De Ja Vu type thingy - is this a thing?

[TeintDeNeige]

Ok, not strictly an AIBU...but I’ve been having a conversation with my 11 yr old DD tonight and we need to know if other people experience this and how common it is?!
(So far nobody else in our family knows what we are talking about).

DD and I don’t experience ‘de ja vu’ often. I’m in my 40s and hardly ever have it. BUT we both get ‘dream de ja vu’. The intense feeling NOT that you’ve actually been in that moment before, but that you have DREAMT the moment or (more commonly) the new place you are visiting - that it’s somewhere you have dreamt of before.

I get this fairly regularly. DD is starting to get it frequently. These are not places we have seen on TV or possibly been to in the past, btw. But totally new and often quite specific places. Peoples homes. Streets. Shops. All sorts of weird unknown places.

We can both suddenly clearly remember the exact dream where we visited these places, too, so it’s not false memory.

Hope that makes sense!

Has this happened to you? What is it all about? I’m not remotely woo, btw, so not hoping for some ‘you are psychic geniuses’ replies. But we can’t be alone and this must be an explainable ‘thing’? Right?

Not to worry you, but certain types of epilepsy are sometimes linked with deja vu episodes. Might be something to have a read up on.

It sounds like a variation of deja vu, called deja reve

It happens to me and is part of my seizures, or at least the aura before the seizure (I have temporal lobe epilepsy, and have complex partial seizures).

Yes it's a thing. To but it very simply it's the brain experience a "miswiring" so causing it to process what your seeing as a long term memory (or in your case a memory of a dream).

I should add — mine are accompanied by acute nausea and a feeling of doom. I am left disorientated by them. I was having anywhere from 1-20 a day before going on anticonvulsant medication.

Yep l experience them but not that often. Allegedly it’s a sign you are on the right life path

That’s interesting about the connection with epilepsy. My father visited northern France as a young man and was convinced he had visited it before, he said he could predict landmarks etc. He was convinced he was the reincarnation of a WW1 soldier. He suffered from epilepsy from his early 20s. .

I had an experience the deja reve as a young teenager. Dreamt an exact scenario, being on a certain street corner and seeing a particular sequence of events and saw it play out exactly like my dream the next day. As I had made a positive decision to be in that place at that time it made me think that everything is pre ordained, an idea I particularly dislike.

This is so interesting, thank you everyone!

@BeerandBiscuits ‘de ja reve’ explains it exactly! I’d never come across this description before.

The epilepsy ting concerns me slightly. Not for DD but for me. As a child my teachers thought I had hearing issues as I would stare in to space a lot. Hearing tests came back fine. I didn’t remember them calling me and the idea of absence seizures was raised, but then never investigated and it seems not to have troubled me too much in adulthood..,

As Red says above, i used to get this frequently many years ago, i was eventually diagnosed with a form of epilepsy and been on medication since, it stopped instantly

I get this occasionally and have wondered if it was epilepsy. After I have it, a huge wave like feeling passes over me and then I'm fine again. I find I get it more when I'm tired.

Definitely look further into this, I had 'hits' of deja vu and odd feelings and then one day I'm hit by what seemed like another big wave and the next thing I know I'm coming round with colleagues shaking me (they were terrified) and an ambulance being called.

Have a read about auras and speak to your doctor

@FurnitureAndBackgammon that's the exact same feeling I have with mine.

I'm epileptic (temporàl lobe) and one of seizure types involves deja vu. I hear a phrase being said completely out of context during conversation, could be spoken by a friend or family member and I've heard someone on the TV and radio! I couldn't tell you the phrase in between fits though but there is an intense feeling of familiarity and fear
I'm a GP and think you should have a chat with your doctor about your symptoms. Mine are now controlled with a decent dose of anticonvulsants

I have had this once, I had a dream about becoming friends with a boy. His face was very clear in the dream. I saw the same boy at a theme park the next day. We were away on holiday so definitely wasn't someone I had seen before. I was probably about 10 at the time.

I get this quite often. It's a really weird feeling and I don't like it when it happens. I think that might be because most of my dreams are quite unsettling so when I suddenly feel like I'm experiencing something I've previously dreamt, I tend to feel really uneasy and anxious and my heart starts racing.

As far as I'm aware, I don't have epilepsy. I do have various sleep disorders that cause visual and auditory hallucinations as I'm falling asleep, though, and night time anxiety attacks.

I’m slightly freaked out by this!

I’ve always to some degree had strange dreams (from childhood). Very vivid and seems like I have them more than other people. Dreams I can control, sleep paralysis etc. Very vivid and weird nightmares.

I’ve very recently developed sleep apnea. Probably due to weight gain, I think. Hasn’t increased the weird de ja reve (!) but could this all be related?’

I have dreamt of the same place all of my life, I am 55.
My dreams do not revolve just on this house, garden and area, but they quite often come into dreams I am having.
I dream vividly every night.
I feel a longing to live in this house and its lovely surroundings.
I dont understand it at all? But would love to know if it's a real place.

I get/have déjà rêvé. I only recently discovered that there is a name for this particular type of déjà vu. I have had two EEGs over the years and have not been diagnosed but I've read enough about it to be sure that's what is happening.

In my case, I don't feel as though I have already dreamed what is happening, I get flashes of what I assume are dreams, with the wide range of things you can dream about. (The first one I had like this when I was 21 years old, involved comic strip characters. Five years ago, I had five seconds of Boris Johnson standing in front of 10 Downing St.)

Sometimes fear is a part of it. In this case, the dream flash is usually sinister somehow, often, someone in my dream will look right at me as if to say, "Yes, it's us/me again". And it isn't just that I have seen that flash before, but I feel like I have seen it a hundred times before. (Not bloody this again!) I "see" the flashes just behind my left ear.

I usually have a headache after, feel a little uncertain and just want to sit at home with a cup of tea. On one occasion, I thought I would fight it out and stayed at work. I forgot my phone number.

@Putkettleonlove do you actually hear the sentence or do you think you hear the sentence?

I'm asking as when I've had a seizure I know that I'm watching what seems to be hours worth of memories flashing through my mind and searching for something in particular but I couldn't tell you what I'm looking for. Before starting on keppra I used to get hung up on words, they would repeat over and over in my head, I'd have to spell them out.