Does anyone else find the concept of sleep mental?

[vivi45]

Probably a very weird thought process but I’m just laying here, ready to go to sleep thinking how strange it is that we spend so much of our life unconscious. If I sleep from 11pm-7am which is normal for me, I will have slept the equivalent of my work day. All of the things I’ve done during the day, meals I’ve eaten, people I’ve spoken to, places I’ve been - and I’ll spend that same amount of time just laid in bed asleep. Also find it weird how the world just carries on while we are oblivious to it.

Sorry I know this is incredibly random 😂

Yes! This is why I hate hosting sleepovers for the kids. I'm going to be unconscious whilst supposedly looking after someone else's kid.

'...anything could happen to you?!' With an attitude like that, it's no wonder you've got insomnia! 😄

(That is actually the sort of thing that keeps me awake at night)...

I have all sorts of weird hypnagogic experiences - sleep paralysis, false awakenings, REM intrusion, and I go through phases of sleepwalking when under intense stress (sidenote: I do not recommend attempting to sleepwalk in hospital while hooked up to a blood transfusion - that really pisses off the nurses who have to clean up the aftermath and I felt so guilty for the donor). Perhaps the weirdest happened a few months ago when I'd had an extremely upsetting few days and had taken myself off to sleep on the sofa one night. I was exhausted but very distressed and really struggling to sleep, and at two separate points I found myself drifting into a state of partial awareness of my brain flicking through memories really fast - way too fast for me to know what each individual memory was, almost like going through a very fast flicker book. I knew it was somehow sorting/filing things and that I needed to go back down into deep sleep and let it get on with it. So weird to experience, though.

I have this picture in my head of the planet seen from space, and all the awake people are represented by a yellow light and all the asleep people are represented by a blue light, so you can watch the wave of yellow lights becoming blue and the blue lights becoming yellow as the world turns.

I probably need some kind of counselling.

Yes 100% I think about this all the time. I imagine an alien having x ray type vision and being able to look in down on roads of houses and see all the people fast asleep and oblivious to any dangers!

I do think about this! Sleep is weird but what blows my mind is that there are buildings all over the world that are only there for people to sleep in! I mean places like Premier Inn, etc.

Rooms full of unconscious people. So weird 😂😂

Sleep makes sense. Dreaming doesn't. I think it's interesting that tribal cultures that still embrace shamanic practices make a big thing out of lucid dreaming (being aware of your dreams and controlling them). My dreams are utterly trivial and pathetic, e.g. queuing for hours to buy a lip salve, trying to clean a toilet.

I think having a baby and being sleep deprived taught me why it's needed! Especially for memory.

My mum had super mundane dreams, things like making a cup of tea. She has no idea what I was talking about when mine had plots, changes of location etc. Apparently basic dreams are a sign of a content mind though - your brain has nothing to work through via the medium of weird made up stories.

I thought recently that we die every night when we fall asleep. Bonkers!

I love sleep too. We got to bed very early because of insomnia etc. I love settling down and the moments before sleep. I have extremely active dreams and can often direct my dreams like a movie.

I had an awful sleep last night but was only working a half day today. I went to bed at 2 pm with the electric blanket on. I had to push my grumpy tabby cat to one side and we slept together with my arm around her and her breathing her little snores in to my neck.

Does anyone else find the concept of sleep mental?
Oh yes, absolutely! Mind you, when you think about it, so many things in life are mental (e.g. kissing. Who decided that shoving your tongue in someone else's mouth was romantic?).

It has always taken me aaaaaaaaaaages to fall asleep (unless I am dying of flu or something, which is rarely, and has to knock me out for a week or so). My mother never understood this, as she lies down and immediately falls asleep; as a child, I used to get up and read for hours before dozing off. However, I do have some very interesting dreams. Last night's dream was a nightmare about Crocs... the footwear variety, not the swimming reptile sort!

I'd love to get more sleep, but 4-6 hours a night seems to be my body's version of normal... despite lying in bed for as close to eight hours as I can get.

Omg I love this thread. I think about this all the time

It’s soooo weird. And dreams. I love this kind of thing

I had a friend years ago and we often got a late night train home. She would always say looking out of the dark window, how odd it was that thousands of people were lying down in their little rows of boxes ( houses) sleeping until morning. That huge events could happen but no one knew until they woke from their scheduled unconsciousness ( pre internet) . Sleep is weird.

Sleep is not weird, it is essential.

I don’t understand why there are twelve months of varying lengths in a year- surely it makes more sense to have thirteen months of equal lengths (28 days each- plus 1 extra day every four years for the leap year)? It’s something I’ve often thought about randomly. Also, the september/ october / november as months 7 8 and 9- it makes sense that March is the first month of the new year, as this is when we really see the start of spring and new beginnings in nature, January is mid winter when everything is pretty much bare.

The pagan calendar follows the ancient Celtic "wheel of the year" which was organised differently: as eight seasons, roughly 6 weeks apart, marking solar events and agricultural milestones such as planting and harvesting:

Yule (winter solstice)
Imbolc (1 Feb) = lambing season
Ostara (spring equinox)
Beltane (1 May) = fertility/fire festival
Litha (summer solstice)
Lughnasadh (1 August = harvest
Mabon (autumn equinox)
Samhain (31 October) = new year; honouring the dead

I love sleep and naps. It’s my favourite thing. I would find life so stressful and overwhelming if I didn’t get to have a break from myself every night. I often think about how much time I’d have if I didn’t need to sleep and how much money if I didn’t need to eat!

Owning things makes sense someone has to make it, grow it, etc.
But owning land blows my head.

Surely at one point people were like birds or wild animals they just lived where they lived, built their shelter where they wanted it. Who determined they would Own that patch of ground.

This thread is brilliant.
I love that delicious feeling you get when you know you're just about to fall asleep. I know I'm about to fall asleep because either my foot, arm or whole body do a hypnagogic jerk. Happens every night.

I also dream that I'm sitting my Chemistry A Level but I haven't done any revision but I never did Chemistry A Level & I did my A Levels over 20 yrs ago.

I also have "Déjà rêvé (already dreamed) about places, situations, people.
Its really weird sometimes visiting somewhere new, meeting someone new or having a random conversation as I've dreamt about it already.

Finally I've always wondered how early humans decided what sounds meant what e.g. why is a tree called tree & not fire, why is a fire called fire but not tree or tiger?
I can grasp different languages happening as the sounds got changed as people diverged & moved apart & also maybe words were misheard.
Like aqua becoming agua, but how did aqua/agua become water/eau/vann/ilma/viz etc?

Beginnings of life - can we create it ourselves by throwing a load of amino acids in a vat of mixed chemicals?

I’m just floating about here reading about sleep trying to sleep!

Yes, but not just humans.
The aliens will be observing that every species on our planet also has this same conscious - unconscious pattern.
Same in the sea as on land.
Loving this thread 🤗

😂😂😂 literally this. I’m reading more and more and I’m like 😳. Never thought about any of this until right now 😂😩🙈

I was talking with DH about biphasic sleep patterns earlier today (as you do). He got up in the middle of last night to drop some friends off for a holiday pick up (he did volunteer as they were struggling to book a taxi) and then came home and went back to sleep afterwards. He said it had actually turned out fine and he felt like he’d had a good rest regardless of the interruption.