They're not regular. Just whenever I do experience a dream-in-a-dream loop, it's never just one loop and it feels like it's taking forever to actually wake up. During the dream, I do experience the emotion of impatience and annoyance. Sometimes there is also a feeling of urgency and fear because the in dream I am trying to escape some danger and I know that I can escape it by waking up ... but when I do wake up, I'm still in a dream.

I've on a few very rare occasions been awake/conscious in real life, but also still dreaming. That's really weird when that happens. To explain: once I was awoken by my wife getting ready for work, I said some words to her, while in the back of my mind the dream was still happening. I then went back to sleep and returned to the same dream in progress. It wasn't like I was talking to her in my sleep and didn't remember it. I was fully awake and making new memories, while still dreaming.

The best analogy that I can make that you might be able to understand is. I have multiple streams of consciousness. One level I use to think about what I'm going to say when speaking to someone, but at the same time I could be counting in my other stream of consciousness. I assume that's how most people's brains work. I think when the dreaming-awake thing happened, the dream was in one stream and the awareness was in the other.