Thread: electric shock

Originally Posted by narf

as i started to wake up i could feel my body shaking like i was actually being electrocuted and by the time i was fully awake the 'buzzing' had stopped.
it was really full on and a bit upsetting.

Nasty. Sounds like it'd be difficult to convert a nightmare like that to anything else; with fearful nightmares its said you can try accepting/embracing your antagonist, or gain a degree of lucidity so you know they can't really hurt you, but I'm not sure what you could do about a physical feeling that suddenly comes over you and makes you feel bad enough to want to wake up.

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You asked if anyone else had a similar experience. I have had something that might have been the same. It could have been a seizure of some sort. Its also possible to wake up suddenly because you stopped breathing for a while.

I expect you'd have given a bit more detail if anything happened that was serious enough to worry about. I bet you'd have said if you'd bit your tongue! You can't make much of something that's only happened to you once. But because of my own experiences I feel I have to ask.

I know you said the buzzing stopped once you had woke from the dream, but are you sure that's right and it wasn't just that you didn't feel "normal" until the buzzing stopped and you assumed you were still waking up? Do you think your body was actually shaking (or sleep in the same room as someone else who might have been woken up by it?), and was there anything else such as feeling out of breath, a pounding in your head, some loss of vision, a gradually fading tingling feeling afterwards, or muscles that feel strained for some time?

I've had a couple of seizures when awake. Depending on what causes them there can be warning signs, so keep an eye out just in case. The classic epileptic precursor is seeing "auras" round objects and people, or maybe strange sounds or smells; theres also "deja vu", or confusion and temporary memory loss. Or you might just feel dreamy and strange, even though you can carry on with whatever your doing whatever. In my case the actual cause seems to be cardiovascular, which means I lose vision, muscle control and consciousness relatively gradually, with the chance to notice it when it starts and have a few seconds to prepare.

If you feel slightly odd, try and make sure you can make yourself safe. E.g. you might want to get out of the swimming pool :-). Be aware of your position so if you do start to lose vision or muscle control, you would be able to quickly lie down, in a space where you can safely thrash around a bit without braining yourself or falling.

Don't follow the example of my first time, when I woke up, got out of bed and started to faint. I tried to stay standing by holding on to a door nob as my peripheral vision grayed out, right up to the point where I completely lost my vision, lost feeling in my hand, lost consciousness and toppled over backwards onto the floor. At least try to bend at the knees :-).

thanks for responding,
i found your info quite interesting.
i steared away from the word convulsion because it was more like shaking.you know when you see someone(like in a movie) getting an electric shock and they kind of shudder and shake it was more like that.its kind of hard to explain.i felt it the most in that time when youve decided to wake up and your in that half awake half asleep state.by the time my eyes were fully open the shaking had stopped and the only thing i noticed was my heart racing a little bit. but that too settled down pretty quickly.all the other things you mentioned didnt occur but thank you as i will keep these things in mind and now have an idea what to look out for if something like this happens again.
another thing is i cant remember what the dream was about now, although i could at the time,but it wasnt a bad dream.plugging in the aerial was just a small insignificant part of the dream until i got the shock.
thanks again
narf

Wear a rubber suit to bed...

I used to have dream about being electrocuted when I was younger, about 7-10. I was up on the side of a mountain with my leg strapped to this wire and the wire led from this like dynomite detonator things, like ones where you push down and then the bomb explodes, well this person pushed it down and I got a really funny feeling in my leg not like being electrocuted it was more like pins and needles it actually felt nice at times not painful

I just had a dream 2 nights ago. No prelude to the sensation of electric shock, just a sudden incredibly intense feeling like I had grabbed a bare electric wire with my right hand. I tried to let go of the wire but coulnd't and the sensation became completely overpowering. Everything was black except for a white thing that looked sort of like a lightning bolt and in the middle of the lightning bolt were some tiny little things that were all that I could see of the physical world and that this connection to life was being shut off. I thought to myself I'm going to die and won't see my family or this world again and realized that this was what it would feel like to actually die and know that there is no turning back or escape this time.

