When I was an infant, my parents often found me sitting straight up in my crib, eyes wide open yet clearly asleep, screaming about a fly that was trying to attack me (yeah, the insect terror has been a lifelong thing). These so-called “night terrors” lasted a couple of years, and then went away for awhile, only to return with blinding force when I hit about 15…and started opening my eyes in the middle of the night only to see a man/monster/enormous spider/whatever in my room, advancing towards me. Sometimes I remembered the dreams, and sometimes I fell straight back to sleep without every fully waking, only learning about the episode in the morning from someone who had heard me or had tried to wake me up.
They sound more or less like normal nightmares, I know, but here’s the difference: when they happen, my eyes are wide open. I am seeing the room around me, but I am also seeing the intruder (or whatever I’m dreaming about) clear as day…so it really feels more like a hallucination. I end up sitting straight up in bed screaming at the top of my lungs, and whoever’s in closest proximity – usually Kendrick, obviously (sorry, honey) – has to shake me until I wake up for real and the vision disappears.
Weird, no? And probably pretty miserable for the person being awoken by a shrieking bedmate.
This happened last night, and it suuucked. I had another one of those teeth-falling-out dreams, but in the dream, I sat up in bed and put my hands to my mouth, and felt something release. I looked down, and saw that most of my top teeth (and a couple of my lower ones) had tumbled out into my hands. I jumped out of bed and ran over to the mirror, and saw that yes, my teeth were gone, leaving only a bloody mess behind. Now, mind you, in reality I actually did jump out of bed and run to the mirror, as well as have the very real feeling of running my hands along my teeth and finding them missing. I didn’t scream this time – just woke up on my own eventually (and with considerable difficulty) – but it was a horrifying experience, because I was in my room, in the dark, dressed in the shirt I was wearing to sleep in, staring into my own mirror, and it felt very much like it was really happening.
Apparently this kind of thing is called a night terror. As distinct from a nightmare, night terrors involve “extreme terror and a temporary inability to regain full consciousness…it is often impossible to wake the person fully because they are so concentrated on waking” (Wikipedia). They also generally aren’t found in people older than 12 (usually peaking around age 3). Except for me, it seems. You’re also not supposed to wake up fully from them, or remember them, but I usually do (I didn’t when I was younger; I only know I did this because my parents told me about it).
The thing about them is that – for me, at least – they they take place in real time, exactly where I am, so the divide between dream and reality becomes nearly impossible to pick apart. They are horrible, although I’m starting to be able to manage them better because as I’ve gotten older I’ve developed the ability to sort of realize I’m having a night terror even while I’m in it, so I’m able to take steps (getting out of bed, shaking myself awake, etc) to handle them. I’ve never gotten an official diagnosis, because it doesn’t happen often enough these days to really disrupt my sleeping schedule and isn’t impacting my life to the point where I feel I need to see a doctor, but jeez, are they ever horrible when they do happen.
So why do I bring this up? Because I have never heard of anyone else (other than children) having these things, and everyone I’ve ever mentioned them to has no idea what I’m talking about. I’m wondering: have any of you ever experienced this, or do you know someone who has?
I assume they’re related to stress/feelings of lack of control/generalized anxiety about something or another, but I’d love to learn more, if you know anything about this stuff.
