Nightmares & insomnia

Hi Emma your nightmare certainly sounds very vivid,, lots of detail, 

I would not dare trying to analyse your dream for you, although it has something to do with death and sadness to accept it, hence the anger and disconnect from the twins, Maybe a film or something you watched once?

and it helps to talk these things through as the dream becomes a shared experience and they had better watch out as we can now be included in your dream and sort them out for you.

that said  I hope you sleep better . Take care.

I've only ever done that once! (On public transport anyway, I fall asleep on school coaches when we take the kids out to places all the time).
It's horrible when you wake up and don't know where the bus has taken you.

No nightmares today.

But my insomnia caused me to fall asleep on a bus this evening and I missed my stop by a big margin. 

I had a bad nightmare last night. I was in some sort of post-apocalypse, run-down hotel and there was a pair of eerie similar looking but non-identical twin children (I'd put them about age 8-10) there with me, a boy and a girl. I remember feeling that there was something inherently eerie and wrong about these children, but they were alone and claimed to be frightened by something and were determined to stay very close to me as the only adult in the way that children do when they are scared.
We hid in a room in the hotel, and I started talking to them about a variety of things to distract us all, including my family. That was when I noticed it; whenever I talked about someone I knew who was dead, their eyes would completely black over; no iris, no sclera, just black. (Blacked out eyes= one of my major scare factors. Creeps me out horribly.)
I started to experiment with the conversation to make sure I had the pattern right, and I could feel that they were starting to get a bit suspicious of me, dropping the lost-child-act, a bit more hostile.
So I decided to bite the bullet and confronted them. I asked them "Why is it that whenever I talk about someone who is dead, that your eyes go black?" and as I asked it their eyes went black and then the twins looked straight at me in a really hostile way (I could feel the anger coming off them) and their eyes changed again into a horrible glistening off-white, like the whole thing was the white of the eye and it had gone slightly rotten. They then suddenly lurched closer to me in robotic fashion, right up to my face.

Woke up at that point in a panic. Cue a long cuddle with the cat and a good dose of youtube. Still took a while to get back to sleep. *shudders*

Hoping for a quieter night tonight. :( 

Sorry you had a rough night Robert.  Did you manage to get back to sleep after waking?  I've had to resist the urge of watching overly excitable films before bed as they often influence my dreams.  Books can also have the same affect, which is a tad ironic given everyone tells me to read a book instead of watching a film.

Bad nightmares last night.

A mixture of my last two jobs and the sci fi horror DVD ( under the Dome) I was watching last night.  I woke up shaking.

My nightmares are back.

Last night I almost got 8 hours sleep.  But it was in three parts.

The nightmare I remember is speaking to one of my ex neighbors.  In reality she was a nasty piece of work and we mutually disliked each other and I tried to avoid her.  In the dream she was just as awful as I remembered her.

(These are my thoughts, not a scientific study)

The brain is full of loads of stuff, and memories are made of various connections in the brain.  During sleep, the brain constantly connects and disconnects various neurons which has a similar effect to thoughts and memories. It does this in order to 'clean' itself for rational thinking the next day when there is need again for a clear head.

The brain then tries to make some sort of sense of this, and as such it manifests itself as a dream, a seemingly real experience at the time.

I myself have had dreams that I have been unable to know they are dreams at the time and it has taken months sometimes to realise that what I 'remember' is a dream and not a reality.  However, once a real event becomes a memory, it can become subject to some sort of manipulation  to fit in with later events. Especially the order in which things have happened.  I have watched films or read books and later come back to watch it again (perhaps years later) and somehow the events are in a different order.  They are not, of course, but my brain has somehow changed the order for some reason.

I do wonder if some thoughts of those suffering from forms of dementia are also linked to dreaming, even day dreaming.  An aunt I had in her nineties who had dementia was always insisting she had been out with her mother (my grandmother) the day before, despite her having died twenty five years previously.  To her it was a very real experience and she told of the trip very lucidly.  But it obviously didn't happen at the time which she said.  Whether it was something she had invented in her mind or remembered from years ago I do not know.

