“The room was totally pitch black and I needed to pee. I lay there with my eyes wide open looking around, trying to find some visual clue. Nothing. Total blackness,” he says, regarding the helpful travel hack. “Not only could I not recall the city, but I didn’t even know how to get up. Where was the wall? Where was the lamp? Which way to the bathroom?”
Adding Perspective
He continued: “The hack is to turn on the bathroom light and leave the door cracked just the tiniest bit. The light coming through that crack will give you your bearings.” However, Wagner explains that you don’t necessarily have to use the bathroom light. Any light will do.
A close up of a hotel bed. Framed art and a white wall in the background.
Image Credit: Pexels | Pixabay
“If the curtains don’t fully block the light, you don’t need to do this, so the real hack is to make sure there is some sliver of light somewhere to help you recall where you are,” he added. “Even then I still awoke every once in a while wondering what city I was in, but it turns out that just a few orienting clues in the sliver of light were all I needed to recall.”
Sleep Disorientation
Although sleep disorientation isn’t an official medical term, Very Well Health describes something similar, confusional arousal. Around 20% of adults and children experience some form of confusional arousal, which often happens during the transition from the deepest stage of sleep, to waking up. The cause is thought to be related to brain function because “different regions of the brain fail to fully communicate with each other,” according to VWH. “As a result, some parts of the sleeper’s brain stay asleep while others suddenly awake.”
Recognizing Sleep Disorientation
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