October 08, 2004

• Funny you should ask. I have " Non-24 hour sleep wake syndrome " Which as I understand is fairly rare.
• Are you on medication? That was for rpm, btw.
• I used to dream that I had woken up when I was little, but now it's just incredibly realistic and very boring dreams. Like dreaming that I went to the store and forgot to buy eggs. It's rarely a problem but I remember them so clearly sometimes I'll think they actually happened, so I'll say or do something strange as a result. Like buying two dozen eggs in one week, for example.
• No, never been on any meds.
• I've had a few instances of Hypnopompic paralysis complete with accompanying hallucinations. Each time it happens becomes the most terrifying experience of my life.
• Sleep apnea. I wear a orthodontic device called a herbts device that thrusts my lower jaw fowrard and makes it so my soft pallet doesn't fall againt my throat opening. Stopped me snoring and makes my sleep much deeper.
• I also routinely experience false awakenings. On October 26th, it will be ten years since I quit drinking. I still occassionally dream about alcohol. The dream usually involves me waking up (I suppose that this is actually a false awakening, too) and realizing that I have screwed up and drank the previous night. It is very realistic. When I actually wake up, I will often question whether I drank the previous night before I realize it was a dream.
• bernockle, I dont have false awakenings (just many other sleep issues) but I quit smoking cigarettes 4 years ago and still have dreams in which I am half way through a cigarette before I "realize" what I am doing. Its always incredibly disturbing... congrats on leaving the drinking behind for 10 years!
• Here is a website which may be useful to some monkeys with unusual dream experiences. Dreaming experience can be central to practices of some groups (Native Americans, aboriginal peoples) and practitioners of some religions (traditions within Tibetan Buddhism, Sufis, shamanic), among others.
• Dream Yoga
• Bernokle and Medusa - Sept. 24 was my "six years on the wagon" date. Times in my life when I was particularly stressed I'd dream that I'd gotten drunk and I'd suddenly realize what I'd done and feel just horrible about it. Then I would wake up and realize it was just a dream and feel such relief! My brain's way of reminding me how good it is that I don't drink. Rolypoly, I've had instances of what you describe, except usually it's that I've hit the snooze button on my alarm but the alarm won't turn off. I try hitting every button on the top of the damn thing but to no avail. Then I wake up. I recently read The Mind at Night and found it very interesting. She does talk about this "false waking" phenomenon, along with various theories on why we dream and studies that show dreaming is necessary for processing memories, among other things.
• My partner suffers from something like a cross between night terrors and hypnogogic hallucinations. She appears to wake up moments after falling asleep, starts seeing something horrific in our room and completely freaks out - screaming, trying to get away, warn me of our imminent fate etc. She usually ends up in a corner of the room with me trying to gently convince her that it's "just a dream" or whatever. What's strange to me is that she appears to be completely awake, eyes open, moving, responsive to my comments etc. but still suffering intense hallucinations. Naturally, this used to scare the bejezzus out of me, but I'm kind of used to it now. Of course, if it ever turns out that there actually is a menacing demon or a car-sized spider in our bedroom as my wife claims, I'll no doubt react in a completely inappropriate way.
• I used to have a recurring dream. I was lying in bed when I would hear noises outside and on the roof. I would try to tell myself that it was just possums but the next thing I knew I would hear the sounds of the aluminium ladder (stored outside my house) being dragged across to my window. As I lay there quietly with my eyes shut I could hear someone climbing the ladder and then kicking through the flyscreen and climbing through the window. Then, my attacker would jump on top of me pushing my face down into the pillow. I would struggle to escape but could never overpower my assailant. That's when I'd usually wake up. The thing was, the experience was so realistic that I would wake up absolutely terrified. It was one of the most traumatic things I'd ever experienced. I found that this commonly occurred within a week of a "big night out."
• Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome: Basically your Earth Days are a few "hours" shorter than on my home planet. OT: Does anyone here know a good matter/anti-matter reaction assembly (M/ARA) mechanic for models 9800 and above? (email in profile)
• I have lucid dreams, although I trained myself to have them. I only once had a false waking dream, when I was 15, and it was confusing, but I would love love love to have more. I've had hypnopompic & hypnogogic hallucinations of a mild type, usually a noise or a voice saying my name or some other thing, but only about a dozen times in my life. I actually would like to have more of these sorts of things, as alternate states of consciousness interest me greatly. However, I wouldn't want to have night terrors. I haven't been attacked by nasties in dreams since I did Qabala workings & stuff years ago. Once you beat 'em, they never come back.
• I get night terrors when I'm really stressed out (and when I'm sleeping alone. So far this hasn't happened when I have someone else with me). The form this usually takes is I "see" someone standing either at the foot or side of my bed, lurking over me. This makes me wake up in an absolute panic: heart racing, breathing heavily, sweaty. Usually, I end up either just staying up afterward or sleeping with the lights on. (Thanks for the link, gooddoggy! I thought I was odd for having these past childhood.)
• I sing nursery rhymes in my sleep (i didnt believe it till i was videotaped!) I also apparently talk quite a bit...and even laugh hysterically sometimes. It seems i crack myself up quite a bit!
• See: Old Hag, Old Hag Syndrome, the.
• I too have had false awakenings, vivid recurring dreams. The ones that bother me the most are the one that while I am sleeping my body becomes very flat and transparent and I can move through walls and objects, & travel long distances. And the one where my mouth fills up with broken glass, like from a car windsheild, and I can't spit it out. No matter how many times I spit the glass out it keeps coming back. The glass one really freaks me out because I feel as if I am going to choke on the glass and it all seems so real.
