Why do I feel strange after a nap?

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This doesn't have much to do with AS because NTs can be like this too, but I wish I wouldn't.
If I take a half-hour nap in the day, I always wake up feeling very strange, and I will never know why because I don't get like this in the mornings after a full night's sleep. If I have a nap in the day, I feel very irritable and snappy after I wake up and I don't like to face people for at least 15 minutes, just until my uncontrollable emotions calm down a little. I really don't know why my mood completely changes after a nap. Would anyone else know why? I've been trying to find out why by asking the internet, but it doesn't come up with the answers I want, and my family doesn't know either.

Most people have a sleep cycle that goes from light sleep to REM to deep sleep and returns to light sleep before waking up. It averages about 90 minutes. If your naps are shorter than this, you're waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle and that's why your brain takes so long to return to normal.

I always feel groggy and just generally terrible after a nap, even if it's long enough for REM...so I try to avoid naps as often as possible.

In the past I never napped because I woke up feeling so groggy and miserable, but now I often sleep badly at night, so afternoon naps are unavoidable. These days I wake up to the more pleasant sensation of having just seen Everything Very Clearly, which lasts just long enough for me to fail to put my insights into action.

I try not to sleep during the day.

I can't nap or sleep anywhere other than in a bed. If I nap anywhere else, I always feel awful, sick, dizzy and in fact far worse than if I hadn't slept at all.

Taking naps makes me feel extremely spaced out for the rest of the day

Maybe you just have morning wood.

erections that occur during the night. Perfectly natural and normal..

Google "sleep inertia".

Usually I don't have trouble sleeping, but I still experience ''morning grogginess''. It's different to what I experience after a nap though. Each morning I never feel like breakfast, and if I do eat first thing after getting up, I tend to take ages eating it because it seems everything I look at makes me feel sick. This strange feeling goes away throughout the morning, especially after having a bit of fresh air and exercise, then I can eat in any sort of environment without anything making me feel sick.

Also, if I get up too early (when it's still dark, or right at sunrise in summer), I tend to feel nauseas, and it grows worse and worse, until I end up heaving (but not actually being sick). After heaving, the nausea ebbs off slowly, then my stomach starts having that healthy hunger sensation. But that only happens if I get up really early, and especially if I am to go travelling straight away. I think it's because my body is confused when I'm up too early.

By the way none of this is an Aspie thing - it happens to most NTs I know.

I dont know. but i take naps all the time now, f-ing tired as hell son. old age!