5 ms·

Exploding Head Syndrome: What We Know About This Mysterious Disorder

56 points by amichail 2y ago

brudgers 2y ago
Scanners immediately came to mind. That's not what the article is about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners
zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
This happens to me sometimes. I think it would happen randomly when I was a kid, but as I've gotten older it seems to only happen when I'm really stressed out and not getting much sleep.
JohnMakin 2y ago
I have had something like this and a bunch of other parasomnias for a while, one of which I haven't really come across in any literature and doctors seem to have no idea what I'm talking about, so I'll try to explain. I can't do it 100% of the time, but I can enter a dream/unconscious state whilst being fully awake. Here's how it goes: - first stage you start seeing light swirling shapes that can take various colors, believe this is called hypnogogic hallucinations, but at this point you won't make any sense or shape of them - second stage these swirling shapes start to take form into the shapes of images, sometimes flashing between different ones - third stage directly after this is the "exploding head" part that doesn't happen 100% of the time but right in between that hypnogogic boundary I get an incredibly loud buzzing sound in my head, accompanied by a deep sense of terror - almost like you get from sleep paralysis. - fourth stage, once you get past that, you enter a light "dream" state where you start to feel like you can move your arms and legs and walk around, even if you don't see anything - it's a very weird sensation because you can still "feel" your physical body lying in the bed at this time. I believe this is when sleep paralysis is happening. - fifth stage I am in a dream state and fully lucid. I can maintain that state for a while before either losing the dream and waking up or falling deeper into unconsciousness. What's odd is in this state I am almost always in a dream-representation of my house. 99.999% of the time. Initially my doctors thought this was when I was sleep walking, but cameras ruled this out. I have a bunch of other parasomnias like sleep walking/talking and bed wetting stuff when I was younger. It's all related somehow, but no one really knows what's going on that I've talked to so far. It's kind of cool but can occasionally lead to crappy stuff like insomnia or poor quality sleep, or when I injure myself sleep walking. The only thing that's ever come up in a sleep study (which I struggle to take because in those settings I can't fall asleep normally) is that I enter REM sleep very quickly, almost like a narcoleptic, but that was never the formal diagnosis. Another thing that's happened in more recent years, ever since I experienced DMT, that I will occasionally have dreams where my sense of time literally feels like decades have passed. It'll always be super mundane stuff too, and when I wake up it's a really disturbing feeling.
- pureheartlover 2y ago
  That mirrors almost exactly the process of astral travelling. You might be interested in the book "How to Know Higher Worlds" by Rudolf Steiner.
- kfrzcode 2y ago
  This is essentially what the advanced tantric sadhana of dream yoga is all about... Lucid dreaming is a super power. Cultivate a practice of recognizing when you are in a dream state (during sleep) and building the ability to visualize intently with the minds eye is essentially what all the esoteric traditions are trying to teach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_yoga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_yoga
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    I don't really believe there is anything mystical about it, but yea, that stuff is interesting - and I am well practiced at becoming lucid during a dream state, due to chronic severe nightmares I've had since a very young age. But, what I am describing here looks and feels way different to me. However, this is funny: > According to Kragh, "The yogi is here instructed to think of whatever dream arises as being merely a dream and to relate to it without any fear. If he dreams of water, he should plunge into it or walk across it. He should jump into an abyss or sit down to be bitten by dream-dogs or beaten by dream enemies. He should fly in air, visit the god realms, or go sight-seeing in India." > Blessing as illusory and getting rid of fear – Here, the yogi checks their mind during the dream to see if there is even the slightest fear, and if so, they should let go of it by recognizing that they are only in a dream. Once they've mastered the feeling of complete unobstructedness, they have "blessed their dreams as illusory" (sgyu ma byin gyis brlabs pa). I basically do this but didn't know it was a thing. When I experience that sleep-paralysis like terror in a dream state, I try to conjure up the most horrible thing I can imagine until it goes away, stuff like that. Nothing ever comes.
    - david-gpu 2y ago