• I don't know what to call this, but it's not unusual for me to have a very intense nightmare (really horrific stuff). During these nightmares, I often become aware that I am dreaming, yet I can't wake up and I get "get out" of the dream. It's still just as frightening. Although I am aware on one level, unlike lucid dreaming, I can't exercise control over what is happening. What I can do, though, is make a kind of moaning sound, which is my wife's signal that I'm caught in a nightmare again and I need her to wake me up. I do this intentionally, knowing she is there and that she will get me out of the nightmare. I haven't run across anyone else with quite this same experience.
• I have a much more mundane sleep syndrome. Restless leg syndrome. It's both a cause and a symptom of chronic pain. Someone with chronic pain moves more than average during the night to reduce pain (which doesn't let them sleep soundly, which causes more pain, etc.). It comes and goes with my flare-ups. On preview, I do the same thing with my husband, MelancholyPlatypus. He whimpers in his sleep a bit and that's when I know he's having a night terror. The moment I touch him, he wakes fully and grabs on to me until he calms down.
• Melancholyplatypus- I know exactly what you are talking about. I was asleep once and was having an incredibly scary nightmare. However I had the sense to know that it was only a dream and also knew that I had my GF lying next to me. I started trying to move and call out in the hope that she would wake me as I couldn't seem to wake myself and desperately wanted "out" of the experience. She eventually did wake me and told me that I had been moaning and wriggling round. Terrifying.
• I don't if it's true of all SSRIs, but Celexa has a documented side effect of "difficulty distinguishing dreams from reality." When I was on it, I would have dreams about activities and conversations with friends and coworkers, and then when I would talk to them I would have to stop and think if it had really happened. Same drug also caused me to grind my teeth in my sleep, which kept popping the crown off one of my teeth and forced me to get a mouthguard.
• "The ones that bother me the most are the one that while I am sleeping my body becomes very flat and transparent and I can move through walls and objects, & travel long distances." This is sometimes called Astral Projection, and is an experience known by every culture on earth, throughout history. I once met Ingo Swann, an artist who is credited with taking his natural ability to astral travel, and using it to found the modern form of 'Remote Viewing'. Swann can (or used to) do it at will, and under tests produced startlingly accurate results, describing hidden objects, places & other things. As a child, long before I could read or talk properly, I used to 'bounce' up and down out of my body in bed, like a weightless balloon. I would sometimes crawl into bed with my parents in the morning, and in a half-awake state, 'project' my arm thru the mattress and wave it about under the bed. These memories are vivid and were by no means dreams in the usual sense. I have not been able to do this at all since then. Sometimes I would also find myself expanding and contracting in a strange way, as if I filled the room, then becoming very small, like a grain of sand. These memories have stayed with me for my whole life.
• yea like that, Nostril. Become really big, then really small. Not like a real dream at all. I read about astral projection in highschool, when my speech and drama teacher told me thats what he thought my dreams sounded like. But I never could quite buy into it. My youngest son had similar dreams and also night-terrors.
• Wow, I really should not be reading all this before going to bed.
• Lot's of astral projections, especially in my teens. I have always dreamt very intensely. But, like Nostril, it's something I've trained myself to do. I enjoy them tremendously. I can even deal with the terrifying ones because I am always aware that I am dreaming and am also aware that, rather than dealing with whatever is terrifying me, I am dealing with an idea or experience. Dreams can be an amazing tool. My neighbor suffers from really intense night terrors where she wakes up and 'sees' things that aren't there, ie; snakes, huge spiders, attack dogs, etc... She says that while she is terrified she is also feeling rage and a strong sense to protect her family. She will yell for her kids to stay in their rooms and she will grab a lamp and start swinging. To say that her husband was freaked out the first time he experienced it would be putting it mildly. Nowadays, he apparently will just sit in bed and laugh at her. She will be frantic asking him if he is seeing what she is. I'm thinking it's largely because of the dichotomy she has going with being a right-wing, born-again wacko, an alcoholic and having some fairly strong cocaine-binge tendencies. But that's just me.
• gooddoggy - is your partner taking a drug called Elavil? I used to get stuck between waking and sleep, and I'd see all kinds of weird stuff - my pillow once turned into a volcano spewing lava, and I woke up across the room, having run to hit the light switch by the door. Another time, I watched a glass see-through grasshopper about 3 feet long slowly float out the window above my bed. I'd also have problems if I started to fall asleep looking at something with a strong light/dark pattern, because the light areas would jump forward a foot or so, and seem to float in the air. Turns out all this stuff was a side effect of the Elavil I was on. After I knew what it was, then it was kinda groovy. Now I have Chronic Nightmare Disorder, which came along as part of the PTSD. Basically, what it means is that for me, sleeping = ultra-vivid full-sensory nightmares. It's fucking exhausting, so I sleep about 12 hours a day. If the nightmares are particularily bad, I get this sort of bleed through into the next day, where everything feels slightly foreboding and I feel shut down and muffled. Because sleeping is so scary, I can't do it without pills. Meh.
• I've had episodes of sleep paralysis for most of my life, as well as restless leg syndrome, garden-variety chronic insomnia and the occasional sleepwalking incident. Yeah, I'm a barrel of laughs at night. (Hey, looky at the 3:00AM time stamp on this post, and where am I? Posting to MoFi. Unless I'm only dreaming that I'm posting to MoFi about sleep disorders, or dreaming that I'm dreaming about posting to MoFi...) The first time I experienced sleep paralysis I was 12 years old, and to say that it scared the living hell out of me is an understatement. I had all the classic symptons of being unable to move, sensation of weight upon my chest, and in addition I "saw"/sensed a malevolent dark cloud floating near the ceiling of my room, that spoke to me. I didn't quite believe that it was any type of supernatural thing, even then, and after searching out some books on sleep disorders at the library I had a name for what I experienced. That made subsequent incidents less frightening, in a way, but there is always a sensation of terror that accompanies an episode, even though I am aware while it is going on that it's just the sleep paralysis again. The sleepwalking incidents were much more frequent when I was a child, tapering off in my early twenties. When I'd sleepwalk, I'd almost always try and leave the house. One time I set off the alarm system at a friend's house during a sleepover, trying to climb out the window. My parents' soultion to this was to tie my ankle to the bed, which usually worked, except for the time I untied myself in my sleep and woke up blocks away from my house. Fully dressed. With silverware from the kitchen in my pockets. To my knowledge, I haven't walked in my sleep in years now, although my husband says that, quite regularly, if he comes to bed after I'm asleep, I will abruptly sit straight up and let out a bloodcurdling shriek as soon as he's about to drift off. Like I said, a barrel of laughs. I don't know that I'd call restless legs minor. Non-life threatening, to be sure, but it's pretty miserable. I've found that anything I take to alleivate insomnia - OTC or prescription sleep aids - tend to make the restless legs worse, especially, especially anything containing Benadryl. Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't there.
