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I was curious if anyone else experiences these when they sleep. Basically, at some point during the first few hours of falling asleep, I'll wake up but not fully aware of my surroundings, I'll "see" things or feel things in my bed, or the room I'm in.
Usually it's a kind of insect, spider or a snake (although once it was a balloon...lol). I will "see" it or feel it and believe 100% it's real and in the room with me and wake up and turn on a light, tearing off my bed sheets until a few minutes pass and I wake up enough to realize what happened. It's not really a dream because I'm awake prior to it, it's akin to night terrors but I can move and after waking up a bit realize what's going on.
I call it sleep hallucinations, there's some medical name for it I think but I don't remember exactly. I've experienced it for quite awhile, since I was fifteen-ish, so about six years. It seems to happen randomly, the only consistent thing is it happens within the first few hours of falling asleep. It can once, than not for a few months, than occur every night for a week.
Basically I'm just curious if anyone else has experienced this at all.
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All clear here. Have you grown accustomed to this? Sounds kind of scary to be able to see or feel a spider or snake around you.
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i hallucinated spiders all over the bed when waking up once as a kid.
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I absolutely hate this, and yes I do get them sometimes, usually when I'm very sick. I had these for about a week when I had a bad head cold last summer.
For me it was always spiders or roaches. I would open my eyes an hour or so into my sleep, half-awake, and right on the wall one foot from my face would be a gigantic spider as big as my fist, or sometimes even as big as my head. Right there, not blurry or anything, a clear as day giant fucking spider. Or if I was facing my night-stand when my eyes opened, it would be covered in giant roaches crawling all over it.
Obviously the immediate reaction is to jump out of bed in a panic, grab the flashlight on my computer desk, and shine it on the wall or nightstand, where the spider/roaches no longer are at that point (because they were never actually there). Lemme tell you that pretty much ruins any chance of getting a good night sleep after that.
The illusions are very strong, to the point where you could look at them for several seconds and have them not fade away.
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I never had those, but it's all very interesting. Sometimes I've woken up in the middle of the night having a "dreadful" feeling, but I don't see or feel anything. Probably I've just dreamt something I don't remember or whatever.
I've even taken vitamin B6 and 5HTP in pretty high doses which makes some people dream extremely vivid things or have night terrors. I get nothing. I dream but I don't remember the dreams.
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United States24814 Posts
I used to occasionally dream that I was lying in my bed and it was horribly disorienting :-/
Never had your problem though.
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On January 13 2010 20:29 Hinanawi wrote:
I absolutely hate this, and yes I do get them sometimes, usually when I'm very sick. I had these for about a week when I had a bad head cold last summer.
For me it was always spiders or roaches. I would open my eyes an hour or so into my sleep, half-awake, and right on the wall one foot from my face would be a gigantic spider as big as my fist, or sometimes even as big as my head. Right there, not blurry or anything, a clear as day giant fucking spider. Or if I was facing my night-stand when my eyes opened, it would be covered in giant roaches crawling all over it.
Obviously the immediate reaction is to jump out of bed in a panic, grab the flashlight on my computer desk, and shine it on the wall or nightstand, where the spider/roaches no longer are at that point (because they were never actually there). Lemme tell you that pretty much ruins any chance of getting a good night sleep after that.
The illusions are very strong, to the point where you could look at them for several seconds and have them not fade away.
lol that's just fucked up but still quite normal.
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i've had these before they're called sleep paralysis, if im right? :s
had a dream where i was in my room (my tv had broken and i threw it away) and i heard my tv playing a movie , it had a vcr/dvd built in, and i heard my mom's laughter (it's pretty spooky sounding, if you havent familiarized with it) directly in my ear; so i woke up pretty fucking scared.
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On January 13 2010 20:16 MYM.Testie wrote:
All clear here. Have you grown accustomed to this? Sounds kind of scary to be able to see or feel a spider or snake around you.
every time it happens, because i'm not fully awake, it freaks me out. afterward i realize it's the same thing as usual, sigh, put my bed back together and go back to sleep. it's just too random to get completely accustomed too, since i don't know when it will happen, and what i see is almost never the same. i might see a large spider one time, than feel several crawling in my bed another. i'm not afraid of anything that i see normally, but i definitely freak out when i think it's either in my bed or room while sleeping, especially given the size/quantity of whatever it is.
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On January 13 2010 21:02 Revolt wrote:
i've had these before they're called sleep paralysis, if im right? :s
had a dream where i was in my room (my tv had broken and i threw it away) and i heard my tv playing a movie , it had a vcr/dvd built in, and i heard my mom's laughter (it's pretty spooky sounding, if you havent familiarized with it) directly in my ear; so i woke up pretty fucking scared.
sleep paralysis implies not being able to move. i can move just fine, as soon as i see/feel whatever the hallucination is i get the fuck out of my bed and turn a light on asap. after a few minutes of tearing my bed apart i wake up enough to realize it wasn't real.
