Night Terrors?

[dboooy]

When I was very young (4 years old), I had horrible, indescribable nightmares somewhat often. I've since learned to call them night terrors, but I'm still not confident of this label. All I remember is vague, blurry images of mouths without teeth and a profusion of twisted metal piping, much like the old Windows screen saver. I awoke sweating and screaming every time. They continued through my childhood and into adolescence, but I don't believe that I've had one since I was 15 or 16. I'm 23 now. Any thoughts on this? I remain curious, as I've gained little insight since they stopped. I appreciate your comments and suggestions. Darrell

[Axis]

Hello dboooy, I have known people that have suffered Night Terrors. A truly horrible experience for anyone. The way some people get rid of their Night Terrors is to, well, wait. Also, some of the time, a situation in a person’s life can change their point of view for the rest of their lives. It can be anything, most of the time it is a feeling of security or of self-trust. I hope this helped. - Axis

[mongreloctopus]

i thought night terrors were non-REM nightmares involving physical movement.

[Rainbow Werewolf]

I found if I become obscessed with something in life, it tends to eventually come out in your dreams. Maybe these can be replaced by something your think about quite a bit.

[Patrick]

A Medical Encyclopaedia I have defines Night Terrors as a sudden awakening from sleep, accompanied with sweating, screaming, confusion and rapid heart rate. The subject will often not remember anything of the incident after waking up, but may have vague images of their nightmares. Night terrors occur before REM sleep. They are most common in boys, aged 3-5.

[italianmonkey]

I suffered it badly and sometimes still happen it's just abstract shapes, the pipe screen saver image is quite a good example - but the feeling is horrible, also because even if perfectly aware it's just images, the feeling doesn't disappear - and even waking up doesn't always solve it immediatly. I had one by chance while awake, and noticed that (at least for me) it always depends of something pretty phisical - specially a bad position or block of the mouth bones. I wondered if it was sort of an alarm bell to protect children from choking... I saw that chewing movements when i woke up in panic for this thing helped a lot. I still prey I won't have those things one of those night anyway. Mouth bones or not, it does suck!

[Entity]

I kinda had similar hallucinations as a child of some weird dots that got bigger, then smaller, then bigger again. Something like that, it's hard to describe in detail. It used to terrify me as a kid, but not enough to suddenly wake me up and scream. I actually had that hallucination just under a year ago, when I was sick with tonsillitis. It still freaked me out. This topic just made me remember an incident when I was a kid, and woke up screaming, and my mum shouted 'Go to sleep'. I think it was probably a night terror.

[dboooy]

Thanks for responding, everyone. I'd never met anyone who shared my experience. Italianmonkey and Entity, I find it peculiar that each of us had our own personal hallucinations, though it sounds like they had something in common. Now that you mention it, I remember dreaming about a giant metal ball expanding and shrinking, similar to your dots. I didn't feel like it would crush me, exactly, only that I was being crushed/destroyed. Anyhow, I feel a bit better, though I'm still curious. I suppose I'll have to wait for my next fever to investigate. Darrell

[italianmonkey]

tonsillitis, teehtless mouths... may it really be the mouth? that would be really silly

[Rainbow Werewolf]

When I used to have nightmares, they would always be proceeded when I was falling asleep my dreams of me getting sucked into a vacuum cleaner. Then later that night I would have a nightmare.