• I once had a dream where my duvet turned into the national rail network. ...That's about it.
• spent several of my preteen yrs 19-12ish assuming I saw a ghost I called the "lintman" that paralyzed me at night. Then found out 6 years later, whether it was to my dissapointment or relief, that it was only sleep paralysis. I also have taught myself to lucid dream which is the most amazing thing anyone could do. Easiest when napping, you can live out your fantasys. I love my dream life its so fascinating.
• I too laugh in my sleep. I've even woken myself up doing it. It must be because I'm so funny... Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahah!
• I just have straightforward insomnia at times (such as this morning), but it's bothersome enough that I wish I could correct it. My nephew loaned me a book by Stanley Coren, Sleep Thieves which has a lot of great advice in it for normalizing your sleep patterns. And, hurray for lazy sloths like me, Dr. Coren advocates at least nine hours of sleep per night, not some piddling six. Six hours of sleep is a nap. Says me.
• There's must be something wrong with my nightmares. I've enjoyed every nightmare I've ever had, except for two. Like the one where aliens kidnap me and about thirty others, along with some killer sharks. They start to intentionally flood the spaceship (kinda like Deep Blue Sea). We're trying to hide from the aliens with their lasers, but we have to be on the move because of the rising water filled with sharks. It's futile, since there's only so far you can run in a space ship, until the thing is completely full water. The few of us that survive the alien laser and the sharks slowly drown to death. That dream makes me wake up literally jumping out of bed it's so scary. But it's so damn exciting that I can't help enjoying it. My nightmares are like roller coasters: they're scary, but in a good/fun way. I was very little the first time I died in a dream. That was probably a learning experience, that taught me that I was always safe in a nightmare, even if I die.
• I also used to sing nursery rhymes in my sleep, except they weren't real ones; they were apparently bizarre morbid ones about how black was my favourite colour and death and birds taking people's souls. My mother talks in her sleep when she's not on her CPAP for sleep apnea, and her sleep-talk consists almost entirely of swearing. I stopped sleep talking in most instances since I started doing acupuncture and general stress levels decreased. However, when I do talk in my sleep now it's usually an indicator that something very bad's just happened (the night after I was attacked by an ex), or the weather's going funky (twice before tornadoes.) I used to work in a clinic that got some sleep disorder files. People do some weird stuff in their sleep; one guy used to dream that bad things were happening to his house and he used to pick up his wife and 'escape the house' in his sleep. She understandably called and made him an appointment with the clinic. I think it's called 'REM Behaviour Disorder' and people often do 'heroic' things during it, as far as I've known.
• Wow... I'm so... boring compared to you guys. I just read for a while and go to sleep. Must read, though, or I'm awake forever listening to my brain (which I get quite enough of during the day, frankly). Can't stay in bed for longer than 8 hours, but that's my creaky bones talking.
• That's really interesting. I just pseudo-sleepwalk - apparently it's not "real" sleepwalking because I am acting out dreams (mundane things like getting up in the morning, falling asleep in a public place - in which I end up trying to sleep sitting up - or seeing creepy-crawlies in my room / under the covers / etc.) and sometimes remember it, two things that aren't supposed to happen with sleepwalking. And you're supposed to "grow out of it" after childhood, which I haven't done either. (And I can talk pretty clearly when asleep, even when not sleepwalking. Some of my family members do the same thing, so I don't think it's all that uncommon.) I've never heard of false awakening, so maybe there is a name out there for what I do. It wouldn't help the situation, but it would be a small comfort. I am always, always thankful that I don't have any of the more serious problems, though. Night terrors or nightmares or any of that. I don't mean to sound whiny; I know I have it pretty easy.
• I just have boring old insomnia and a hyperactive dream life. Although I did have an interesting experience last night: I dreamed I was asleep. Even stranger, when I woke up, I was.
• I used to sleepwalk occasionally, but haven't done in many years. Once, sleeping over a friend's house, I managed to climb down a loft ladder and find my mother's room, in my sleep, even though I didn't know where her room was. Now, PMS gives me insomnia and nightmares. I find St. John's Wort helps with the insomnia.
• I dated someone with restless leg syndrome, although not apparently due to chronic pain. His was pretty consistent though, and it was like sleeeping with a jogger two or three nights a week. I have very few sleep issues... I love my 8 hours a night. Most of my dreams are mundane, but I do have a reoccuring dream that my teeth are crumbling out of my mouth. I've had this for years, and it is very vivid.
• I never remember my dreams. I mean, never, not for decades. And while I don't know if that's a disorder, exactly, Mrs. Fes thinks it's pretty damned strange. I'm guessing it's due to my crystal clear conscience.
