I finally decided to move this topic into the Stuff Dreams are made of forum, cause it’s not really about paranormal
(If there’s already a topic on this, mods, please move it.)
I don’t know too much about night terrors (just what I’ve read, thank goodness), so I was looking up information about them and came across this poor soul’s story: sleepnet.com/forum5/messages/1102.html
He seems truly disturbed by his night terrors and he does mention lucid dreaming but calls it “paranormal junk” and “pseudo-scientific garbarge”. What a shame, I’m sure if he opened his mind and learned more about lucidity he could try to overcome his night terrors, don’t you guys agree? Even if LDs didn’t fix him, it would be worth a try.
It bothers me that he also says that others believe in “paranormal realities”, as if he himself doesn’t believe in LDs and OBEs, etc., but then he goes on to say how he feels that whatever is causing this abyss of evil he suffers from in his sleep, is caused by some outside force and it’s not within his own mind. That seems to be a contradiction to me, wouldn’t the belief in some “other being” controlling your dreams mean that you believe in an alternate reality?
And things I’ve learned state that night terrors usually happen to children who grow out of them and when they do have them, they don’t usually remember them, but this poor guy is in his thirties and still has them and does remember them. What a bummer. Anyone here ever have them? Know anyone who has? Has trying to become lucid helped?
As you say, “night terrors usually happen to children […] and when they do have them, they don’t usually remember them”. What is described there is not night terrors but the typical sleep paralysis trouble.
I completely understand him when he calls lucid dreaming and OBE “paranormal junk” and “pseudo-scientific garbarge”. Lucid dreaming is not paranormal at all but it seems quite impossible to people to not mix this notion with all the New Age stuff about personal growth, shared dreaming, spiritual entities, divine enlightment, bizarre calendars, world ending in 2012, etc. Even Laberge gives nowadays courses about New Age stuff. All this just ridicules LD’ing and in a few years, LD’ing will just be considered again like a paranormal psychic ability.
If there were more serious information about LD’ing, this “poor soul” would have use it in order to overcome his SP episodes. As what he reads is mainly unbelievable and is mixed with junk, he can’t learn more about lucidity and it’s useless.
Not really. It’s the classical problem with hypnagogic hallucinations. Your prefrontal cortex is disconnected thus your thoughts are perceived like external voices. It’s a typical problem in schizophrenia and some other psychoses when people have the feeling that they didn’t want what they are doing or thinking, or they have the feeling that their hand or arm don’t belong to them, etc.
In those cases, believing that some “other being” is controlling something is not believing in an alternate reality, it’s just the description of their true feeling. Imagine that your arm is moving by its “own will” - because of a brain problem - and you’ll understand that it has no relation to any belief about alternate reality. It just occurs.
Night terrors can also happen as a result of intense worrying, besides being some kind of “disease”.
SP: you wake up, you’re paralyzed, you sense someone evil or something dangerous, you’re scared as long as the hallucinations last.
Night terror: you wake up, you CAN move, you sense someone evil or something dangerous, you try to fight it or to run away, often causing a mess in the house. They’re also harder to snap out of.
Tips: try to make the affected one relax, explain to them what happens. When they run, don’t try to chase them to make them calm down, it will only make things worse. Try to slowly approach them, confort them with words or other friendly attitudes. If you can, hug them and keep conforting them verbally or with cuddles.
In order to further answer MissEvil’s question, I’d also like to mention that sometimes SP isn’t even as extreme as that. In some cases, a person may feel paralyzed, however there isn’t the sense of something evil or dangerous. (also called an “Old Hag”) To someone who doesn’t know what it is, the experience of waking up unable to move can still be scary all by itself.
Reminds me of the time when I was in bed with fever one night… That little girl from the ring constantly returned in me dreams and haunted me the entire night… Weird when you have a fever never really know if you are awake or sleeping sometimes it’s psychou… Anyway in one dream I became aware that I was dreaming and had a pretty high lucidity. I was at home and I remembered that the girl had been scaring and shitting about all night with me and I got really angry. I went into the next room and found a tv (knowing she comes out of a tv in the movie) and pulled me hands in it and dragged her out of it… I was still a bit frightened of her but me anger and the knowledge that I was in control put me beyond that… Next thing I grabbed hold of her and started banging her in the floor untill nothing remained but a little lump of flesh. Sounds mean when I tell it but after that I slept like a baby and she never haunted me again.
Actually Sepultura123, SP usually means you awaken but are still paralyzed from sleep and may think an evil presence is in the room with you and/or sitting on your chest if you don’t know it’s just SP…with night terrors you are asleep and don’t know it and are terrified but acting out your nightmare kind of like a sleepwalker; some people’s SP may be like night terrors, they don’t know they’re just having SP.
i had a night terror once when i was in junior high- i was woken up by what i heard to be a large boom but i ‘felt’ it more than heard it, i get up im frightened as hell and for some reason the sound i ‘felt’ was sourced from my mothers room, im frightened as hell and feel an impending sence of extreme fright (terror i guess) and i leave the house and i see a vision of a young girl in a dress twirling a flower in her fingers i run past her through the front yard and hide in some bushes and a few minutes pass and i realize that im fully awake and have no idea what the hell just happened just then, just that it was weird and incredibly frightening. it was quite apparent that i imagined these things but it was half sleep walking half night terror i guess. and my mother heard no noise in the night.
On nightterrors.org ,in the section on sleep stages they mention about REM sleep “If sound is incorporated into dream, then harder to awake”. A little offtopic but couldn’t this be harnessed to prevent premature awakengs?
