Fuck. I shouldn’t have trusted that dream, things were going too well. Then bam! It had me and wouldn’t let go.
Night terrors are intense episodes of fear or terror during sleep, often accompanied by screaming or flailing. Experts recommend against waking someone up who is experiencing a night terror.
The screaming and flailing is actually to wake up. Either to wake yourself up or have someone hear you and wake you up. The “sleep foundation” doesn’t know shit. “Parasomnia”, they gave it a scientific-sounding name so I guess they’re the experts.
Sure it can be PTSD, or anxiety, but what if there are actually dream entities that feed on our fear? I wanted to write “evil dream entities” the first few times, but now I’m thinking why would they be evil? It’s not their fault or choice they feed on fear, the lion isn’t evil for being a carnivore and feeding on the gazelle (yeah, there was no metaphor I could think of in which the supposed dream entities aren’t the predator lol). But lion might be the wrong one, spider is a better one cause I didn’t feel hunted, I felt ensnared.
I had to write this post cause I couldn’t risk going back to sleep so soon after, that’s how they get you again. After some time the entities move on. But it’s probably PTSD and anxiety.
Hope you have better dreams comrade
Nightmares are often nsightful and I can tell what’s bothering my subconscious.
Night terrors for me have three discerning qualities that make it different from regular nightmares: 1) They hurt, a lot. Real, strong pain, and I usually have a high tolerance for it. 2) I know that I’m dreaming, but the only thing I can do is call for help or wake up.
I lucid dream more often than not, in fact when I was a kid I thought lucid dreaming was how everyone dreamt and I looked forward to it every night, a playground world where I can do what I want. That’s what I mean when I say things were going so well in the dream.
But I got trapped in a false sense of security and all of a sudden a pig-monster with big teeth was sicced on me. I remember its teeth gnawing on my arm and it wouldn’t let go. It was ripping muscle from bone, it hurt just as much and I freaked out. Then I woke up for a fraction of a second (or thought I did) but fell immediately back to sleep and the monster was back on me, but going for my neck this time. A panic attack in dream form.
Thinking logically about it, it could have been sleep apnea (feeling like I’m choking). But I was sleeping on my side, cause in the half-awake moments, I was sleep paralysed and when I opened my eyes I was looking at the room but couldn’t move. That’s what I mean when I say the dream wouldn’t let go.
So like the “sleep foundation” and other websites say, sleep paralysis, waking up slightly but not fully from dreams, anxiety, sleep apnea, it all rings true, but when it’s actually happening logic goes out the window.
I was hoping someone else would also post some night terror experiences but it seems not that many people have them. I haven’t had them in a very long time, which is why this time felt so intense. But luckily I remembered how to wake myself up. I actually had to fight to keep my eyes open and fully wake up.
Unrelated, but one time I was so tired and I was having trouble falling asleep. Then all of a sudden I started falling asleep but got scared and changed my mind. I tried staying awake and I distinctly remember as if my brain went “you can stay up if you want but this body is going to sleep” and me/my conscious got literally dropped into the dream. There was nothing I could do, I just got pulled in and started falling into dreams (I guess that’s what Lewis Carroll meant with Alice “falling” down the rabbit hole). It gave me enough time to think about where I want to fall though so that was kind of fun.
Dreams, consciousness, it has always fascinated me.
Do you experience false awakenings or sleepwalk? Is your dreamscape consistent? And do you have chronic pain? Just curious, don’t meet people with similar experiences often
Do you experience false awakenings or sleepwalk?
False awakenings yes. I also often start dreaming before I fall asleep, as in the room/world around me will start changing as I drift to sleep.
Is your dreamscape consistent?
In the dream? Yup. It often feels like I have been taken to another world or accessed a parallel reality. I’ve tried to exchange names and numbers with people saying I will contact them when I wake up lol
And do you have chronic pain?
Nope, thank god for that. That’s the one thing I don’t have that seems to plague a lot of people.