• I have nightmares. Lately it hasn't been too bad, I'm down to three a week. It used to be three a night. My dreams tend to be odd no matter what, I've had dreams completely in cartoon form, I've been both male and female and I've dreamt through the eyes of cats and dogs and other creatures, I fly, I die, I play poker against the devil... I do have false awakening dreams, and they all involve me waking up in a bed in a dark room with a stranger sleeping next to me and me realizing I'm naked. I usually try to feel around the ground for my clothes, trying not to wake up the stranger next to me. I always do wake up my boyfriend who will usually reach over to find out what I'm doing, which makes me jerk away from him and wakes me up for real. The first time this dream happened, he asked what's wrong and I blurted out "I'm naked." and proceeded to laugh hysterically because it finally hit me that it was just a dream.
• I've had a number of times that I've dreamed that I woke up, very realistic, gone about my day, then something will happen that seems wrong... and then I'll really wake up. I remember one time recently where this happened and when I "woke up" out of the dream I didn't really wake up. I was in another dream. Then I really woke up out of that one. That was freaky. I've had that thing where you're drifting off to sleep and you jerk awake out of nowhere, as if a loud noise or something startled you, but there was no noise. Also waking up and being frozen in place, trying to lift my arms or legs and they're so heavy it's like trying to lift rubber concrete, trying to talk and being unable to. These aren't things that happen all the time but they have happened often enough to me in my lifetime. Other than that... just nightmares, can't-turn-my-brain-off insomnia, and I talk and open my eyes in my sleep. Oh, the losing-your-teeth dream. That one is scary, I get that in repeats. For those with restless leg syndrome, I know someone with that and she says what works for her to help it is to take a tiny dose of Zoloft every night. Something like half or a quarter of a pill. IANAD, she got that from her doctor, you might want to ask your doctor about it.
• I "saw"/sensed a malevolent dark cloud floating near the ceiling of my room, that spoke to me. I find this fascinating. Sleep paralysis is a recurring theme with me and there is always an outside "presence" involved. My wife recently had the same experience, and, as always, she felt that there was "someone else" in the room causing it. Is this the same for everyone who has experienced this unsettling state? One of the times that I had sleep paralysis it gave way to an astral projection type dream. On subsequent occasions when the paralysis set in, I felt that the option to "leave" was available, but the transition is such a terrifying feeling (much like drowning) that I have never again done so.
• My wife occasionally hallucinates, nearly always about being attacked by insects. Last time it was a swarm of gnats. Her reactions range from annoyance to terror, evidently (I sleep straight through it). Me, I TALK. Loudly. I have very heated conversations with the voices in my head. Sometimes I shout. Fortunately, the wife thinks it's cute, because I do it all the time.
• "Is this the same for everyone who has experienced this unsettling state?" Not all, but for so many that it has acquired a name - The Old Hag - as I attempted to hint earlier on. "I've had that thing where you're drifting off to sleep and you jerk awake out of nowhere, as if a loud noise or something startled you, but there was no noise." From my own conversations with people on this topic - & certainly my own experiences - this is the really common one. It's almost like a second 'body' is slamming back into your physical form. It's easy to see why people would imagine that their 'souls' went walkabout during the night, because of all these sorts of things. I've experienced this loads of times - often when I'm 'overtired' & drifting off to sleep. I suspect stress has something to do with it (unless astral projection really is happening - remember - it's one of the few concepts universally shared by every human culture - not even smiling or the handshake share that universality -- from what I gather). Years ago I saw some BBC documentary about sleep in which they showed a short clip of laboratory tests on cats who had had some sort of neurochemical inhibited from being expressed during sleep cycle. In the grainy footage, a caged cat jumped around animatedly, swatting at an invisible flying prey. The cat was fast asleep. IIRC, the neurochemical acts like some sort of paralysing agent, preventing the sleeper from actually getting up & acting out performance of their dreams. This, I presume, is at the root of why some people sleepwalk - something is preventing the natural expression of these neuropeptides. There could be myriads of reasons for that, & I am too zonked to research it just now.
• darshon: "being a right-wing, born-again wacko, an alcoholic and having some fairly strong cocaine-binge tendencies." so... your friend, she is president bush? weird. i thought he was a dude. nostril - they blocked the cat's ability to lock down body muscles. usually in REM sleep muscle movement is inhibited via a medullary nucleus that blocks nerve impulses to the skeletal muscles. they cut this connection in the cats, so rather than sleep quietly they acted out their dreams. heh. cats are fun.
• Great post and discussion! I have the body expanding and contracting one, but have never been able to go anywhere with it. I also have restless legs syndrome, though it doesn't bother me or keep me awake. Several partners have described my "jimmy legs" activities, though. One study links it to ADD, which certainly fits in my case. Another study, which I can't find right now, links it to some flaw in iron metabolism in the brain. I tried taking iron before I went to bed, but it didn't seem to make a difference.
• Not all, but for so many that it has acquired a name - The Old Hag - as I attempted to hint earlier on. How about some personal monkey-dotes? I'd like to read a few descriptions of "presences" that monkeys have encountered between sleep and waking
• Nick - The first time it happened i was sleeping in my bed, awoke to the feeling of something constricting my chest and a strange metallic taste in my mouth(where else i would have a taste is beyond me) the only part of my body that could move were my eyes(which is the case in every episode). When i finally snapped out of it my heart was pounding and i was too terrified to get back to sleep or even move from my bed. I sat there staring at the door for a good hour or so waiting for something to come through. The second time I was on the couch i saw this large gray/black cloud moving past. i tried to follow it with my eyes but it moved passed my head causing me to try and roll my eyes up and around to see where it was going. Again, when i woke up i was too terrified to move of the couch and just sat there huddled up waiting for it to return. My reactions make me feel like an 8yr old kid but it's the same every time even though I know it's not real.