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On January 13 2010 21:02 Revolt wrote:
i've had these before they're called sleep paralysis, if im right? :s
had a dream where i was in my room (my tv had broken and i threw it away) and i heard my tv playing a movie , it had a vcr/dvd built in, and i heard my mom's laughter (it's pretty spooky sounding, if you havent familiarized with it) directly in my ear; so i woke up pretty fucking scared.
Haha, damn son.
Yeah, some form of sleep paralysis, without the paralysis part. Some people have lesser ones like yours and some have longer, drawn out ones which can involve scary people charging them and jumping on their chest. The word "nightmare" is believed to come from sleep paralysis as a phenomenon.
I can't recall having so vivid dreams, like it doesn't feel like reality.
I'm very curious though, what do you guys eat and drink during the day? Some stuff affects dreaming immensely.
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Yeah I get this every once in a while, it usually occurs when I have a sudden shift in my sleeping pattern.
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I dreamt that I woke up and took a shower once... Imagine my dissapointment when it turned out that I had to shower AGAIN once i woke up.
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On January 13 2010 21:49 Catch]22 wrote:
I dreamt that I woke up and took a shower once... Imagine my dissapointment when it turned out that I had to shower AGAIN once i woke up.
That has really nothing to do with the topic though
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On January 13 2010 21:13 Foucault wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2010 21:02 Revolt wrote:
i've had these before they're called sleep paralysis, if im right? :s
had a dream where i was in my room (my tv had broken and i threw it away) and i heard my tv playing a movie , it had a vcr/dvd built in, and i heard my mom's laughter (it's pretty spooky sounding, if you havent familiarized with it) directly in my ear; so i woke up pretty fucking scared. Haha, damn son. Yeah, some form of sleep paralysis, without the paralysis part. Some people have lesser ones like yours and some have longer, drawn out ones which can involve scary people charging them and jumping on their chest. The word "nightmare" is believed to come from sleep paralysis as a phenomenon. I can't recall having so vivid dreams, like it doesn't feel like reality. I'm very curious though, what do you guys eat and drink during the day? Some stuff affects dreaming immensely.
i haven't found anything that affects when it happens. as i said, i've had this since i was fifteen, so there are a lot of variables.
as for dreams, i rarely remember them. i started remembering vague pieces of them after i started sleeping more than when i did in highschool, but i don't remember much and they aren't very vivid. i have a friend that says she dreams really vivid dreams that are distinct and real-ish. it was always interesting to hear them, while the only thing i had was inconsistent bouts of hallucinations.
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haha i wake up once in a while with real spiders right in front of my eyes, luckily i don't mind spiders at all. Not trying to say i'm braver than you but... pussies.
+ Show Spoiler +hehe joking, spiders i don't mind a bit but ants make me cry like a child. For some reason my instincts tell me spider= nice and kinda cute as well as totally harmless Ant= evil critter that wants to call his buddies and eat you alive, i'm not joking. Spiders i don't mind a bit which is lucky cause like i said i get them in my room pretty regularly. No ants luckily though.
edit: never experienced an hallucination like yours, however this has happened to me 3 times in my life allthough latest more than 1,5 years ago, apparently it's not unusual to get hallucinations with it.
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Oh alright, but how often does it happen then? Do you drink coffee? Supplement with any specific vitamins? etc.
I see. So you have these sleep hallucinations but don't recall your dreams much otherwise? lol I sound like a doctor. Anyways, it's interesting.
Why do you guys wake up seeing spiders? Sounds so random that you have a similar experience. Maybe it's the cobwebs when you open your eyes that create spider-like images and your sleepy mind project these images as spiders
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There was one really bad time where I woke up but it seemed that my conciousness was stuck in the reality of some extremely random star wars dream. I woke my g/f up and was going on and on about having to get boxes of lightsabers to somewhere or something and at the same time saying sorry. I can vividly remember thinking that none of it was real but I couldn't escape the hold it had on my brain. Like my normal personality was totally engrosed in the fake world while that little logical voice in my head was going wtfwtfwtf??!! It actually launched me into quite a bit of research into finding out if my family has Alzheimers in it anywhere. It lasted about 10 minutes I believe...
Not that this is what you are referring to but I thought I would throw it out there :D
*Edit*
I went and did some more looking around today seeing as how it has been a while and I'll just say that wikipedia is awesome. I found that it was most likely a dream turned into a hypnagogic hallucination. The dream makes sense when I think about it now because it was reflecting on the stress of my current job.
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EPT
