The Strangeness of Subjective Experience

[contrarianarchon]

What subjective experience of falling asleep do people have? I ask because I fucking don't. If I didn't have dreams to wake up from, or, like, stiff limbs and bleary eyes, I would not actually notice sleep happening. (I know this because this happens sometimes, that I lie in bed for a while and then I notice the lighting changed a bunch and I check the clock and I guess I was asleep for 8 hours, huh.) It's really weird! I am honestly surprised that this repeated lack of memory integrity doesn't get to me more than it does, but I guess you can get used to anything!

So yeah - what're other people's experiences of falling asleep like?

Comments

[wingedcatgirl]

We have no subjective experience of falling asleep. We go straight from "trying to fall asleep" to "waking up".

Waking up does subjectively feel like a change of state, usually.

We'll try to figure out how to describe it more the next time it happens... unless we forget. Which we might.

[wingedcatgirl]

Update: It is... very hard to remember to pay attention when waking up.

[contrarianarchon]

Not surprised, TBH. Sleep is attention-manipulating in a way that makes paying more attention to it hard.