• Is this the same for everyone who has experienced this unsettling state? The first time was the only time I felt there was a presence in the room with me. I've had visual and auditory hallucinations in episodes since, just not the sensation of a presence. According to a study (PDF link) done at Waterloo University about 80 percent of survey respondents reported the "intruder" sensation at least once, and 30 percent said they always experienced it. How about some personal monkey-dotes? Ok. As I said, I saw a dark cloud hovering against the wall near the ceiling of my room. It was somewhat transparent, reminded me of the kind of smoke you get from a burning tire. It spoke to me in a deep voice, told me that half my life was over. As I have long passed the age of 24, obviously, the spooky cloud was wrong. ;-) In subsequent episodes I have seen moving lights, funny shadows, pictures on the wall and objects on shelves moving, and heard sounds... most memorably, an entire chorus of Gregorian chants once. I can easily see how episodes like this could lead to the belief that one has had a religious vision, supernatural manifestation, or even had little gray aliens dropping by for a visit.
• Can anybody read print in dreams? Like road signs, notes, etc.? I had a breakthrough dream years back, where I read the name painted on the hull of this boat that was floating in the sky - it was called the "Black Leaf" - and since then, I can read in dreams. It's like you can acquire dream skills. I also can now be the opposite sex in dreams, and can be killed as well without too much damage.
• I've always been able to read in my dreams. In fact, I was surprised to hear that other people couldn't. Same with my dreams being in color--apparently a lot of folks only dream in b&w. I have "on the edge of sleep" audio hallucinations--where I'm just drifting off and I'll hear something, usually a voice, either laughing or moaning or, very rarely, saying a word (when it happens, it's most often my name). Of course this causes me to jerk awake and unsettles me for quite some time. But then I'm not as smart as some, by the conventional indices of intelligence.
• I also can now be the opposite sex in dreams, and can be killed as well without too much damage. Well, sounds like you've garnered enough XP. You're now a level 7 somnambulistic death-defyer. I can't read that I know of, though I think I'm getting more control as I get older. I also hear my name, sometimes shouted, when I'm on the verge of sleep, and it never stops being freaky.
• Regarding reading in dreams... When I was learning welsh, I once dreamt entirely in print. there were just those red words in black space and I was some kind of editor, fixing grammar errors. The text did make sense after the grammar errors were fixed. The funny thing is that it's the only dream that I recall having any kind of letters... I have had false awakenings too, however there were usually something over the whole experience that made it almost hyperrealistic while being unrealistic at the same time... like low gravity, I was bouncing around as if I had done so all my life and it wasn't strange at all to me at the time. Other times the colour and lighting made it look more like a film, and so on. Sadly I'm the same as Fes now - I simply don't remember anything.
• I find I don't mind *shrug* Ok, sure, no "Fes finds himself in a babypool full of jello with supermodels replacing the normally appearing fruit cocktail" dreams, but then again no nightmares, either. Of course, it's driven me quite mad, you know. Quite. Mad. Indeed. *holds up severed hobo head* See?
• Wow, it never occured to me that people couldn't read in their dreams. Dying in dreams is interesting. For me at least. It's sort of just a fading out. I've also been a ghost in dreams. Watch out middleclasstool... there's an old superstition that it's the devil or demons that call your name out as you fall asleep and if you answer them, you open yourself up for possession... At least that's what someone told me when I was 10 and made me petrified of falling asleep for a week!
• I don't know that I can see specific letters that don't change, but I can look at print or text on a screen (yes, I'm an idiot and dream of online doings sometimes) and know what it means. Somehow there's a difference to me. Rather than reading, it seems like "knowing" the same way that I "know" where I am in a dream even if the literal details differ from reality. I just know. But then that's how it usually goes; I'm not special. ;)
• Wurwilf I also incorporate online stuff into dreams--from scrolling text conversations to nightmares about being trapped in a cell of an Excel spreadsheet. As for reading... I've always been able to read in mydreams. Signs, letters, book pages, etc.
• Wurwilf i have the same "reading" experience in my dreams i look at something and can understand what it says even if it's just squiggles. I've also dreamed of playing video games, of course halfway through the dream i'm no longer playing the game so much as living the game. I've also been having dreams about being in grade school again, and i haven't been there in years. I always wake up in a panic that i hadn't done my homework assignments.
• I can and do comfortably survive on 2-6 hours of sleep a night...
• When I overdose on the video games, after multi-hour long sessions, I dream I am playing video games when I sleep. The same thing happens when I spend too much time at the pc, I dream I am surfing the web all night or I am programming, which is funny to me cause I know nothing about programming. Yet there I am programming away, designing new software and pc games. When I was in college, I dreamed algebra for 6 months straight. The SO said I would talk in my sleep, spouting off algebra problems right and left. I suck at math, so it was just the stress of trying to get a passing grade in a subject I detested. And I had to have at least a B.
• Great thread! I sleep like a professional. I've had a condition called ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome if you're in the US) since I was 11, which makes you incredibly tired - I've had times where I've been sleeping 20-22 hours a day. Even when I'm healthy (like now, no relapses for five years - woo!) I still need about 14 hours of sleep to function optimally. When I was very ill, I used to get the Old Hag thing all the time (never knew it had a name before, thanks Nostril!) and it scared the absolute bejeezus out of me. It would happen when I was just falling asleep, there would be this dense blackness which would push me deeper and deeper into the bed, my ears would start to ring, it would get harder and harder to breathe, and I knew that if I didn't manage to summon up the last ounce of energy I had to pull myself into the waking world again, I'd suffocate. Ghastly. The indescribably awful nightmares of childhood thankfully stopped in my early twenties. I remember almost all of my dreams, and they come with full surround-sound, glorious technicolour, casts of thousands and, occasionally, subtitles. Often as not, I'm not actually in them, so it's just like watching a film. I love my dreams. I swear I'm more interesting when I'm asleep than when I'm awake.
• Sleeping for me is like a temporary death. I go to sleep, then wake up hours later, and there's nothing in between. Is that a disorder?