Lack of sleep probably plays havoc with the connections in the brain, and the mind is trying to make sense of things.  A long journey I had back late at night once I was so very tired and was sure I was seeing animals at the side of the road which were turned out to be stones and trees - and I was not on any haluncinogenic substances, it was just lack of sleep.

Robert124 said:

One moment I'm in a town the next in the woods between towns.

Not sure what's happening???

Consider societal selves in towns ~ natural self in woods, perhaps?

Robert124 said:

I still don't understand why they repeat.

All dreams follow a particular theme that we are in the process of working through, and until we we do so ~ they repeat.

Emma said:

Then when I'm very tired, I hear little snippets of piano music (not any tune I know, it seems random but sounds pleasant, I wish I could remember it enough to write it down) or occasionally snatches of (mundane and/or nonsensical) conversation.

I get this a little bit when I'm extremely sleep deprived, but it's very indistinct; a bit like hearing it from under a duvet or through a wall, or bursts of electrical noise. I think it's a little bit like the visual snow and migraine auras I sometimes get; my perception "recognises" things in my brain's background noise, a bit like seeing faces and objects in random clouds and rocks.

Emma said:

I had quite the reputation for sleeping anywhere at university, because anywhere includes 'in crowded nightclubs', 'sitting on other people's kitchen worktops' and 'before it gets back round to my turn in a board game'. 

That's interesting; I was known for that kind of thing, too. I've realised since my diagnosis that these were quite likely autistic shut-downs rather than just nodding off. Of course, lack of sleep and alcohol most likely played their part, by making me more sensitive to over-stimulation; but I very rarely nod off when there are just a few people around me, it was always pubs, nightclubs, parties etc. that made me zonk out completely. I was known for being impossible to wake, too, and it was sometimes mistaken for me being black-out drunk. Shut-downs and melt-downs always do make me sleep deeply afterwards, whereas the smallest disturbances can rouse me easily if I'm just trying to have a quick nap.

Last night's dreams were just weird.  It was the second very similar one this week.

I was traveling on a double decker bus and it started to fall over while we were going round a bend. And we all had to evacuate the bus in a hurry.  

One moment I'm in a town the next in the woods between towns.

Not sure what's happening???

I get 'normal' auditory hallucinations too, but not in quite the same way as you Trogluddite.

I've always been able to 'make my own radio', by which I mean I can make myself actually hear songs playing that aren't. It takes a weird sort of half-focus, a bit like controlling a lucid dream; I have to be genuinely expecting to hear it, but concentrate too much on it and it stops playing. Done right, it's exactly the same as having a quiet-ish speaker on.
It sometimes happens accidentally too and I'll think "oh, this shop's sound system is playing that tune I like", but then I focus on it so it stops and I realise! 

Then when I'm very tired, I hear little snippets of piano music (not any tune I know, it seems random but sounds pleasant, I wish I could remember it enough to write it down) or occasionally snatches of (mundane and/or nonsensical) conversation.

The piano music is sometimes the first indication I get that I am very tired to the point that I need to get myself to bed or I will fall asleep where I am. My body just shuts off if I try to stay up too long, no matter where I am.
I had quite the reputation for sleeping anywhere at university, because anywhere includes 'in crowded nightclubs', 'sitting on other people's kitchen worktops' and 'before it gets back round to my turn in a board game'. 

I've always had Exploding Head Syndrome (though didn't know what it was for most of that time.) It's incredible just how startling it can be, especially when most of my brain is already half asleep. It's usually just a very loud "bang" for me, as if the extreme loudness of it prevents me from identifying it as any particular kind of sound.

I get auditory hallucinations when I'm awake sometimes, too. Never anything particularly coherent, like voices talking to me, more like a memory of a very specific sound leaks through into my consciousness. It's not unusual that I go to answer the front-door or to check a new text-message only to find that I imagined the sound.

That must have been a horrible experience Lonewarrior.  Hospitals are one of the least autism-friendly environments to begin with, let alone when there's all that distress going on and nobody is explaining why. Hugs to you.

Sounds a bit like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome Robert?

I've had it for years, when I have it waking up it's usually weird electronic buzzing for me (occasional and almost always accompanying sleep paralysis) or if I get it when I'm falling asleep rather than waking up (much more usual) it's gunshot/explosion sounds or voices shouting my name. 