      If you want to learn more about Dream Yoga, Alan Wallace's Dreaming Yourself Awake is a great resource that includes guidance and exercises you can practice. When you experience fear in a dream, remind yourself that what you experience is not what you are, in the same way that the movie is not the same as the screen on which it is projected. The monsters in our dreams are a reification of our fear, and the best way to address them is by allowing conpassion to arise and kindly comfort your fear as you would do with a child who is scared. Nothing in your dreamscape can harm you. Anyway, I hope this helps. Alan Wallace recommends letting the monster hurt you in your dream, but personally I think it is not the optimum approach.
oorza 2y ago
This happens to me. Started in my twenties and I was convinced I had a brain tumor. I'll be almost entirely asleep, then I get jerked by a weird electric buzz sound, like the buzz of a transformer, and it feels like my body from the shoulders up is zapped with electricity, then I get terribly anxious. And then I don't get to sleep that night more often than not because of the anxiety.
- charliebwrites 2y ago
  I get this too occasionally. I find it correlates with being extra stressed or exhausted. If I workout too hard, or stay up to long or too much is happening at work and I'm tanked, I get the ZZZAAPPPP noise in my head when falling asleep. A lot of folks say its related to withdrawing from Antidepressants. But I'm not on anything and havent been, so who knows what actually causes it
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    Exploding head is very much a sleeping thing. Brain zaps can be while fully awake.
joe5150 2y ago
If you have a chance to see Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, you definitely should. Tilda Swinton plays a woman with this condition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoria_(2021_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoria_(2021_film)
wyldfire 2y ago
"Drive" [1] was a really fun episode of "The X-Files" featuring exploding head(s). And - interesting anecdote about it: > The episode was written by Vince Gilligan, directed by Rob Bowman, and featured a guest appearance by Bryan Cranston. Gilligan cast Cranston to play the antagonist because he felt he could successfully humanize the role. Cranston's success in "Drive" later led to his casting as Walter White in Gilligan's AMC series Breaking Bad. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_(The_X-Files) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_(The_X-Files)
- falcor84 2y ago
  An interesting coincidence that Cranston also had a significant supporting role in the 2011 film Drive [0] (after he was already in breaking bad). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_%282011_film%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_%282011_film%29
deisteve 2y ago
similar but for me and this only happens after I've taken large amount of edibles before falling asleep instead of a large bomb I hear a loud scream in my head usually when i have to be awakened due to urge to urinate i now avoid taking large amount of edibles before I fall asleep waking up during the night and feeling paranoid
- willy_k 2y ago
  Tangential but what were ‘large amounts’? I guess there’s always some interpersonal variance in metabolism etc., but are you talking high tens or in the hundreds? Did this ever occur after smoking/vaping cannabis? If so, I wonder if the more drawn out pharmacokinetics (incl. those of the active metabolites, primarily the more potent and potentially more sedating 11-HO-THC) of edibles played a factor.
  - deisteve 2y ago
    yes 20mg to 1000mg sometimes (high tolerance and i dont ant to repeat that)
Janicc 2y ago
It used to happen like every night in my teens. Now it's only like once a month. No real idea why. Maybe less stress
wduquette 2y ago
I'm delighted that "Exploding Head Syndrome" isn't what I was afraid it was.
- airstrike 2y ago
  for a minute I was worried "The Boys" might have been _too good_ about the current challenges to humanity's future...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
AcerbicZero 2y ago
I had 2-3 sleep paralysis events over a short period of time; seemed mostly self inflicted due to poor sleep hygiene and lots of travel, but the first time was very disconcerting. I was "90%" awake, but unable to get my body to do anything for what felt like a long time. I didn't really feel a "presence" like other describe, but maybe I was just distracted. The next time it happened (a few days later), I had a plan. I knew I had limited control over my lips and drooling/spitting, so I just did what I could with that until I couldn't breath; Didn't take long to wake up for real after that :)
- Swizec 2y ago
  I used to get sleep paralysis a lot. Almost daily. Easiest to trigger when you’re falling asleep but your mind is racing. At one point you’ll notice that your body has fallen asleep but your mind has not yet. At this point you have two options: 1. Just wait. You’ll fall asleep soon and then all good 2. Focus very very hard on moving something. Eventually your body gives way and unlocks. Now you can move These days I use option 1 when going to bed. Got so used to it that I don’t notice the paralysis part anymore. Option 2 is good when you need to get up in the morning or when you were startled awake (or just need to pee) at night and your body hasn’t caught up yet. Ok I guess I still get sleep paralysis a lot but I got used to how it feels heh
  - altruios 2y ago
    3. Focus very hard on staying conscious and you get to remember the process of falling asleep (do not recommend).
    - david-gpu 2y ago
