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Parasomnias/sleep disorders with autism

Emma

Hi all,

A few of us were going off-topic in another thread https://community.autism.org.uk/f/adults-on-the-autistic-spectrum/12994/diagnosis-experience-and-coping-strategies-for-obsessions and started talking about sleep, dreams and disorders thereof this morning. So, I'm now wondering if this is a common thing for autistic people.

Please share your experiences here if you have any! Or tell me if your sleep is dull and uneventful too. All information is useful information to me! Stuck out tongue



On my part, I have always had severe nightmares and hypnagogia/hypnopompic hallucinations. Sometimes the dream imagery carries on in real life for a few minutes, so I see things that aren't there (these images are never anything really interesting, often just still pictures, and vanish when I try to touch them). I commonly hear noises as I fall asleep, ranging from small explosions to voices shouting my name to snatches of piano music (the latter is actually really nice and relaxing). 

When I learned to talk, one of the first things I spoke about in any detail were my horrible dreams. I also had trouble separating the things I experienced in dreams from reality as a very young child (pre-school), often getting angry with my mum about things she had done in my dreams and even begging my my dad to repeatedly rearrange my bedroom in an attempt to confuse away a scary dream-character (which he did on many occasions, bless him). I had 4 nightly recurring nightmares, each about a different malevolent character, for the first decade of my life and got rid of them all at once after dreaming I confronted them all in a group meeting and told them not to scare me again! 

I took very naturally to lucid dreaming as a teenager, but found it interrupted by scary characters I couldn't control as I tried to refine my technique and learned to go straight from waking into dreams. As an adult I have also developed semi-regular episodes of sleep paralysis accompanied by visual, audible and physical hallucinations.
I have even had periods of sleep apnea, sometimes accompanied by dreams about drowning- my mind's response to being suddenly unable to breathe.

Basically my body and mind go haywire when they're unconscious! ^^' 

Parents

  • 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.

Reply

  • 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.

Children
  • in reply to Boating_taxonomist

    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?

  • in reply to Boating_taxonomist
    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!   :-)   )