is anyone familiar with night terrors?

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Azharia
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22 Jan 2008, 11:50 am

Don't know if it counts. My bro used to have waking dreams. He'd wake from sleep, but unable to move a muscle. He says now (he is 23) that it were absolutely terrifying.
Parents always sayd he'd scare them by sleeping with his eyes open as a baby, so I have to wonder how long this all went on for.



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22 Jan 2008, 12:48 pm

Azharia wrote:
Don't know if it counts. My bro used to have waking dreams. He'd wake from sleep, but unable to move a muscle. He says now (he is 23) that it were absolutely terrifying.
Parents always sayd he'd scare them by sleeping with his eyes open as a baby, so I have to wonder how long this all went on for.


That's sleep paralysis. That in combination with the feeling of an "evil" force or figure in the room pushing you down is sometimes referred to as Old Hag Syndrome.


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Azharia
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22 Jan 2008, 12:50 pm

Vince wrote:

That's sleep paralysis. That in combination with the feeling of an "evil" force or figure in the room pushing you down is sometimes referred to as Old Hag Syndrome.


That's what he had then.



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22 Jan 2008, 1:12 pm

I used to have Incubus Nightmares, three times a month, between the ages 16, and 29.


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22 Jan 2008, 2:05 pm

Here's something weird about my dreams. Every once in a while, I'll dream that I'm on fire. But the thing is, I really feel like I am rather than just thinking about it. It's really creepy and it scares the heck out of me. 8O



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23 Jan 2008, 10:13 am

queerpuppy wrote:
Yes.

(I go to sleep at about 11pm every night, and this happens usually after very close to 1 or 2 hours of sleep, rather than 1 1./2 hours or 45 minutes, if that makes sense)

Anyway.

I have night terrors of a form where I awake between 12 and 2am into a panic attack I am not aware of having been dreaming, all I am aware of is that I am terrified for no apparent reason. I feel sick, shaky, pounding heart, sometimes with cold sweats. I have emetophobia, and the fear that I am going to be sick sometimes turns it into a full blown panic attack, but I am better at dealing with this now (my ex partner taught me to calm down)

I then can take an hour to get back to sleep, and then wake into panic again an hour or two later, and so on.

I notice this happens much more commonly if I've had repeated sensory overload in the day, and in turn, a bad night's sleep reduces my capability to deal with sensory stimulation the next day, so it can become a vicious cycle.

I do not think automatically medicating for this type of thing is a great idea. It is better to be able to work out how to reduce the incidence of night terrors (for example I worked out that they happen when I am over tired and / or over stimulated and / or have gone into overload that day. On these occasions I take a low dose of a sedating anti-histamine before bed, which doesn't change how I get to sleep, but it seems to keep me asleep through the point at which I would normally get the night terrors.

Best wishes

Robin


My oldest granddaughter used to get night terrors fairly often, she seems to have outgrown them or something. Saying that sensory overload makes them more likely makes a great deal of sense, and that when you have them and don't sleep well you're more likely to get overloaded again. It can be a vicious cycle.

I don't think I've ever had night terrors myself, but I've had some pretty intense dreams, they seem to be worse for me when I'm suffering from allergies and don't breathe very well.


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23 Jan 2008, 12:11 pm

What some of you are describing is monoclonic seizures.



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23 Jan 2008, 5:44 pm

Lunacie wrote:
My oldest granddaughter used to get night terrors fairly often, she seems to have outgrown them or something. Saying that sensory overload makes them more likely makes a great deal of sense, and that when you have them and don't sleep well you're more likely to get overloaded again. It can be a vicious cycle.


I had a reason to observe this, and I think you are right. A few weeks ago, I went out for a social occasion which turned out to be overwhelming. That night I had a great deal of difficulty sleeping, kept waking with my heart racing, feeling terror for no reason, and maintaining a state of hyper vigilance. I can see now that it was from sensory overload.


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23 Jan 2008, 6:01 pm

i often wake up in the middle of the night on a verge of a panic attack (short of breath, palpitations etc). sometimes i can remember a dream that may have caused it & other times i have no idea why. apparently i used to shout in my sleep (according to my parents, i dont know if its true, i was asleep at the time!)