      Why do you not recommend? Pretty much every night I attempt to fall asleep consciously and nothing bad has happened, as far as I can tell. Witnessing the transition from being awake, to light and deep sleep, and finally the emergence of dreams -- it's a fun experience, and it automatically rewards you with a lucid dream.
daedrdev 2y ago
I get the related hypnic jerks they mentioned, just suddenly my whole body jerks a little every so often, I think it goes away when I am not getting enough sleep funnily enough
guerrilla 2y ago
Hypnagogic hallucinations, sleep pralysis, sleep walking and night terrors I've had but the most fucked up one I've had is compulsive night eating. The sleep walking was also night eating but a bit diffeent: unconcious rather than compulsive. I wonder if there really is a big difference. If you've never had a true compulsion, I have to tell you it's a lot stranger than you think. I could stand there and tell myself to stop repeatedly and reason with myself, even put obstacles and reminders in my way ahead of time but it was like I was just a passanger in my own body. It took me two years of fighting it full time. Literally harder to stop than actual drug addiction. I think it came from a sleep medication that I had discontinued by then but the damage somehow stayed with me. What worked was eating a lot much later before bed and then still doing battle with all my other tricks like obstacles, etc. Recurring nightmare hallucinations suck too though. I used to wake up absolutely certain there were snakes in my bed, get up, turn on the light and look through my bed. It took me minutes to fully wake up and realize it was a dream. I think I was able to fix that by imagining the dream but with a pleaeant ending before I went to sleep. I'm not sure if that works but it did stop after that. I didn't even know recurring nightmares were a thing. I thought that was just from movies.
- bafe 2y ago
  I've had both hypnagogic hallucinations and night terrors a lot when I was younger, up until my early 30s. They almost disappeared now, which I can't really explain. For me the worst were the hallucinations, the most recurring one was seeing a dark figure abseiling from the ceiling or from the window, which after waking reveals to be a ceiling lamp or a curtain. It's terrifying stuff while you experience it and I even broken stuff in a desperate reaction of throwing objects to defend against the "intruder"
- pram 2y ago
  Oh yeah the waking up thinking there’s “stuff in my bed” happens to me at least once a week.
stillbourne 2y ago
I have this. When it first started I thought there were like secret gang wars going on in my apartment complex. I would wake up hearing a BANG. I called 911 a couple of time even thinking it was gunshots, but they police said no one else heard anything. I started asking my neighbors if they had heard it too. That's when I started to realize that I was hearing things. I talked to my doctor and that's when I learned about exploding head syndrome.
- sys32768 2y ago
  Yes, I had this during an extremely stressful life crisis. Basically woke up believing a bomb went off in my neighborhood. Absolutely real and startling and disorienting.
- drcongo 2y ago
  I've noticed my brain tries to instantly construct a story to account for the noise, like someone is kicking in the front door, gunshots outside etc. I think the order of thoughts / senses while in that half-asleep state is fluid enough that my brain manages to make it all feel like it happened in the order it would if real. I've got up to answer the door more times than I care to remember.
kylehotchkiss 2y ago
Is this the same thing as night frights that some people are prone to?
- russdill 2y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "night frights". Are you talking about "night terrors"? As someone who experienced EHS a lot when I was younger and who's seen someone with night terrors, they are very, very different things.
  - kylehotchkiss 2y ago
    I used the wrong term and you used the right one - yes, I mean night terrors. And got it - different things. Thank you.
lkrubner 2y ago
On a slightly different topic, we now know that a surprisingly large number of people suffer daytime "hallucinations without delusion" meaning they see things but they know the things are not real. And I've often wondered if that is some kind of dysfunction of the sleep cycle. If we think of dreams as a kind of hallucination, then is daytime "hallucination without delusion" a kind of dreaming while awake? I'd like to see more research on that question.
gmurphy 2y ago
I used to get this a lot - I'd be dozing peacefully, then would hear a loud bang with a hypnic jerk and auditory startle response (a white flash). I just put the whole thing down to nervous system noise, like closed-eye hallucination and tinnitus, though it went away when I got a bit older and stopped drinking caffeine after 3PM.
kl4m 2y ago
I have this. About once a month, in the early morning hours, I hear a hard to describe, "internal" sound, as if a hard object hit my cranium. Extremely loud, but painless. 20 years ago it was distressing but now it barely wakes me up. Stress does seem to increase occurrences for me.
ddmf 2y ago
I've experienced this only once or twice in my life, thankfully. Probably under huge stress at the time, normally have pretty constant tinnitus.

