Parasomnias/sleep disorders with autism

I'm an extreme lark (advanced phase sleep disorder). I struggle to stay awake once the sun goes down and am usually up several hours before dawn. I often wake in the night feeling completely alert and ready to start the day, only to realise on checking the time that it's not even midnight yet. I involuntarily fall asleep at evening events if they are not brightly lit.

I've experienced that exploding head only once that I can rememver as a kid, maybe 4 or so

Me too :0( sleep paralysis

Wow. Thanks for sharing. I'm undiagnosed as of yet but I can totally relate. Extremely vivid dreams as a child that would carry so much emotion it would take me all day to "get over it" so to speak. Sometimes I would cry for hours the next day over the residual effects of the nightmare.  I have sleep paralysis then and now (more so as an adult) so I talk, laugh, panic, yell, sing in my sleep. I've also experienced exploding head (sound) as a kid.  This just means you hear an explosion aound in your head.  

THANK YOU very much, Emma, for your more serious response to the rest of my Post.
(I wrote a longer response yet due to "Personal Circumstances" at my own end, that was erased and so this is going to seem a bit more curt...)

I wanted to say that I am glad of your responding since I did not want the Thread to end in making light of "Exploding Head Syndrome" --- Imagine trying to sleep, and all of a sudden hearing a LOUD explosion or Bang or Crash, yet then silence after that... as if someone had suddenly turned up a Television to maximum and then muted it again...? That is what it is like...

(What would have happened had I instead posted about Restless Leg Syndrome, Tea And Toast Syndrome, or even Mean World Syndrome, I might wonder...?)

...With regards to some of the rest of your reply, you are quite correct about the Environment, and the blindfold (I myself keep my own hair very short). With regards to snoring, I only know this since during Dreaming, it is a repetitive noise which stops or alters if I hold my breath, but I often hear it upon waking upon the "exhale"...!

Again I say Thank You very much for the Reply.

The blindfold is interesting. I wonder how that works! I can't wear anything to bed (mask, headphones, etc.) because I move so much I shake it off and it gets painfully tangled in my 2.5ft mane of hair.

I've never heard myself snore in my dreams, but I do hear things around me that get incorporated into them; whole conversations from the radio/tv, my alarm, the pets. Maybe I don't snore. I do sleep-talk though, according to my other half who writes my "dreambabble" down and sends it to me. It ranges from nonsensical ("Oh my god, EVERY candlestick") to downright creepy ("It should be in your blood by now").

A change in environment will usually incorporate itself into my dream; e.g. if I'm camping I will usually dream about being in a forest.

I would agree about dreams being different meaning-wise depending on who you are. If I dream of snakes it's usually MY snakes I'm dreaming about, so that would be a pretty mundane and uneventful dream for me  everyone's subconscious is built around their own life experiences, I suppose.

(...Feel free to start a "Red Dwarf" Thread, yourself or anyone. There are already Threads about "Father Ted", "Pokemon", Star Trek" and so forth. Humour is indeed useful at times, upon this Forum...)

I thought of this myself:

HaHa, im laughing at me not you by the way. 

i read 'exploding head syndrome' and was greeted with a mental image of an exploded head, then i read on to the fact you get this sometimes and wonder how you can survive your head exploding. So i derail to google to find out what this exploding head is and find the funny side in my thoughts. 

What a misleading name - misleading for me anyway.

Liz

Emma said:

Or tell me if your sleep is dull and uneventful too. All information is useful information

Me again. There have been other Threads about "dreams" upon this Forum. But I shall Post more, and see if anyone else cares...

To get rid of "Sleep Paralysis", I have to wear a Blindfold. The paralysis only occurs nowadays whenever the blindfold slips a little and I can see something while sleeping.

I used to be very good at Lucid Dreaming, but nowadays, my dreams are ALL about some Government Organisation which is using me for one as a GuineaPig in order to learn how to control or suppress so-called Dreams (Thoughts below 'Alpha Frequency State').

I also know about "Exploding Head Syndrome" and have it at times.

I am very susceptible to smells and noises. These influence the Dreams, and if severe they will wake me. I already posted about Asthma... which is similar to bladder functions, where I dream of toiliting yet it has no effect.

I have bad dreams almost every night. Yet can tell Dreams from Reality using certain cues I have in place upon the waking side.

I can hear in my dreams when I am "snoring", seriously. (Can anyone else here do that?)

Insofar as dreams being "Dull and Uneventful", mine are about everyday things yet exaggerated, and it is very rare that I dream about a thing which I do not do in reality (e.g. driving a car or swimming in the ocean.) When I do do something unusual, I dream about it and then not again.

