How Do I Know If I’m Dreaming? 7 Reality Tests To Find Out
At some point in your life you may have asked yourself if you are dreaming or not. In certain situations reality can become difficult to distinguish from imagination, especially during very vivid dreams or altered mental states
The tips that we will describe in this article can be very useful if you ever find yourself in these types of circumstances. These methods of detecting whether we are awake or asleep are known as “reality tests.”
In general, the difficulty in distinguishing between dreams and reality is not very common. However, anyone can ask themselves this question if they find themselves in a highly stressful situation, like when traumatic or very strange events happen or under the effects of drug consumption and other psychoactive substances.
Injuries and bruises also make it easier for sensations of unreality to appear. For example, loss of contact with reality can occur after a traffic accident that causes a head injury.
Confusion is more likely to appear in childhood around this issue, since familiarity with the perception of reality is inferior. Something similar happens in cases of psychotic disorders, which can cause vivid hallucinations that are difficult to distinguish from dream experiences.
On the other hand, people who try to have lucid dreams and control them can find themselves immersed in realistic dreams, particularly loops of false awakenings that can be very anxiety-inducing. Oneironauts can especially benefit from reality testing which we will describe below.
How do I know if I’m dreaming?
When used as a tool to control lucid dreaming, reality testing is practiced in real life until it becomes a habit, so that it appears naturally during sleep; This makes the person realize that he is dreaming, the first step in managing the dream life.
Similar Strategies May Be Helpful in case of confusing reality and dream for any reason that we have seen in the previous section. You will also be interested in these reality tests if you simply want to know more about the “rules” of the dream world. The effectiveness of each test may vary depending on the person.
1. Ask yourself if you are dreaming
Although it seems obvious, within dreams, asking yourself if you are dreaming is a key step to detecting it. The effectiveness of the rest of the reality tests increases if we ask ourselves this question while we perform them. This advice is less applicable if the confusion is not due to lucid dreaming, realistic nightmares, etc.
2. Observe your surroundings
When you’re not sure whether you’re awake or dreaming, look around you and look for typical dream signs, especially inconsistencies in your surroundings. For example, you may realize that you find yourself in a place you’ve never been or that the people who accompany you have already died or are fictional characters.
A useful sign for people with vision problems is to check if you can see perfectly even without glasses. Sometimes this effect can be confusing due to the feeling of blurriness typical of the dream world of many people.
3. Look at your hands and face
In dreams the image we see of ourselves tends to be distorted. Looking at and touching your hands is an especially useful way to check: if you have more than five fingers or can put one finger across the palm of your hand, you are most likely dreaming.
Looking in a mirror is another effective reality check ; You may notice that you have an unrecognizable haircut, that your reflection does not correspond to the image you have of yourself or is not stable, or that you are of a different age than your real age.
4. Breathe with a stuffy nose
This reality test is less known than others we have included on the list but it is one of the most effective. In dreams we can practically always breathe even if our nose is blocked, we are in water or any other circumstance occurs that should prevent us from breathing properly.
5. Compare with everyday life
Check if your actions are consistent with what you usually do on a daily basis and if the environment responds as you would expect to your interaction with it. Do you wear clothing appropriate to the context in which you find yourself? Do you remember how you got here? Does this situation usually occur in your daily life? Do the switches work correctly?
In dreams, when we read a text, we look away and look at it again. The most common thing is that it has changed, that the letters float or that they are distorted. The same thing happens with clocks, which can also help us if we evaluate the possibility that the time they indicate is correct.
7. Check if you have “powers”
The dream world can be modified at will; Obviously real life does not work from the same world. Try to levitate, move objects with your mind, teleport to another location, make a flame appear in the palm of your hand, or summon an imaginary person or creature. If you succeed, enjoy your powers, if only until you wake up.