• I just took some NyQuil, read the ghost story thread and now this! I was really hoping to see some experiences like mine in this thread, but since I haven't yet, perhaps others will pipe up. I've had the "false awakening" thing - in fact, I've had it as several layers, where I'd dream the baby was choking in his crib, I'd jump out of bed and at that point "wake up" to the next layer, where I'd turn to my ex-husband in my bed and say "that's weird", then wake up again and think "weird, I dreamed I had a baby and a husband". I "woke up" a good seven or eight times. What I was really hoping to see was an experience similar to this one - it's happened to me twice. The first time, it was Easter Sunday and I was about 14. I woke up to use the bathroom, but couldn't find the door. Everything was rearranged - my heater was in the closet, my bed was moved against the door (which opened inward, so I couldn't get out), the light switches weren't where they should be, etc. It was a basement room, so there was absolutely no light getting in at all. I was obsessed with those glow-in-the-dark stars and by chance happened to design a heart constellation over my bed with the point of the heart pointing to the door. I remembered this and followed the stars to confirm that my bed was indeed blocking the door, when it should've been on the other side of the room. Like I said, this has actually happened to me at least twice. When I had to go to the bathroom I was a bit upset, but I didn't freak out. I did get a distinct "breaking with reality" feeling. I remember thinking - at age 14 - that the Easter Bunny must've rearranged my room. Anyone ever hear of anything remotely like this, or have any ideas?
• "I remember thinking - at age 14 - that the Easter Bunny must've rearranged my room. Anyone ever hear of anything remotely like this, or have any ideas?" Yes, many times. You are what is known as a "Shaman". You cannot escape your destiny. You will always be a conduit between the "real" (culturally accepted paradigm of reality) and the "spirit world" (individually experienced vector of non-mapped space/time). A reasonable analogy would be: you are a translator. Your purpose is to convey symbol-concepts to meat-popsicles from alter-mind to mote-vessel. You are not a "normal" human being, & your life will never be "conventional". Your sense of identity is merely a facile shell & you should attempt to shed it by exposing yourself to unconventional events.
• I remember thinking - at age 14 - that the Easter Bunny must've rearranged my room. Anyone ever hear of anything remotely like this, or have any ideas? So, you rearranged your room in your sleep? You're just a more active sleep walker, I would guess. When I'm really stressed out, I will walk in my sleep, but it doesn't happen often. Once in college I went to bed with my closet doors open and my window blinds up and the window open. When I woke up to find the closet doors shut, the window shut with the blinds pulled all the way down to the floor. I had my own room and the door was locked. Now, scarier, a lot scarier, about a week ago my mother did a little walking in her sleep and went into the bathroom and cut her hair. She cut the sides and her bangs really short but woke up before she could get to the back so now she has a mullet. As far as I know, she's never done any kind of sleep walking before.
• That's very interesting, Nostril. It was definately not that I rearranged my room in my sleep - everything was topsy-turvey and there was no way that I could've rearranged everything in the time I was sleeping. The thing that freaked me out was that when I got back from the bathroom, everything was back to where it was and I figured it was a dream - until I found my little heater still in the closet.
• You guys are scaring me. I'm going back to the ghost story thread. Seriously, I like the dreams in which I meet my animus. Sometimes there's sex, sometimes not, but whenever it happens, it makes the next couple days really smooth. When I was going through a really rough time in my life, I would wake up out of a sound sleep--no dream--and think I smelled smoke. It was so bad that I would wake my husband and be absolutely terrified. The scary thing was that I could NEVER just lay there and make the assumption it was an olfactory nightmare--I always had to get up and check, just in case it did turn out to be real. I used to have nightmares where I would attempt to scream, and couldn't make any sound, or I would think I actually screamed, and believe that I could hear the echos in the room when I awoke, but my husband would be asleep and if I woke him, he'd say I'd made no sound. About 15 years ago, we were staying overnight with an elderly relative, and I had a horrible nightmare about the house burning down. I sat up and screamed in my sleep, and caused a certain looseness in the bowels of the elderly relative. This problem was compounded by the fact that the scream gave my husband a flashback to Viet Nam, and he hurled out of a peaceful sleep off the bed and straight at the elderly relative's throat. Fortunately, he caught a foot on the chest at the foot of the bed and smacked into the wall instead of killing the nice elderly relative. I never have screamed out loud again, nor have I smelt smoke or dreamed of fire. The elderly relative has since passed, fortunately in a peaceful fashion.
• Sleep is always more exciting than I expect or want. As a kid, I couldn't move my limbs, while vertical and horizontal black bars zinged past each other on my eyelids. Jesus, it was scary. Later, I'd come in my sleep. I'm female, and tho Judy Blume had told me about wet dreams for boys, I had no idea I was capable of it. Lucid dreaming - terrifying. And you don't know leg restlessness until you've got a paraplegic lover who suddenly in the middle of the night propels himself across the room, asleep. Sleep apnea is a cakewalk, comparatively.
• In recent years, a great deal of work's been done concerning the causes of and conditions for troubled ot disturbing sleep and/or dreams. If sleeping is something you dread, or find disturbing, it doesn't have to be that way. For example, there are some postural behaviours which can cause this. Rucking a pillow up under your neck if you are a side-sleeper can apply enough pressure to your neck that blood flow to the brain is reduced. This may result in unpleasant/vivid/disturbing/panicky dreams or sensations. Above in this thread I placed a link to the website of the Association for the Study of Dreams (ASD), which has a wealth of information on these and other topics, and stresses an ethical approach to working with dreams. Anyone experiencing unpleasant sleep might want to look it over. Dreamers can ask questions, get information, participate in informed discussions, ask questions, and much of the site is open to the public.
