Some people call this ‘lucid dreaming’ and some have even learned how to control their dreams when this happens. Others have tried, with very limited success, to change the course of a dream.

Most people I suspect simply awaken when they realize they are dreaming. Not sure why our bodies seem to mandate this response.

But other times, for me at least, there have been times, usually in a nightmare that involves something extremely unlikely (like dozens of hostile miniature alien robots coming out of a squealing icemaker) that I have become aware I was dreaming, and although I knew I was safe, I feared what would happen just in the dream itself, and did not awaken right away.

One other time, back when I was a teenager, I dreamed I had met the perfect girl and lost her in a crowd at some event, like a small carnival—and when I realized I was dreaming (because I couldn’t identify the place where I was, or how I got there, and realized then that I was dreaming) I did not wake up, and wanted to keep on looking in the crowd for the girl I lost. Eventually I awoke anyway, the feelings of loss spilling into the first few moments of morning consciousness.

One time, I dreamed of taking a test and realized I was dreaming because the bizarre questions didn’t make any sense and were quite ridiculous, but no one else taking the test seemed to think so. I sat there, knowing I was dreaming, trying to absorb the details of where I was and what the dream was about.

One time, when I knew I was dreaming, I asked a friend in a dream what I looked like, because I wondered if I was in a similar “body” when I was dreaming. But I find it hard to hold awareness that I am dreaming without waking up.