This is going to be a different post. I have plenty of dreams to write about that I've had in the past but lately I've been getting night terrors, which are much harder to talk about because you never really remember them. When I told a friend of mine I was having night terrors she said, "Oh, I hate those. I have the craziest dreams sometimes!" But those aren't night terrors, those are nightmares. So, this post is going to be about night terrors.
This is the best explanation science has to offer for night terrors.
The worst night terrors involve sleep walking which I haven't experienced yet and hope not to; a lot of times people will cause damage to others or themselves. What I get when I'm really stressed out is much simpler but still ruins my night's sleep. I wake up in a panic and I have no idea where I am; when I say "panic" I don't mean "holy crap I forgot my paper that's due today", I mean my brain has somehow convinced me that I just narrowly avoided dying. And it feels like dying meant I was being chased by a murderer and was saved because a bear chasing us ate the murderer and then I had to run away from the bear and only survived because I fell into a hole it didn't feel like climbing into because it was already pretty full of murderer pieces.
I suppose my would-be murderer was more out of shape than me.
So essentially I wake up sweating and sometimes crying, shaking and my whole body feels like its beating with my racing pulse. On top of all that I remember absolutely nothing. It's not like when you wake up and you sort of remember things, like, "I was at my house, but it wasn't really my house, and there was magical book involved or something", there's just nothing, nothing but fear. Shortly after awakening I can't concentrate on anything and I'm still in a state of confusion; I can't put my thoughts together correctly and I can't calm myself down. Usually it takes about 20-30 minutes to relax enough to play Futurama on my phone and it takes about 3 or 4 episodes to be calm enough to fall asleep.
Yay sleep!
One night this week I had one of the aforementioned, but then the following night my brain decided it wasn't trying hard enough and stepped it up. I've done a lot of research on night terrors and everything I'm writing is pretty text book, I'm just thankful I don't have what the worst cases are like. This one night I woke up and I was in a specific position staring up at a specific spot above me; quietly floating and spinning in the air was a gyroscope, which has no significance to me. Imagine if you were just sitting on your couch and something bizarre like this happened, something you couldn't explain at all, how would you react? Terror is the best word to describe what I felt then. But I blinked and it was gone, I was awake and I was feeling what I always do after a night terror, but even more so. I had never experienced this before. I noticed it had only been 45 minutes after I had gone to sleep, which is very typical of night terrors.
No...not creepy at all....
The next night I woke up in the exact same position staring at the exact same spot but this time there was a small, shadowy figure of someone running in place on the wall, then I was awake and it was gone; it was only about 30 minutes after I had gone to sleep. The fact that I had never experienced these before and that they had happened two nights in a row made the experiences even more terrifying for me. The next night I refused to fall asleep. I took some Benadryl to knock me out but I fought it all the way. I researched night terrors some more and felt a little better knowing I wasn't alone, but I still wouldn't sleep. The dread of experiencing it again was too great, greater even than the horrors of TV at 4 in the morning. I even watched 10 minutes of Khloe and Lamar which, instead of being sickeningly embarrassing, is really just boring, which I suppose is good for them. Finally 5:30 rolled around and some part of my brain decided that since lots of people are getting up now it doesn't count as night terrors anymore so I wouldn't get night terrors. It worked.
This is a perfect example of a nightmare.
Now, I know the more I fret about having a night terror the more likely I am to have them, but they're so scary to experience it's hard not to freak out about them. The past two nights I've been sleeping with my head at the foot of the bed, much to the chagrin of my husband, with the logic that if I can't end up in that particular position from the previous night terrors then I won't have them. Silly, I know, but it's been working so far, as long as I don't give myself a panic attack over it.
I suppose the main difference between night terrors and nightmares is that if I had a nightmare about being chased by a murderer which then got eaten by a bear and I fell in a hole I would probably really enjoy thinking about how ridiculous it was when I woke up and would easily be able to calm myself down. Instead I wake up and don't remember anything except that my brain is convinced that what just happened was real. Yay side effects of stress!!!
Self-explanatory.
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