Thread: False awakening dream journaling

I've recently started to keep a dreamjournal, next to my bed. Before, I just reconstructed the dream in my head every morning.
Now I have this recently occuring problem (2x in 10 days) that I wake up in bed, take my notebook and cellphone (to give me some light) and I write down my dream. Last night I wrote down about half a page and I remember I flipped it over to start a new page. I went back to sleep and in the morning when writing down another dream, I turned the page to see what I wrote during the night and nothing was there. I searched my whole notebook but no note of that dream in the middle of the night.

Could it be that I wake up in a dream and do fake dream journaling? It's quite annoying because I really seem to think I'm awake, everything just feels so real. I try to do as many reality checks as possible (with awareness!!!) but for some reason I always seem to forget it while waking up during the middle of the night.

Anyone has experienced this before? Is this considered lucid dreaming? It feels like inception to me: waking up within a dream.

Thank you already in advance!

Best,

Risdt

Sounds like you have experienced false awakening, it's when you wake up in dream and do things you usually do when wake up, they are not uncommon and can be confusing, i am one of people who experiences them quite often, once i got like 8 in a row. It's not considered lucid dream because being lucid means being aware of dreaming, but, it can be turned into one, doing reality checks every time when waking up helps with that.
If you have problem remembering to do them, you can try using mantra when at some times during the day and while falling asleep like "I do reality check when wake up" or use some kind of reminder on the notebook, or maybe on the cellphone, whatever works best for you.