsciously contributed to an an incident where one night (I think I was about 8 years old) I went to sleep in my own bed.. and work up to the sound of my Mom shaking me awake at 7am on my Grandmother's couch! My Grandma says she looked out her front door and I was standing silently on her porch. She opened the door and I walked in, laid down on the couch and went to sleep. She assumed, that my Dad had given me permission to come over, and just threw a blanket over me. I can only imagine the panic my parents felt when they realized I had somehow disappeared in the middle of the night. The crazy thing is.. I don't remember any of it, other than going to sleep at one place and waking up somewhere else.

There have been other occasions. I once woke up standing in our basement in the pitch black, talking to myself (about what I have no idea). I slept over at a friends house one night and freaked his mom out really bad when she found me in the hallway standing in front of a mirror babbling incoherently.

I've mostly grown out of it, but I will still wake myself up screaming every now and then, which really scares the crap out of my girlfriend. The sleep-walking has stopped entirely though.
posted by adustum at 3:39 PM on September 24, 2007

I get this occasionally when I'm awake; kind of like an extreme case of jamais vu. It might be caused by a focal seizure, but it's not really anything to worry about unless it happens a lot; if it does, go see a neurologist.
posted by Freaky at 3:39 PM on September 24, 2007

i never nap in the afternoon for this exact reason. for the rest of the day i feel like the dude in quantum leap.
posted by klanawa at 4:11 PM on September 24, 2007

@Ian A.T.: Yeah... it usually last about 1 minute for me. At that point I beging to "tell myself" to snap out of it. Then I am usually really fatigued and not rested at all for the rest of the day.

Anyway, it sounds like I am not completely nuts (yet).
posted by punkfloyd at 5:17 PM on September 24, 2007

This is why naps suck if you actually fall totally asleep. The only thing that gets me out of a post-nap funk is eating.
posted by MadamM at 6:27 PM on September 24, 2007

That used to happen to me a lot, also with the visual disconnect that skorgu mentioned. Occasionally, in a really bad one, I would get tremors in my hands and face, often enough that I was afraid I was getting Parkinson's Disease.

I saw an internist, and it turned out I had hypoglycemia. A (fairly small and easy) change of my diet helped a lot - it almost completely disappeared. Now that I'm older, I don't have to watch it as much. Though I haven't been tested in years, I think the hypoglycemia is fading with age.
posted by ctmf at 7:47 PM on September 24, 2007

Hypnopompic hallucination. Nothing to worry about, happens to a lot of people from time to time. The experience is almost invariably terrifying; disorientation, derealization and feeling a "presence" in the room are frequently reported.
posted by ikkyu2 at 8:06 PM on September 24, 2007

As was said above, it generally happens to me when I nap in the afternoons. I'm not sure if it's the light, but when it happens to me, its usually when wake up from sleep at a time of the day when I would never normally awaken.

Am I the only one who actually loves that feeling? What does that say about me?
posted by diggerroo at 8:14 PM on September 24, 2007

I don't nap habitually, but I did once fall asleep late in the afternoon (5:00 p.m. or so) and when I woke up and the clock said 7:00 I freaked out (panic state, who am I, how did I get here, etc.). I called work to let them know I had overslept and when I got the answering machine I realized it was still the same day. It is a very disorienting feeling and a relief when you come back to yourself. So, I guess what I'm saying is that it is not all that unusual.
posted by wv kay in ga at 8:33 PM on September 24, 2007