I could feel the connection to my body severing and I felt like I was going to go into the tunnel that they always talk about in near death experiences; I remember resigning myself to the fact that I was dying and thinking that it was easier than I had anticipated it would be. Even though I felt myself moving away from the connection point the violent shocking sensation stilll continued and then I woke up very suddenly.

I couldn't believe how suddenly it had started or how real and powerful the feeling of being electrocuted had been and I thought maybe this is how I will actually die, like a precognitive experience. If it had been a symbolic dream about accepting the inevitability of death I could have dealt with that but I wondered why the physical sensation in the dream had felt so real to me.

There didn't seem to be any sensations in my waking body that could have triggered such a violent perception in the dream so I am wondering WHY I had that particular experience and how it could have felt as real as it did.

It wasn't really the dying part of the dream that was scary, but more the ability of my brain to create such a realistic and powerful sensation in my body and then have it turn off instantly as it did when I woke up.

I experienced something similar, but it was while waking up. The harder I tried to fight it the more my body seemed to "convulse". It never manifested in the dream itself. At first I was worried it was some sort of seizure, but there were no physical signs (that I could tell, but I don't know anything about seizures) and I attributed it to simply coming out of sleep paralysis, because that phenomenon alone can make things infinitely more terrifying and it felt similar to the falling and weight sensations that I have felt before. I have not experienced anything like that since.

Originally Posted by Shift

I experienced something similar, but it was while waking up. The harder I tried to fight it the more my body seemed to "convulse". It never manifested in the dream itself. At first I was worried it was some sort of seizure, but there were no physical signs (that I could tell, but I don't know anything about seizures) and I attributed it to simply coming out of sleep paralysis, because that phenomenon alone can make things infinitely more terrifying and it felt similar to the falling and weight sensations that I have felt before. I have not experienced anything like that since.

I used to have what I called "twitches" when I was lying in bed and trying to go to sleep. My whole body would convulse just one or two times but it would happen two or 3 times a minute. Eventually I found out that the twitching comes from changes in the calcium metabolism in the body as it is "changing gears" in order to fall asleep.

It only happens very rarely now but at one time it was very annoying, especially if I was not sleeping alone and on one occasion I had to talk the person I was with out of calling 911 for me.

Originally Posted by preview

I used to have what I called "twitches" when I was lying in bed and trying to go to sleep. My whole body would convulse just one or two times but it would happen two or 3 times a minute. Eventually I found out that the twitching comes from changes in the calcium metabolism in the body as it is "changing gears" in order to fall asleep.

It only happens very rarely now but at one time it was very annoying, especially if I was not sleeping alone and on one occasion I had to talk the person I was with out of calling 911 for me.

Oh tell me about it. The first time I verbalized that falling sleep-paralysis sensation and the actual paralysis we were practically on the way to the emergency room and speculating about nervous system injuries and disorders before I finished my sentence!

I actually had a similar problem many times, and I came here for an answer.
I've been reading other people's posts on this, and I honeslty dont know what to do when I'm at the point in my "dream" where it feels like I'm not able to control myself, and i fight to wake up against this strong vibration kind of feeling that I get through mey whole body. The scary thing is, is that I'm not only shaking when I'm sleeping, but when I wake up, I can feel the ending of myself still shaking, which means that it's actually me doing it-not a mental imagination. I know for a fact that it absolutely cannot be a medical/health problem or a seizure because I can even be fully concious and aware when it is happening. When I try to fall back asleep, the shaking would start again until I open my eyes and pull myself out of it again.
what should I do? Should I stop pulling myself out of it before (what I dont know will happen) or should I not take any chances? please answer me with your personal opinion

Originally Posted by Adjoycent

what should I do? Should I stop pulling myself out of it before (what I dont know will happen) or should I not take any chances? please answer me with your personal opinion

Like I said before, it sounds like textbook sleep paralysis while waking up and while going to sleep. You can actually use that state to enter a lucid dream! So if it happens again, relax and try to go with it and enter a LD
If it is sleep paralysis, riding it out or fighting it won't hurt you. Either way it will eventually pass. It happens every single time you go to sleep, it's only that in these cases you are conscious and aware that it is happening.

thanks so much
I think ill go with it for once and see where it takes me
a bit scared I guess, or maybe more nervous?
I'll try it anyways