The environment (City) has a big effect upon my dreams, hence the many bad dreams I have. Smells, sounds, sights, that sort of thing. I do not think that dreams have the same effects or meanings for everyone. For instance, if I dream about a Snake or a Spider, I find it cute and capture it to either telephone the RSPCA or throw it out of the nearest window!

I occasionally take a 1 month supply of antihistamines (over the 1 month period) just to get some solid sleep. This helps with day time napping which can then lead to worse night time sleep. Its a vicious cycle, though I also struggle to fall asleep, it takes around 2 hours after getting into bed to fall asleep. Yet im sure my partner is asleep before his head touches the pillow, its actually nice to lay quietly 

Ha, you're the opposite of me; I meet boredom with extreme restlessness! 

Wow, 7 times a night is excessive!  That said I'd quite like to wake up as soon as I get frightened.

I see and hear things when i'm tired, but im also very sensitive to sound. I dream, its never anything good, i tend not to dream for long. It seems as soon as i feel uncomfortable or frightened in my dream I wake up. On average i wake up 7 times a night.

i had 2 reoccurring dreams up until the age of around 16

I often find myself getting dozy at work when it's boring.

Those sound like the kind of nightmares I have as an adult :/ things got a lot darker in my dreamscape when I hit my late teens. I've just woken up from a really horrible dream where I was kidnapped, escaped and then got hunted down by the kidnapper over the course of days. *shudder*

Thanks for the reply Boating_Taxonomist! 

"The first ever episode I had was probably the most terrifying; it was just this really, really intense sensation of there being something 'evil' in the corner of my room, I don't know if I've ever felt so scared. Subsequent ones are somewhat more dull." This makes sense, as I've found that if I keep my head during sleep paralysis it's not that scary. These days I only have the really frightening episodes when I don't realise I'm paralysed before I start to hallucinate.

"I always have really vivid dreams-my sister is always saying she doesn't know how I not only have so many dreams but remember them so well" -members of my family have told me the same thing, verbatim.

Waking up after the boat dreams sounds really weird/unnerving! D: I imagine it's hard to quite trust that you're awake?

When I was very young most of my dreams were fighting in wars like in lord of the rings or flying around between planets,

I mostly don't recall dreams anymore although about 6 months ago someone slit my throat and it was indistinguishable from reality I awoke terrified,  at the moment I hardly sleep at all often only sleeping every other night or only sleeping for 3 or so hours a day, I often feel tired yet also wired at the same time so I can't sleep until I am very tired.

Actually I recall another dream now my recently deceased cat (car killed him) jumped in through the window and sat on my lap but then maggots started appearing as I patted him then he was dead, I often think most humans really have horrible thoughts about me and are talking behind my back, and can't really trust them, cats make better friends.

Boating_taxonomist said:

I have had some dreams where I'm aware its a dream, but don't have any control. I don't generally have nightmares, but I've had several that have resulted in an asthma attack

Greetings. Me, too. Very much. I dream that I use my Asthma Inhaler, but it has no effect, and I must wake up in order to use it in order to breathe. Very annoying when I am having a fun dream (which is quite rare).

...Just to let you know that you are not alone in being an "Asthmatic Lucid Dreamer", there...   (!)

(Very interesting UserName you have, too!   :-)   )

I regularly get hypnaggogic/hypnopompic halluncations, mostly the latter which tends to be visual ones, but I have had auditory ones before (and the former tends to be more auditory, usually music).

I also suffer from sleep paralysis sometimes with largely visual hallucinations. It seems to go through periods where I get it a lot and then I go ages when I don't get it at all, I think it's related to stress. The first ever episode I had was probably the most terrifying; it was just this really, really intense sensation of there being something 'evil' in the corner of my room, I don't know if I've ever felt so scared. Subsequent ones are somewhat more dull.

I always have really vivid dreams-my sister is always saying she doesn't know how I not only have so many dreams but remember them so well-although I'm not sure if I've ever truly done lucid dreaming. I have had some dreams where I'm aware its a dream, but don't have any control. I don't generally have nightmares, but I've had several that have resulted in an asthma attack. In one of them someone threw a bowling ball at my head! Which made me gasp which led to me bolt upright in bed unable to breathe. I'm not sure whether the nightmare results in an asthma attack, or an asthma attack results in the nightmare. I kind of suspect the latter though. The other thing I have nightmares about is my boat and they tend to be recurring for a few days at a time, so maybe also stress related. I once had a week of recurring boat disaster dreams where it sank in a variety of novel ways or floated away down the canal. Quite disorientating when I then woke up on board.

So yes, my brain does all sorts of weird stuff related to sleep.