velvetears
Posts: 2933
Joined: 6/19/2006
Status: offline
|
i am opening up this thread to discuss experiences people may have had regarding this. i had my first experience in my early 20's and it was extremely frightening for me as i had no idea what happened to me. i was in college at the time and the summer preceeding that i had worked in an answering service, mainly for doctors of all specalities. i had someone call in regards to her husband being released from a psychiatric facility, she was very agitated and eager to get his psychiatrist on the phone as they were releasing her husband and she did not want that to happen.
As fate would have it this particular doctor was on vacation in New Hampshire and left explicit instructions regarding being contacted in emergencies. my gut instincts told me that even though i would probably be chewed out, i should most definately make the call. i informed the woman that her husband's doctor would be charging her $35.00 to return her call and she hastily agreed, with a pleadiness in her voice to quickly get him on the line. We had a call out that day and my boss had to cover for the sick woman and as fate would have it, she sat next to me the entire night. She heard me making the call to this doctor and abruptly pulled the plug to my console and asked me if i had read his instructions. i explained the situation to her, but she had no sympathy and simply told me, "sweetheart everyone has an emergency" and told me to call that woman back and ask he if it was a true emergency. i did and the woman, who was waiting in a phone booth, ended up hanging up on me. i will never forget the regret and sense of dread i felt at that moment, someting inside me told me i should have went against my boss and made the call anyway to the doctor.
To make a long story short i come to find out all hell broke loose the next day as i was called into her office as she said "we have a slight problem on our hands". This institutionalized man was in fact released, whereby at his first opportunity went and jumped off one of the borroughs bridges and died. You can imagine the impact, i broke down nearly hysterical and quit that job immediately.
Fast forward 3 to 4 months. i am in my dorm laying in my bed trying to go to sleep. i am lying facing the radiator away from the hallway leading to the door. i hear the door opening.... i hear footsteps slowly making their way down the hallway. i am terrified but i cannot move. i have my eyes opened, they are the only parts of my body i can move and control. my heart is pounding... who is this entering my room! i thought i locked the door. i feel the bed depress as if someone has sat down on the end of it. All of a sudden a hand grips my shoulder and yanks me over to my back, a body is on top of mine, i see an angry man's face above me, his wet hair dripping down into my face. i cannot scream even though i try all i can do is passively lay there as he angrily tells me who he is, the man who jumped off the bridge and he is asking me why i didn't call his doctor..... i suppose the fear escalated beyond my ability to stay asleep and i let out a blood curdling scream which woke up the whole floor. There was pounding on my locked door and in a daze i got up and opened the door to let everyone know it was just a "bad dream" - what else could i say? i honestly did not think it was a dream, but i had no words for what it was. That was the first time, since then i have had many more troubling ones, but none as morbidly horrifying as the first (thank god).
A few years later i got the courage to ask a therapist i was seeing about it. i thought i was perhaps having psychotic breaks and was going to end up a helpless psychotic and he chuckled saying velvet your not psychotic, far from it, what you are describing is hypnagogic imagery. You can imagine my relief. His explanation was that it was caused by the extreme stress and guilt i felt over the man's death, which was never resolved.
i still get them at 47. Not as often, but always as frightening. Eyes are always open, always paralysed. Visual, tactile, and auditory are usually all three involved in my "awake dreams". Never happy stuff like pretty fairies dancing or calming stuff always scary things like demons and monsters... One time the face of my clock came alive and kept zooming into my face saying evil things to me lol, my luck lol. i have done reading and you can find this experience under hypnagogic imagery as well as sleep paralysis, and i think sleep awake.
Is there anyone out there who has had these experiences,or has anyone in their life with these experiences, any knowledge of their own to share about what is happening. They say 10% of the population has this condition and that at least 40% will have at least one episode in their lifetime. i think it is what has led me to be the insomniac that i am. i can feel something different when i first lay down that i have come to identify as it coming on. If i can catch myself before its too late (when paralysis sets in) and i can get up, i take a medication and when i go back to sleep i have no problem. i can't always do this, sometimes it's like being sucked into a black hole you can't get out of. Problem is i can't always predict them and i don't want to take this med all the time.
Thanks for the patience reading this long thread and for (hopefully) sharing your experiences.
< Message edited by velvetears -- 12/2/2007 11:44:41 AM >
_____________________________
Religion is for people who are scared of hell, Spirituality is for people who have been there
|
Hypnagogic Imagery and Sleep Paralysis - 
Profile
RE: Hypnagogic Imagery and Sleep Paralysis - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread