Did you hear that?

Image by Sandrine Replat

I've had problems sleeping over the last few nights. Waking frequently to scary audio hallucinations. They play on my fears, mainly that someone has entered my home putting me and my children's lives in danger. Its frightening, disturbing and unsettling. I can hear talking, lights clicking on, doors opening. My heart races, thudding loudly in my chest and I'm gripped by an immense fear of harm. It triggers aggressive episodes of cataplexy, literally rendering me paralysed with fear. Scenarios race through my mind and I silently tell myself that we're fine. Remind myself that I've been here many times before, me and the children are safe. I try to convince myself that the best thing I can do is to ignore these false sounds, encourage sleep to engulf me in hope that it neutralises the terror. Unfortunately fear is persistent and adaptable, invading new dreams which will later wake me with greater force.

If the children are in the house, I find that pure adrenaline will spur me on to face any potential threat. Natural, mothering instinct to protect kicks in and I'll fly down the stairs.  My reaction is very different if they are away at their dads. I will hide, attempt to quieten my breathing, my movements and try to become invisible. Eventually I will tire of letting the unknown scare and go through the motions of reassuring myself. Every door, window, cupboard, nook and cranny is checked until I can return to the warmth of the duvet. Even then I won't be able to shake off the fear, I remain tightly bounded by it until the light of the next day.

The above is a typical hypnopompic hallucination, a dream like state whilst my body is physically semi-awake after waking from REM sleep. These are the most frightening kind for me. I also regularly experience hypnagogic hallucinations, a dream like state whilst falling asleep. These are actually pretty cool, as I feel out of body spinning sensations that are very similar to being high from marijuana joint (something that I haven't done for a while!). Trippy sleep I can deal with. Scary sleep that terrifies the life out of me, not so much.

As a proper grown up (or so I'm told), I'm embarrassed that the night is still able to affect me so negatively. It seems immature and has no right in my adult world.  I'm lucky as the scary hallucinations described above are generally audio focused, although i have experienced visual and touch versions in the past. The line between dream and wakefulness is so blurry to people with narcolepsy. We know that these disturbances aren't real (and therefore very different to some hallucinations associated with mental illness), yet the power to frighten remains.

Physically awake, but still dreaming or physically asleep, but psychologically awake (sleep paralysis)...come on, its plain weird. If it wasn't so frightening, it would be funny. Which hallucinations are definitely not.