56 points by amichail 2y ago

Scanners immediately came to mind. That's not what the article is about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners

zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago

This happens to me sometimes. I think it would happen randomly when I was a kid, but as I've gotten older it seems to only happen when I'm really stressed out and not getting much sleep.

JohnMakin 2y ago

I have had something like this and a bunch of other parasomnias for a while, one of which I haven't really come across in any literature and doctors seem to have no idea what I'm talking about, so I'll try to explain. I can't do it 100% of the time, but I can enter a dream/unconscious state whilst being fully awake. Here's how it goes: - first stage you start seeing light swirling shapes that can take various colors, believe this is called hypnogogic hallucinations, but at this point you won't make any sense or shape of them - second stage these swirling shapes start to take form into the shapes of images, sometimes flashing between different ones - third stage directly after this is the "exploding head" part that doesn't happen 100% of the time but right in between that hypnogogic boundary I get an incredibly loud buzzing sound in my head, accompanied by a deep sense of terror - almost like you get from sleep paralysis. - fourth stage, once you get past that, you enter a light "dream" state where you start to feel like you can move your arms and legs and walk around, even if you don't see anything - it's a very weird sensation because you can still "feel" your physical body lying in the bed at this time. I believe this is when sleep paralysis is happening. - fifth stage I am in a dream state and fully lucid. I can maintain that state for a while before either losing the dream and waking up or falling deeper into unconsciousness. What's odd is in this state I am almost always in a dream-representation of my house. 99.999% of the time. Initially my doctors thought this was when I was sleep walking, but cameras ruled this out. I have a bunch of other parasomnias like sleep walking/talking and bed wetting stuff when I was younger. It's all related somehow, but no one really knows what's going on that I've talked to so far. It's kind of cool but can occasionally lead to crappy stuff like insomnia or poor quality sleep, or when I injure myself sleep walking. The only thing that's ever come up in a sleep study (which I struggle to take because in those settings I can't fall asleep normally) is that I enter REM sleep very quickly, almost like a narcoleptic, but that was never the formal diagnosis. Another thing that's happened in more recent years, ever since I experienced DMT, that I will occasionally have dreams where my sense of time literally feels like decades have passed. It'll always be super mundane stuff too, and when I wake up it's a really disturbing feeling.

pureheartlover 2y ago
That mirrors almost exactly the process of astral travelling. You might be interested in the book "How to Know Higher Worlds" by Rudolf Steiner.
kfrzcode 2y ago
This is essentially what the advanced tantric sadhana of dream yoga is all about... Lucid dreaming is a super power. Cultivate a practice of recognizing when you are in a dream state (during sleep) and building the ability to visualize intently with the minds eye is essentially what all the esoteric traditions are trying to teach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_yoga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_yoga
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  I don't really believe there is anything mystical about it, but yea, that stuff is interesting - and I am well practiced at becoming lucid during a dream state, due to chronic severe nightmares I've had since a very young age. But, what I am describing here looks and feels way different to me. However, this is funny: > According to Kragh, "The yogi is here instructed to think of whatever dream arises as being merely a dream and to relate to it without any fear. If he dreams of water, he should plunge into it or walk across it. He should jump into an abyss or sit down to be bitten by dream-dogs or beaten by dream enemies. He should fly in air, visit the god realms, or go sight-seeing in India." > Blessing as illusory and getting rid of fear – Here, the yogi checks their mind during the dream to see if there is even the slightest fear, and if so, they should let go of it by recognizing that they are only in a dream. Once they've mastered the feeling of complete unobstructedness, they have "blessed their dreams as illusory" (sgyu ma byin gyis brlabs pa). I basically do this but didn't know it was a thing. When I experience that sleep-paralysis like terror in a dream state, I try to conjure up the most horrible thing I can imagine until it goes away, stuff like that. Nothing ever comes.
  - david-gpu 2y ago
    If you want to learn more about Dream Yoga, Alan Wallace's Dreaming Yourself Awake is a great resource that includes guidance and exercises you can practice. When you experience fear in a dream, remind yourself that what you experience is not what you are, in the same way that the movie is not the same as the screen on which it is projected. The monsters in our dreams are a reification of our fear, and the best way to address them is by allowing conpassion to arise and kindly comfort your fear as you would do with a child who is scared. Nothing in your dreamscape can harm you. Anyway, I hope this helps. Alan Wallace recommends letting the monster hurt you in your dream, but personally I think it is not the optimum approach.

oorza 2y ago

This happens to me. Started in my twenties and I was convinced I had a brain tumor. I'll be almost entirely asleep, then I get jerked by a weird electric buzz sound, like the buzz of a transformer, and it feels like my body from the shoulders up is zapped with electricity, then I get terribly anxious. And then I don't get to sleep that night more often than not because of the anxiety.

charliebwrites 2y ago
I get this too occasionally. I find it correlates with being extra stressed or exhausted. If I workout too hard, or stay up to long or too much is happening at work and I'm tanked, I get the ZZZAAPPPP noise in my head when falling asleep. A lot of folks say its related to withdrawing from Antidepressants. But I'm not on anything and havent been, so who knows what actually causes it
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  Exploding head is very much a sleeping thing. Brain zaps can be while fully awake.

joe5150 2y ago

If you have a chance to see Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, you definitely should. Tilda Swinton plays a woman with this condition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoria_(2021_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoria_(2021_film)

wyldfire 2y ago

"Drive" [1] was a really fun episode of "The X-Files" featuring exploding head(s). And - interesting anecdote about it: > The episode was written by Vince Gilligan, directed by Rob Bowman, and featured a guest appearance by Bryan Cranston. Gilligan cast Cranston to play the antagonist because he felt he could successfully humanize the role. Cranston's success in "Drive" later led to his casting as Walter White in Gilligan's AMC series Breaking Bad. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_(The_X-Files) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_(The_X-Files)

falcor84 2y ago
An interesting coincidence that Cranston also had a significant supporting role in the 2011 film Drive [0] (after he was already in breaking bad). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_%282011_film%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_%282011_film%29

deisteve 2y ago

similar but for me and this only happens after I've taken large amount of edibles before falling asleep instead of a large bomb I hear a loud scream in my head usually when i have to be awakened due to urge to urinate i now avoid taking large amount of edibles before I fall asleep waking up during the night and feeling paranoid

willy_k 2y ago
Tangential but what were ‘large amounts’? I guess there’s always some interpersonal variance in metabolism etc., but are you talking high tens or in the hundreds? Did this ever occur after smoking/vaping cannabis? If so, I wonder if the more drawn out pharmacokinetics (incl. those of the active metabolites, primarily the more potent and potentially more sedating 11-HO-THC) of edibles played a factor.
- deisteve 2y ago
  yes 20mg to 1000mg sometimes (high tolerance and i dont ant to repeat that)

Janicc 2y ago

It used to happen like every night in my teens. Now it's only like once a month. No real idea why. Maybe less stress

wduquette 2y ago

I'm delighted that "Exploding Head Syndrome" isn't what I was afraid it was.

airstrike 2y ago
for a minute I was worried "The Boys" might have been _too good_ about the current challenges to humanity's future...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

AcerbicZero 2y ago

I had 2-3 sleep paralysis events over a short period of time; seemed mostly self inflicted due to poor sleep hygiene and lots of travel, but the first time was very disconcerting. I was "90%" awake, but unable to get my body to do anything for what felt like a long time. I didn't really feel a "presence" like other describe, but maybe I was just distracted. The next time it happened (a few days later), I had a plan. I knew I had limited control over my lips and drooling/spitting, so I just did what I could with that until I couldn't breath; Didn't take long to wake up for real after that :)

Swizec 2y ago
I used to get sleep paralysis a lot. Almost daily. Easiest to trigger when you’re falling asleep but your mind is racing. At one point you’ll notice that your body has fallen asleep but your mind has not yet. At this point you have two options: 1. Just wait. You’ll fall asleep soon and then all good 2. Focus very very hard on moving something. Eventually your body gives way and unlocks. Now you can move These days I use option 1 when going to bed. Got so used to it that I don’t notice the paralysis part anymore. Option 2 is good when you need to get up in the morning or when you were startled awake (or just need to pee) at night and your body hasn’t caught up yet. Ok I guess I still get sleep paralysis a lot but I got used to how it feels heh
- altruios 2y ago
  3. Focus very hard on staying conscious and you get to remember the process of falling asleep (do not recommend).
  - david-gpu 2y ago
    Why do you not recommend? Pretty much every night I attempt to fall asleep consciously and nothing bad has happened, as far as I can tell. Witnessing the transition from being awake, to light and deep sleep, and finally the emergence of dreams -- it's a fun experience, and it automatically rewards you with a lucid dream.

