Unusual Sleep Disorders

[Horse Ham Radio]

Does anyone have any of the rarer sleep disorders? I don't mean things like insomnia or hypnic jerk, as these are relatively common.

 

I experience some of the more unusual disorders on rare occasions - a few nights per year max. I've listed them below. They only appear when I am under emotional strain (stress/anxiety/negative feelings etc.). I have a lot of things going on in my life over the next month or so, so I am feeling these at the moment. Even so, these disorders are reasonably uncommon even when I am under strain. I sleep perfectly fine when I am free from these.

 

The ones I get are:

Sleep Paralysis (only the inability to move. I don't get the other symptoms). Had this since I was little.

Possibly some form of Parasomnia. I end up in a semi-awake state but still dreaming (always a bad dream or nightmare) and unable to tell the dream apart from reality because the two fuse. Only appeared as an adult.
Exploding Head Syndrome (gotta love the name - a type of parasomnia). I had it on a few occasions while studying my undergraduate degree, but it has since stopped. It would manifest as a loud siren or bang sometimes accompanied by a bright flash of light that would wake me from my sleep in a panicked state. I often felt like I was missing a deadline or important meeting. Sometimes, I would end up getting dressed and getting my keys and heading to the door before it clicks that it's the middle of the night and everything is ok and I don't have a meeting to attend at 4am and I am able to calm myself back down.

 

Last night I had the first two of these on several occasions throughout the night. This is one of the most disturbed nights I have ever had. I fell asleep fine, but woke up at about 3am paralysed. My eyes were still closed and wouldn't open, and I must have been clasping one of my hands with my other hand because I could feel my hand, but I wasn't able to move it. I have experience sleep paralysis so many times before that it no longer scares me, but it is very uncomfortable. It only lasts for a few seconds for me. When I first had it as a kid it bloody well terrified me because I had no idea what was happening. The first time you experience paralysis it feels like it lasts forever as you are acutely aware of your inability to move and your mind is rushing desperately to classify, clarify, and correct it. The worst part is feeling like you can't breathe because you can't feel your lungs working. I never wanted to fall asleep again after that first time. That's how frightening I found it at first. Tonight's paralysis wore off quickly and I soon found myself trying to sleep again.

 

I then experienced paralysis again on several attempts to fall asleep. For some reason, when I am stressed or worried, I can become aware of myself falling asleep as I am about to enter the dream state, and this causes my mind to immediately wake up, but my body lags behind and remains in sleep mode, paralysed. I don't know why this happens, but again it is uncomfortable, and even irritating as you are tired and just want to sleep.

 

After several paralysis experiences, I eventually drifted off again. This time I awoke to the parasomnia. I was convinced there were large spiders in my bed, under the cover. I do have mild arachnophobia. I immediately jumped out of bed, left the room, went to the hall and turned on the lights. Even though the whole concept of having spiders in the bed is completely illogical and nonsensical, the part of my brain that processes these logical thoughts is simply dysfunctional when I am in this state. I'm completely unable to reason that there shouldn't be spiders in the bed, so I am thus 100% sure that there are. The way I defeat the parasomnia is by facing the fear directly. I go back into the room and I cautiously inspect every single inch of my bed and covers to confirm that there are indeed no spiders anywhere on it. Once the reality is corrected I always immediately fall asleep again. Happens every time. The fear goes, my mind rapidly collapses into an extremely relaxed state, and then I'm gone again. Back to whatever new nightmares I'll be having that night. This spider parasomnia was quite mild compared to what they can be. You won't find the next one so nice.

 

I awake again from my sleep. This time I'm lying on my side, facing towards the bedroom door, eyes open but body paralysed. I can hear voices. Incoherent whispering. I can hear shuffling or scraping noises coming from the other side of my flat, like someone is dragging around furniture. I immediately become aware that someone has broken into the flat and I am being burgled. I pinpoint the noises to my living room, across the hall opposite my bedroom door. I initially feel a sense of needing to confront them, but then I think 'what happens if they have a weapon?'. Am I going to go out there and be killed? Are they going to come into the bedroom and stab me? I'm overcome by a very intense feeling of fear as my paralysis drops away. Despite knowing I can move again, I remain still, not making a sound in case I attract their attention. My heart is racing. It's only a matter of time before they reach the bedroom. I'm against the clock here. I grab my phone and turn its LED light on. Although I have nothing in my room that could be used as a weapon, my phone has a very bright LED that could be used to blind someone temporarily and stop them attacking me. I try to move slowly off my bed to sneak up on them, but the movement is loud, so instead I take to moving hurriedly to prevent them reacting in time. I rapidly reach and open my bedroom door, charge through to the living room, and look around. There's no one there. I check all my possessions and everything is right where I left it. The shuffling and voices have stopped. I proceed to search every other room in the flat and check various person-sized hiding spots. Nothing is out of the ordinary. The front door still has both locks engaged. The windows are closed. I go back to bed and fall asleep straight away.

 

The next time I wake up it is morning and I get up as normal.

 

I feel fine to be fair, so I must have had enough quality sleep during the night despite all of this.

 

I'm fortunate these are rare events, and as mentioned, last night was one of the worst nights I have ever had. Normally I would get a single one of these disorders at a single point during the night and that would be it.

 

It's strange, but while they can be anything from uncomfortable to terrifying at the time, when I look back on these events I can smile. Sure, they were bad at the time, but they livened the night up and made it a hell of a lot more entertaining. Sleeping would be kind of dull if I never had these. I feel a good mix of fear and excitement about having these again. It's like when you are on a rollercoaster about to go over the top. You are scared, but also excited and looking forward to it. You wouldn't have got on the ride otherwise. I'm also sure the parasomnia events are beneficial to my life somehow. I'm quite literally having to face my fears directly, and I'm unable to recognise that I am imagining them. I think being able to confront your fears and not run from them is an important part of everyday life.

[Yatogami]

I sleep walk, and get hypnagogic hallucinations.

 

I also can be awake and get up similar to sleep walking and have elaborate hallucinations that are similar to panic attacks. 

[Calvin]

I sometimes have sleep paralysis and hypnopompic hallucinations. I find them pretty terrifying since the hallucinations are usually related to previous traumatic events.

[Grumpy Alien]

O_O thankfully, I just have plain old mild to moderate insomnia. (I'll be tired - because I'm always tired - but can't fall asleep at all.)

[LenaLuthor]

On 5/20/2017 at 5:03 AM, nameinagame said:

Exploding Head Syndrome (gotta love the name - a type of parasomnia). I had it on a few occasions while studying my undergraduate degree, but it has since stopped. It would manifest as a loud siren or bang sometimes accompanied by a bright flash of light that would wake me from my sleep in a panicked state. I often felt like I was missing a deadline or important meeting. Sometimes, I would end up getting dressed and getting my keys and heading to the door before it clicks that it's the middle of the night and everything is ok and I don't have a meeting to attend at 4am and I am able to calm myself back down.

 

 

I think I might experience that. However, the phenomena I experience which is exactly as you described is always related to an explosion in a dream I am having.

[Tainted]

Exploding head syndrome is fun...or not, it's not, stoopid head...

 

I suffer with regular hypnogogic episodes, last night's main one involved waking up as a ghost and 'realising' that I'd made up my life to deal with the trauma of death...I often see creatures in my room, my wife has woken on several occasions to me trying to 'save her life' (trying to claw the smoke demon out of her throat, kicking her out of bed to save her from the deathtrap I awoke in...she liked that one >_> )

 

Sleep paralysis is something I used to suffer with but I only have one or two episodes a month now, for a while it became regular fits instead but they have decreased too. I still hallucinate most nights, often multiple times.

[Correner]

Even what initially seems to be common insomnia can have an uncommon cause. If one has ever had a family member that experienced rapidly worsening insomnia terminating in death, they possibly had a prion disease. A rather rare occurrence.

[AmandaD]

I had sleep paralysis once when I was suffering from frequent panic attacks and anxiety.  Woke up and couldn't move, not even to open my eyes.  I think I just laid in bed until I was able to move again.  Was a very freaky experience and it hasn't happened again. 

[Elftober Country]

 

There's a thread on here somewhere that I started about sleep paralysis. Basically, I get it quite often and it terrifies me 

[Briarwood]

Oh, that's the word for it. I have regular parasomniac episodes when I'm under stress; they also didn't appear until later in life, around the age of 16. Mine follow such a precise pattern. There's always something or someone who needs or wants to use my bed. The list is long: my roommate, my best friend, my crush, some of my other friends, a tourist, an albino corn snake, spiders, railroad tracks, a family of Ukranian refugees...

 

Once I was looking through my photos on my phone for a photo of some notes. I found a picture that I had apparently taken at night with flash on in my room. I wonder what it was that I had to take a picture of.

 

I have a friend who gets sleep paralysis accompanied by hallucinations of people, which was okay until one time she woke up and there actually was someone in her room. One of her neighbors had been drugged at a bar and accidentally walked into her bedroom. It was a pretty awkward situation.

[Zoningout]

I wouldn't consider mine rare but i have sleep paralysis sometimes during the night and i hate it because i know i can't move for a while and i dislike feeling stuck. 

I also have sleep apnea - i'm supposed to be on that breathing thing but it's annoying and i don't like it plus i can't sleep with something on my head.  

It wasn't proven but we think its possible i have restless leg syndrome (Which is dumb because i apparently kick in my sleep so much the little electroids the docs placed on my legs ripped of but oh yea where unsure) i call bull they know so don't i i just don't want to get tested again for people to tell me what i know already. 

 

It's also possible that i have insomnia mixed in with everything else so yeaaa

[StormySky]

This isn't neccessarily a disorder, but it's the reason I don't get much sleep: I have songs stuck in my head for 99% of my waking life, and these often prevent me from falling asleep. I once went 40 hours no sleep because a song called "Dreams" was stuck in my head.

      I wonder if I have insomnia. My brain has trouble shutting down, and I will often wake up at 2 am or so and not be able to go back to bed. I also sleepwalk and do crazy stuff (like putting bananas in the freezer and walking until I bump into a couch to flop on.

It also doesn't help that I'm addicted to stargazing.

[winchester.kaz2y5]

I have sleep paralysis which is terrifying but it's been getting better since I started to go to therapy. I also have trouble falling asleep but that has been getting better as well with the help of some sleeping hormones, I take melatonin before bed and I can usually fall asleep much faster