• Bees, you are fantabuishous! I crown thee with the leaves of a banana tree. Hey! Anybody besides me want to go to Bees' place for a sleep-over?
• It depends on what he wants to wear.
• I missed this when it first was posted, since I was out of town. I dubbed myself Queen of Sleep Disorders a number of years ago. I have seven of 'em. - Non 24-Hour Sleep/Wake Phase Syndrome (I seem to work on about a 26 to 28 hour day.) - Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (and the two interact in very strange and annoying ways) - Periodic Limb Movement Syndrome (Legs and arms jerking randomly and waking me up) - Slowsleep Insomnia (It takes me far longer than most people do in order to get to sleep... generally one or two hours.) - Shortsleep Insomnia (I don't often manage to stay asleep for more than four hours at a time, and then have to try and get back to sleep around all the other problems.) - The common Stress-Related Insomnia (which is the one most people mean when they say insomnia) - And finally, Learned Insomnia (Because of all the others, I've acquired some training a la Pavlov that my bed is where I don't get any sleep, so I now crawl into bed and immediately feel wide awake.) There should be an Olympic not-sleeping contest. I could easily win the gold for my team. And with the hallucinations that come from extended periods with no sleep, who needs drugs?
• Me.
• *hands over the entire unneeded stash to Nostril*
• I've had the Old Hag once, but it was a dog. I totally thought I was wide awake, lying in my bed, reading. Then this dog comes in my back door (that I often left open) and hops on my bed. My place was on the second story, and that door just lead to a balcony (with no stairs or nothing). But that dog was fully there. I could hear his wet breath, huff'n and snortin. I could feel him walking on the bed, and then acorss me a couple times. I could even smell dog. But I couldn't move at all. I was trying real hard to turn over. My first instinct was that it was my neighbor's dog, but after a second or two I realized that it was impossible, that there was no way for a dog to show up on my balcony. I couldn't turn over to look at it though. I kept trying to, and it felt like the dog was emitting a force holding me down. I decided the dog had to be a ghost, and that the reason I couldn't move was that I was so scared. After a minute or two, I was suddenly able to move. The dog had already laid down in the bed next to me, against my side, and had seemed to be going to sleep. When I regained my ability to move, I immediately flipped over fast and sudden. Dog was gone. I could feel and hear him all the way up to me spinning around, but he was gone. My backdoor was shut. I was breathing super hard, but I slowly calmed down. I eventually told myself, as memory faded with time, that it couldn't have been a ghost, therefore I must've been asleep, even though I was so sure I had been awake. Now, after reading about Old Hag, I'm sure that had to be it. Reading in dreams has been cake. But if it's too much, it'll wake me up. If it's some book or magazine (once it was memorizing map directions), my brain will try to make it up for a short while, but it'll soon trying to distract me with something. Bullets, buses, just calling my name, whatever. If my brain fails to distract me, and I keep trying to read, it'll just wake me up.
• Woo-wee, Christophine. That's a long list! I think my father has at least three of them (first two and short-sleep insomnia). I usually have slowsleep insomnia - I've fallen asleep within minutes of setting in, but those times are rare. Usually its about 1 hour to even 3 hours of tossing and turning. Stress-related insomnia hits me in weird ways. I'd be half-asleep, or paralyzed but awake, and what's stressing me just keeps turning and turning in my head. Boy, civilisation sure has its load of screw-ups!
• "I've had the Old Hag once, but it was a dog." Actually, quite a lot of people report a dog sitting on their chest, or some-such, in these cases. It's not always a supernatural monster or a vague entity. I've heard that quite a few times. In at least one case I read about, in a hotel room in Yorkshire (I think) where a phantom black dog would sit upon guests in the night with much the same effects as you report, Mr K, the manifestations were stopped by increasing the ventilation to the room.
• Nostril, you old skeptic, you take all the fun out of being spooked. But this was pretty obvious to dog owners--increasing the ventilation at night always helps that oppressive dog presence--especially after your dog has helped clean up the last of the chili that evening.
• When I've fed chili to my dog (once) I've regretted it. Result: sick dog, all over the bedroom floor, down the hall, into the den, the living room, the dining room, and over the kitchen floor. Hit every damn carpet and floormat en route, too, didn't miss a single one. Squalor of life! Remarkable how few in my household wish to participate in clean-up after these animal accidents. They flee that sometimes did me seek...
• Now THAT'S a nightmare, Bees.
• Oh shit Nostril. That apartment had the worst ventilation in the universe. Wow. Wonder why It didn't happen more often. Bluehorse: That really only makes sense if you're a dog owner. Getting rid of dog smell shouldn't be necessary for us non-dog owners. Nostril, do you have any more links on Old Hag's dog? I'd totally like to recreate the experience.
• "Nostril, you old skeptic..." Careful, now. I am a strong supporter of the view that there are more aspects to our 'reality' than current paradigms can encompass. I just don't like to jump into bed with every black dog that scratches at the bedpost. The only thing I'm truly skeptical about is what we term reality itself. I've experienced some truly weird shit in my time, & won't rule out anything, at the end of the day. "Nostril, do you have any more links on Old Hag's dog?" No, not really. It's not a subject I've been particularly interested in, as far as this sort of research goes, because it always struck me as a manifestation of the foibles of the human nervous system rather than a truly anomalous experience. My attention is on other forms of altered-consciousness & high-strangeness. There's lots of articles out there, though.
• Disrupted sleep causes worker 'burnout'
• Science News just published an article on sleep paralysis that connects sleep paralysis with PTSD, panic attacks and alien abduction. It's pretty interesting.