I often wake up disoriented , also never quite sure what day it is, this morning I woke thinking I had a couple of hours before getting ready for work,, I then start thinking through,,so what did I do last night? What was I doing yesterday? I then realise it is in fact Saturday morning. That is a nice thing to suddenly realise as my whole body and mind relaxes, thank goodness for that, 

It isn’t so nice waking on a week day thinking it’s a day of the weekend to then realise work is the order of the day.

I do have really vivid dreams, I used to have two main nightmares as a youngster, 

One nightmare was of me accelerating down a cylindrical corridor, it was narrowing as I went further along it, the speed just got faster and the further I got the tighter it got. Eventually when I could no longer move forward and the pressure was so intense I couldn’t be squashed any more I would wake suddenly wondering what had happened, several minutes would pass until the nightmare slowly was remembered. So being crushed into an atom at speed,

The other nightmare was more about senses!

I know why the nightmare was vivid as it was a re run of reality, a remembered event played out over and over.

As a toddler my gran became seriously ill, me and my mum went into the old hospital to visit her, the corridors were long and echoey.dark and cold and smelly. 

We met other relations waiting to go in and see her, they were all very sad, whispered voices so I couldn’t hear what was being said, 

when it was my mum’s time to go in to see my gran I was left with the other relatives, they decided to get a drink from the coffee machine, when they returned the smell of sickly coffee was overwhelming to me, I heard extremely loud footsteps all the time we were in that corridor, Lino floors bare walls, so my senses were being over whelmed with sound smell the coldness the dark shadowy corridors, I was really  struggling ,

Then suddenly my mum reappeared crying and shaking,,,her sister my aunt was with her, everyone started crying but I didn’t know why?

I later found out my gran had passed away.

we were not told this, we were not told about the funeral either, it wasn’t something young children told about!

The first dream was long before the hospital dream, something about being accelerated into an ever increasing compressed ball until so small I didn’t exist.

Words and thoughts over the years as to the meanings were often,

Am I

Coming to an end?

shutting down?

life is zooming along and I can’t keep up,?

Am I zooming along so fast I am missing everything?

I also rarely sleep longer than four hours,, although as I age I do sleep longer due to physical fatigue. 

These days I suddenly just zonk out, once asleep I cannot be woken easily.

The whole ritual of getting ready for bed/ sleep has always instilled fear in me! I am not tired, why should I lie in bed staring up at the ceiling when I could be doing what I want, everyone is asleep so I could enjoy myself without the constant overwhelming feeling that I am not really there, always felt I was watching it all, never felt truly connected.

just realised how much I have written, a troubled mind and all that, unloading helps in whatever form it takes, 

thank you if you managed to keep reading this long, 

aspie hugs to all () () () () ()

Today's nightmare, very simple.

A knocking on my wooden door by naked knuckles.

A woke up immediately.

I'm 99.99% certain the knocking was in my head and not real.

Previous similar nightmares is being woken up by loud buzzers or ringing sounds.  Again not real.

I've experienced that too. My wonky sleep patterns mess up my sense of time in general, I think; it's not unusual that I lose track of the time of day, what day of the week it is etc. It can also happen if I overload and go into a shut-down; this almost always segues into a deep-sleep, which I can be very hard to rouse from.

I also seem to micro-sleep a lot, which is supposedly common for insomniacs. This can be for only a few seconds at a time, and can be hard to even notice unless there's been an obvious change in my surrounding while I've been "gone" or if someone else notices. It's definitely not the same thing as the spells of dissociation that I get; those also mess with my time perception, but I retain at least some self-awareness, even if not awareness of my surroundings.

Snap! This happens to me too - if I'm doing something that requires attention, I'm 110% awake. Whenever I can drop down from 'alert mode', if I get slightly warm & comfortable, I'm gone.

It's not like normal sleep - it's like blinking - but I wake up hours later. I can then 'blink' again and I lose another few hours. I can then wake up in the middle of the night disoriented in the darkness and blnk again and it's 9am.

Life gets complicated when you lose track of days.