Sounds awful feeling pain in dreams, just woke up from a crocodile biting down on my arm and while horrific I felt nothing in regards to physical pain and actually thought in that moment about all the diseases crocodiles could carry but once I could tell the crocodile had started to sink its teeth further into my arm I woke up in need of water.
Its good to wake up to a notification to your response.
Sounds awful feeling pain in dreams,
Only during “night terrors”. If it’s a regular nightmare I sleep through it and just deal with it in-dream.
Crocodiles can carry diseases? I thought they were prehistoric reptiles that couldn’t even get cancer.
I should imagine they have nasty bacteria but I’m far from an expert 😅
Looks like you’re right: https://theconversation.com/if-a-croc-bite-doesnt-get-you-infection-will-76308
Give a try to Doxazosin or something similiar. It is off label used against nightmares, night terros etc. It is not guaranteed that it will work but there is a good chance it will
Not to keen on taking pharmaceuticals if I don’t need to. Haven’t had a night terrors episode in years, so they’re not that frequent. I’ve just been super anxious lately and I’ve had a few extreme panic/PTSD attacks, so that’s probably the reason for night terrors. My nightmares are usually of the form that someone or something is after me, and I think that’s classic anxiety.
Of course, that’s up to you to decide. Especially when it is in the context of PTSD, nightmares of this kind are common. If it occurs much more frequently, which I sometimes had every day, certain medications can help. It’s always good to know that there’s a solution in case :)
Yeah, I’d like to try other solutions before going for drastic measures. But as you say, always nice to know it’s available. Thanks.
CW abuse
My girlfriend has night terrors like yours; feeling extreme pain from torture, like being buried upside down in a metal tube filled with ants in the middle of a blazing hot desert, having to relive seeing her loved ones being tied and beaten in front of her and ofc the same happening to her and worse, just really fucked up shit in general. She wakes up several times a night crying, although I sleep heavy, so that only occasionally wakes me. I have nightmares too also related to PTSD, but I’ve thankfully never once experienced pain or anything like that, just the feeling of extreme terror and reliving a similar experience, like having to go down into the basement with my dad, people kicking my teeth in, etc. We both use cannabis, as it’s proven to help PTSD night terrors; I highly recommend it.
We “joke” about an entity like you describe, actually, and call them dream wasps or soul bees, because, well, they appear as wasps in her dreams that eat her brain and generally just destroy her body in ways I can’t describe without getting very NSFW. After learning about this I had a dream about a wasp randomly flying up my nose and have had similar dreams ever since lol, although it’s rare, because cannabis stops my ability to even have dreams
We both use cannabis, as it’s proven to help PTSD night terrors; I highly recommend it.
I actually quit smoking weed (with THC) this year. I’ve been smoking it a lot to cope with these feelings, but then I saw that it negatively impacts other parts of my life.
cannabis stops my ability to even have dreams
Same, or at least it makes me not remember them. I do enjoy dreaming 99.9% of the time, so having vivid and lucid dreams again has been a nice benefit of quitting. I smoke CBD and I find that I get most of the benefits that way.
We “joke” about an entity like you describe, actually, and call them dream wasps or soul bees,
For me it is “shadowy” entities (pitch black, like a shadow) and some kind of dog-beast (also shadowy). I was shocked that last night the beast/monster had a form and colour and it was terrifying as fuck.
Sounds a bit like sleep paralysis which I get quite a bit. Very disturbing, but I don’t have the screaming and flailing. In those moments I only wish I could scream and flail.
In those moments I only wish I could scream and fla
I scream and flail in the dream hoping that eventually it will be carried over to real life. I’ve even tried once falling asleep with a phone in my hand so that I could call someone from the dream world. It actually nearly worked, I was dialing with my hands but I was in the dream and then the phone appeared in my dream, that’s when I knew the experiment failed: can’t call from a dream phone.