• I've had two Old Hag experiences that I remember vividly. Both occuring within the past 10 years... First one happened when I was staying with my parents - may have been home from college or something, so I was sharing the room with my younger sister. I remember waking up abruptly and staring directly at a dark figure in a fedora looming over my bed. I was terrified because as I stared into the blackness where his face should have been, I thought "He sees me looking at him." I kept expecting a pair of red glowing eyes to appear. I couldn't move, I couldn't scream, and I don't think I've ever been that scared in all of my life. Eventually, the dark figure dissipated into the normal nighttime darkness of the room. I think I was awake for another hour before I could get back to sleep. The adrenaline rush was ridiculously powerful. The second time I experienced it wasn't nearly as scary, but more oddly disturbing. I awoke abruptly (once again, in the same room, with my sister asleep in the other bed) and saw a figure crouched upside down in the corner of the room over her bed. He was small - leprechaun-like, wearing a Freddy Krueger style striped sweater, knickers with suspenders, and some kind of wool hat. He looked mischeivously and somewhat menacingly around the room and seemed to kinda bounce around. Like last time, I couldn't move or scream or anything, but I wasn't nearly as frightened. Sometimes I would also find myself expanding and contracting in a strange way, as if I filled the room, then becoming very small, like a grain of sand. I've had that same sensation, though it only happened to me as a child. It was always visualized with red matchstick heads. At one point, I'd be floating a million miles above an unending sea of tiny match heads, then all of the sudden I'd be an inch away from an enormous match head that dwarfed everything. It was always very disturbing, and would often cycle numerous times. I can't remember if I only experienced this when having a high fever, or if it had nothing to do with illness. Oh, and goofyfoot, you're not the only one to really enjoy your dreams. ;)
• Fascinating thread, by the way. I can't believe I missed this the first time around!
• Just don't read it too close to bedtime! *shivers*
• Losing sleep undoes the rejuvenating effects new learning has on the brain
• I go through sleepwalking phases and periods when I eat in my sleep. Ate half a can of salted penuts that way once. Blech! My doctor thought it might be caused by overnight hypoglycemia, but setting alarms to do blood glucose finger sticks over a period of weeks indicated otherwise. I've seen a few articles since then that say sleep eating is one of the more common parasomnias. 99.99 percent of my dreams are silent. If words are needed, they're written down somewhere.
• Update: Sleep clinic says there's nothing wrong with me. Is there such a thing as hypochonrisomnia?
• How about leaving some carrot slices and such around at night? At least you'll be eating something healthy...
• Do you feel that the sleep study was thorough enough to make that diagnosis? If you feel that they didn't spend enough time with you, or you doubt what they have to say, then feel free to speak up :)
• Your search - hypochonrisomnia - did not match any documents.
• Sorry TUM! I just re-read that and realized that I got kinda mommyish on you there. You're a growed-up person, I know, I just want people to take good care of my fellow monkeys!
• I think you're allowed to practice the mommy voice, meredithea.
• I've never had a sleep study done, even though I was kicked out of the Army for sleepwalking. I always wondered what it would be like, though. I suppose the reason I haven't done it is that, once the doctors see all the crazy crap I do when unconscious, they'd want me to take a bunch of pills to control myself. Forget that noise.
• I guess I'll need it soon :)
• Don't worry about the Mommy Tone! It didn't come off that way to me. But the insurance company isn't likely to fund another one.
• No sleep means no new brain cells
• Insufficient sleep increases risk of cardiovascular disease
• Insomnia, Anxiety, Depression: Which Comes First?
• Lack of sleep linked to emotional imbalance, imaging study suggests
• Well, duh! Which came first, the chicken or the insomnia? I can't sleep when I'm in the middle of a depressive episode, and when I can't sleep, I get depressed easier. There ya are.
• Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep
• "Americans are self-medicating" I'm ready for another cup of coffee!
• The Wretched Life of the Insomniac
• After experiencing it during a long season in a loved one's final days, and a few times myself for no discernible reason whatsoever, I can attest that 'living hell' is an apt term.
• Yes, indeed. Chronic insomnia is a terrible thing. I had a lengthy rant in my head about it, since it's something I've been afflicted with all my life. But I'll just confine myself to absolute agreement that it is a living hell in so very many ways.
• Are We Sleep Deprived Or Not?
• Sleep Hacking Produces Results -- For a Time
• I've been reading about segmented sleep lately. I even tried it, but I fell right back asleep on the couch.
• The Poetry of Insomnia
• Awesome find, H - and so true!
• I think I've figured out that my insomnia (at least partially) cycles with my hormones (as does a sort of mild depression). Somehow, figuring that out makes it easier to deal with, because I know it has a cause and an end. Three days a month I won't sleep at all, and then I'll want to sleep all day for the next four days, and then everything goes back to normal (barring big time stress).
• Sleep loss produces false memories
• The U.S. Military's Sleep-Reduction Program
• Yup, that's what the world needs: more drug-enhanced sleep-deprived teenagers with high-caliber weapons.
• Against Sleep
• Sleep
• Lack of Sleep Linked to Common Cold
• *goes to bed*
• Sleep and psychopathology
• That explains why I want to kill someone/thing in the morning when the dog repeatedly wakes me up throughout the night.
• ...or why I'm feeling generally homicidal now that my toddler hasn't slept for four days. *yawn* How *do* you convince a two year old to go to sleep? You know, legally? (heh)
• Well, ok. She's slept. Just after midnight, or during the day when I'm at work.
• Conscious dreams and controlled hallucinations. Oh my. Oh my goodness.
• Does Insomnia Shrink Your Brain?
• Oh great. Not only does insomnia make me cranky, tired and addicted to caffeine, it'll also make me stupider.
• Consider Serious Lack of Sleep Like Being Drunk on the Job
• Not now, Ambien Walrus!
• The myth of the eight-hour sleep
• Up All Night: The science of sleeplessness.
• Your Ancestors Didn’t Sleep Like You
• Black Moon's Insomnia Epidemic Is The Most Unsettling Apocalypse Of All