Did anybody watch Oprah on Tuesday with Dr. Oz? One of the topics was about night terrors. I just had to laugh because this was the first Oprah that while watching I was thinking, "Oh my gosh, that's me!" I mean I really could have been on the show as a guest with the description and some of the examples they gave. Sometimes I'll randomly wake up in the middle of the night hysterically screaming or gasping with fright and sometimes I'll be kicking and hitting Tom. It takes several seconds for me to calm down and to realize I'm okay. It's either triggered by me hearing Tom come to bed after I'm alseep or something else completely random. Sometimes I literally think there's a spider (or spiders) crawling on me and other times I think I see somebody standing over me and sometimes it's neither but I'm just hysterical. When we were first married it would scare Tom half to death, but now he's gotten to a point where he just calmly says, "You're alright Rachel. Go back to sleep." Tom is always sure to ask me the next day if I remember "freaking out." Sometimes I remember, sometimes I don't. I used to do it A LOT, but would definitely say that more and more time passes between each one now. It was really interesting hearing the explanation of it on Oprah though:
...people who have "night terrors" act—sometimes quite violently—on what their brain thinks is happening. People suffering from night terrors typically flail around, hallucinate and scream. Night terrors are not the same as nightmares. "There's a big difference," Dr. Oz says. "Nightmares happen when you're in the dream phase of sleep, when you're actually paralyzed so you can't move to respond to the nightmare and you actually usually recall it. … If you're in that deep hibernating sleep and you have one of these night terrors, your whole body responds. Your heart rate goes up. You start sweating. It's much more than just a bad dream."
The prevention sounds obvious and that is to have more regular sleep patterns and to just plain get more sleep. Sounds simple. Some people's are extreme though and they require professional help. It definitely has not caused me any problems (other than freaking the snot of out Tom), but I just thought it was so interesting and I didn't know it was actually classified as night terrors and not just me being psycho in my sleep. Does anybody else do this or do anything else crazy in their sleep? Or am I the only crazy one?
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Night Terrors
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15 comments:
I am certainly not a terror person, but I am a nightmare person. I still have to run up stairs at night or any basement stairs. I also jump into bed if Ryan isn't home. Not like anything is under there, but it is habit now.
Our little Scotty has night terrors also! Talk about scary!!!
My nephew has them also and I used to think there was no such thing...that it was just a bad dream but, no way, this is way worse than a nightmare!!
His are usually triggered when we travel which messes with sleep anyway but he's neither awake nor asleep and just screams and screams. I guess you just have to ride it out and my friend says- oh just wait until he can talk and it will get even more scary!!
Poor Tom...and poor YOU!!!
I get them every once in a while. You aren't the only crazy one! I've had the spider one a lot. I start tearing the bed apart looking for it because I can't go back to sleep or calm down until I'm sure there is nothing there. I've had it happen with cockroaches and rats too. Oh and Sometimes I wake up crying. I don't usually kick or scream though.
I can't chime in with any personal experience, but one of my best friends sure has shared some fun stories with me about her own battle with night terrors. For Amy, the terrors never started until she got married and was adjusting to having her husband in the room while she slept. Imagine the toll that takes on a newlywed couple! Her funniest story of all is about the family reunion they attended two months after their wedding: they spent a week sharing a one-room cabin with her husband's parents and siblings, and the terrors were stronger and louder than ever. Can you imagine!?!
I'm glad to know some of you do it too or at least know somebody who does it. The feeling is really scary when you first start freaking out, but I do almost feel worse for the person you've startled.
Ashley, I make Tom search and make sure there is no spider before I go back to bed. Isn't it crazy how real it seems?
Becky, that is exactly me! I didn't start having night terrors until I got married either. (That poor girl with her in-laws.) My first one was our first week in our married apartment and it really freaked Tom out. And I don't remember it happening at all. It's weird though that it never happened with roommates since they were in the same room with me too. I've always been kind of a crazy sleeper though. My roommate Sarah and I use to have conversations in our sleep. She woke up to it a couple times.
I'm pretty sure one of my old roommates (not you) had night terrors. Funny, I've never heard the term before. Doesn't sound fun! I just have good ol' nightmares, like my teeth falling out or something. That's terrifying enough!
My friend Ashley in my ward just posted something like this on her blog, except it wasn't about her, it was about her husband. She said she woke up one night to him slapping her in the face.
I've done funny stuff right after I've had my babies. I would wake up almost every night searching the bed and the floor for the baby, and I'd be terrified that I'd rolled over the baby and crushed him/her. Then Kevin would wake up and tell me the baby was in his/her bed. It drove him crazy.
The Military has me working 11pm to 7am which with a little baby has totally messed me up. I have actually hurt myself (i.e. punched the crude out of my dresser, to the point where I bled) I have had bad night terrors since I have been on this shift. I feel your pain!! I was sad you missed our renewal...but understood
My friends little boy has them! She says that they are scary to witnessand that it sometimes takes a long time to calm him down. Poor guy!
I talk in my sleep all the time! John says he tries to lead the conversation different ways to see what I'll say and to have a laugh.
Sometimes I eat in my sleep. One time in college I was house- sitting with a friend and I woke up in the middle of the night with Teddy Grahms all over me. Apparently, I got up in the middle of the night and raided their pantry.
I remember you and Sarah's sleep conversations. Ha ha, funny. I have the spider dream quite often too - although I think it's a nightmare rather than a terror. What's the line though? I mean, I always wake up scared to death and flail a bit as I wake up, then I have to stay awake for several minutes so I won't go back to the same dream. But I don't flail about or scream while still "asleep". I hate that spider dream though. Weird that so many of us are so scared of spiders. I bet there are more spider nightmares per capita than there are terrorist/murderer or other types of nightmares.
That's so funny Emily.....I did the exact same thing. I was always searching for the baby.
i often "wake up" to someone in our bedroom. It's so real, but of course, I'm still sleeping. Jesse thinks it may be my reaction to his sleepwalking, but I don't know about that. Mine must be just nightmares, because I am literally paralized in my dreams. I have tried to talk to the person or ask them who they are, and I have some weird inhibited speach come out. I can never actually do anything no matter how much I want to. I'm glad that they have not crossed over into terrors, but if Graham doesn't start sleeping soon, there is a possibility that they could. I feel for you. Oh, and I of course have also had the spider dreams.
That is really freaky! I'm sorry that you get that scared. We've only had nightmares. Evan has had quite a few lately and he kept waking Jake up. We were losing patience for it, reminding him that monsters aren't real, but then the next night I had a dream about Gollum coming after me. Obviously I know Gollum isn't real, but it was terrifying and that was not anything close to what you go through.
When Noah was about 5 years old, he would get them almost every single night. We could basically set our clocks to it....each night about 10, he would wake up yelling, flailing, hyperventilating. It was odd because he wouldn't recognize we were there, but when he came out of it a little, it would seem like he was away and he would respond to us. Eventually he'd calm down and get back to sleep. Most of the time he wouldn't remember anything the next day.
I asked his kindergarten teacher about them. Her son had them, so she researched it a lot. She told me that the most common age is between 5-6 and they usually calm down. They don't necessarily go away though. She also told us that it affects those more who are brighter (guess you're just plain smart).
Just about the time he turned 6, they DRASTICALLY reduced. Now, he will randomly have a night terror and we have learned to just let him work through it himself (trying to wake him up never works and I've heard you shouldn't do it), but he still sleepwalks a ton.
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