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23 Jan 2008, 6:19 pm

Not exactly night terrors but I do remember that when I was like 6 years old I watched ALIENS for the first time.

Every night since then for about a year I remember having very vivid dreams of being chased by the snap-snap jaw of the alien. Now I laugh at it but it was no joke back then. It wasn't until one day I realized... holy cow.. I got no chance against it so why bother running? And poof! that night the dream stopped coming.

Same happened with Jurassic Park.. I actually missed the lil' alien nipping my heels 'cause that t-rex was a mean MOFO. That one lasted for a few months (i was 17) and I would actually wake up sweating, think about the dream... and laugh.

The Old Hag syndrome I experienced it when I was about 22 and lasted for about 2 weeks with it happening every night. That is one seriously frightening experience since you ARE awake during the whole ordeal.

I would wake up and try to move my hands to pull the bedsheet off and realized I couldnt move my arms or anything for that matter. I tried to BREATHE and I could not feel air moving through my mouth or nose. The first time it happened I thought I was having a heart attack during the first 5 seconds or so. Then you start feeling there's this really malevolent presence very close to you but you cant move your head or your eyes to look at it (which increases the terror!).

Its so hard to explain the sensation.. that evil presence is overwhelming and you can FEEL it focused on some spot next to you (in my case it was to my left side and I could even sense it was at a distance just outside my arm's reach if i could stretch my arm) .. and you can also feel its malevolence emanating from it like a mist and it envelops you as if it was a blanket.

If you can remember the one time you REALLY felt so angry you had to contain yourself from ripping someone's throat with your fingernails.. imagine that INTENT but without the rage.. instead its cold and patient and it wants you to know it is there and that it WILL do something very unpleasant to you. Thats how it feels.. while you're immobile, unable to see or hear or scream.

Five days in a row I had that happening and it came to a point where I had to sleep with the lights on, had a dog next to my bed (critter slept right through the whole thing and would look at me like i was loony when I managed to snap out of it)... hell I even put a VIDEO camera filming the spot between me and the wall 2meters left of my bed. Nothing.

For the rest of the week and a half I was trying damn hard to WILL myself to move to do something.. to beat the thing but the fear was too overwhelming. On the last day I guess I was so frustrated and angry at this that I snapped. Snapped as in when someone finally pushes 'that button' that makes you lose control and you beat the sh*t out of whoever/whatever.

I remember that I opened my eyes, and like always I couldn't move, felt the thing next to me and I was so furious that I didnt care anymore what it did to me. I remember how my right hand balled into a fist and I pushed my body sideways with my right elbow (couldnt move my left side of my body) and threw a punch at where I 'felt' the thing was.. I remember my eyes moving along with my head as my torso rotated and seeing NOTHING where I felt the thing. I felt my fist connect with something though and for a split second I could feel MY rage pouring into the thing and in a snap the presence dissapeared. I could not feel it at ALL.

The weirdest thing of all is that when I did manage to move my body it was in the exact same position that it had been BEFORE i moved my right hand. I know I did not 'move' back into my original position since I was awake the whole time. Its like my body just 'skipped' back to the original position.

I stood up on my bed still pissed off like hell and very confused and stood looking at the spot in a fighting stance for about 2 minutes.

Then that sensation of absolute satisfaction came over me, i began to shake a bit (adrenalin washout?)....


and went to the living room and slept like a baby in the sofa.

It never came back.



Vince
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24 Jan 2008, 6:42 am

Dantac wrote:
The weirdest thing of all is that when I did manage to move my body it was in the exact same position that it had been BEFORE i moved my right hand. I know I did not 'move' back into my original position since I was awake the whole time. Its like my body just 'skipped' back to the original position.

Fascinating. My guess is you must have hallucinated the part where you moved your hand (you moved your hand in your mind, and it felt like you did move and connect with the "hag", but your actual physical body was still in the same place). Sometimes, the sleep paralysis comes with vivid hallucinations, as the part of your brain that makes dreams (and makes you feel in your dreams like you're moving around when in fact you're sleeping) is sometimes still running along with it when you're awake. But that's just my guess.
Anyway, congratulations on beating the OHS!


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