daedrdev 2y ago

I get the related hypnic jerks they mentioned, just suddenly my whole body jerks a little every so often, I think it goes away when I am not getting enough sleep funnily enough

guerrilla 2y ago

Hypnagogic hallucinations, sleep pralysis, sleep walking and night terrors I've had but the most fucked up one I've had is compulsive night eating. The sleep walking was also night eating but a bit diffeent: unconcious rather than compulsive. I wonder if there really is a big difference. If you've never had a true compulsion, I have to tell you it's a lot stranger than you think. I could stand there and tell myself to stop repeatedly and reason with myself, even put obstacles and reminders in my way ahead of time but it was like I was just a passanger in my own body. It took me two years of fighting it full time. Literally harder to stop than actual drug addiction. I think it came from a sleep medication that I had discontinued by then but the damage somehow stayed with me. What worked was eating a lot much later before bed and then still doing battle with all my other tricks like obstacles, etc. Recurring nightmare hallucinations suck too though. I used to wake up absolutely certain there were snakes in my bed, get up, turn on the light and look through my bed. It took me minutes to fully wake up and realize it was a dream. I think I was able to fix that by imagining the dream but with a pleaeant ending before I went to sleep. I'm not sure if that works but it did stop after that. I didn't even know recurring nightmares were a thing. I thought that was just from movies.

bafe 2y ago
I've had both hypnagogic hallucinations and night terrors a lot when I was younger, up until my early 30s. They almost disappeared now, which I can't really explain. For me the worst were the hallucinations, the most recurring one was seeing a dark figure abseiling from the ceiling or from the window, which after waking reveals to be a ceiling lamp or a curtain. It's terrifying stuff while you experience it and I even broken stuff in a desperate reaction of throwing objects to defend against the "intruder"
pram 2y ago
Oh yeah the waking up thinking there’s “stuff in my bed” happens to me at least once a week.

stillbourne 2y ago

I have this. When it first started I thought there were like secret gang wars going on in my apartment complex. I would wake up hearing a BANG. I called 911 a couple of time even thinking it was gunshots, but they police said no one else heard anything. I started asking my neighbors if they had heard it too. That's when I started to realize that I was hearing things. I talked to my doctor and that's when I learned about exploding head syndrome.

sys32768 2y ago
Yes, I had this during an extremely stressful life crisis. Basically woke up believing a bomb went off in my neighborhood. Absolutely real and startling and disorienting.
drcongo 2y ago
I've noticed my brain tries to instantly construct a story to account for the noise, like someone is kicking in the front door, gunshots outside etc. I think the order of thoughts / senses while in that half-asleep state is fluid enough that my brain manages to make it all feel like it happened in the order it would if real. I've got up to answer the door more times than I care to remember.

kylehotchkiss 2y ago

Is this the same thing as night frights that some people are prone to?

russdill 2y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "night frights". Are you talking about "night terrors"? As someone who experienced EHS a lot when I was younger and who's seen someone with night terrors, they are very, very different things.
- kylehotchkiss 2y ago
  I used the wrong term and you used the right one - yes, I mean night terrors. And got it - different things. Thank you.

lkrubner 2y ago

On a slightly different topic, we now know that a surprisingly large number of people suffer daytime "hallucinations without delusion" meaning they see things but they know the things are not real. And I've often wondered if that is some kind of dysfunction of the sleep cycle. If we think of dreams as a kind of hallucination, then is daytime "hallucination without delusion" a kind of dreaming while awake? I'd like to see more research on that question.

gmurphy 2y ago

I used to get this a lot - I'd be dozing peacefully, then would hear a loud bang with a hypnic jerk and auditory startle response (a white flash). I just put the whole thing down to nervous system noise, like closed-eye hallucination and tinnitus, though it went away when I got a bit older and stopped drinking caffeine after 3PM.

kl4m 2y ago

I have this. About once a month, in the early morning hours, I hear a hard to describe, "internal" sound, as if a hard object hit my cranium. Extremely loud, but painless. 20 years ago it was distressing but now it barely wakes me up. Stress does seem to increase occurrences for me.

ddmf 2y ago

I've experienced this only once or twice in my life, thankfully. Probably under huge stress at the time, normally have pretty constant tinnitus.