Not night terrors, what does my dh see?

[mummylove]

Every now and then my dh is woken up by figures standing at the end of our bed. It is a terrifying experience for him and takes him sometime to for his heart rate to calm down after.

It is not night terrors as with them you dont remember waking up screaming, you have no recollection of it.

With my dh, he wakes up in the night, jumps straight up and sceams onthe top of his voice "What the f*k are you doing, or f*k off etc..." as you can imagine it scares me out of my skin and i always have to jump up with him and physically hold him from swiping at the figures. Even though he is awake and can hear and see me telling him to calm down, he can still see the figures for a few seconds until he blinks or looks away. I feel so sorry for him and sometimes it gets him in a real state.

Last week he saw a young man and woman at the end of our bed, before he saw a young blonde boy and girl walk out of our wardrobe and whjen he shouted the backed into the wardrobe again.

He also can see through the attic and see's peoples feet walking above him.

The worse time was when he saw our dd who was about 6 month at the tiem, standing with her back to us on topof our wardrobe with a ligt around her, he thought her soul was bein taken or soemthing, he junped up and start shaking the wardrobe trying to get to her, screaming crying in a frenzy, it was horrible, i was holding on to him with all my might telling him it was not real.i was so scared as our dd was in a cot right behind him crying and i thought he was gouing to pull the suitcase off the wardrobe onto her. She is in her own room now so get a peaceful sleep.

There is no pattern to the, he can go months and then this week he has had a few mild ones.

He said to me that he is worried about getting them in his old age incase it gave him a heart attack, when it happens i can touch any part of his body and i will feel his racing heart beat.

Has anyone else got experience of this?

I say joking to him sometimes that he should ask the figures as calm as possible why they are there and not take his eyes of them, they could be spirits.

What do you think?

so sorry for bad typing

I haven't got any experience of this, I'm afraid, but I'm sure I once read that when you are asleep your brain produces a particular chemical that makes you hallucinate. It's similar to the chemical that is produced when you die, the one that makes you think you're meeting your long-lost relatives.
I'm not suggesting that your dh is close to death when he has these experiences (far from it, please don't take it the wrong way), but that the chemical that is produced when he is asleep is making him have these hallucinations.
Has he thought of seeing a sleep therapist?

At some points of mylife I have had dreams that were so recurrent and scary that I feared to go to sleep. But there was some patterns about them. They only appeared and were at their works when I was having a great amount of stress combined with something that would change for ever (for example new school+ death of my gran; lots of pressure at work+ being at the same time in a very abusive relationship; new baby+new studies pressure; etc)

There was also program on TV a couple of months ago about dreams and I was shocked to see that my dream was common in most cultures when people was under a lot of stress. Other thing they mentioned is that there's a substance that is released while you dream that "paralise" your body and prevents you from physically enacting what you are dreaming, sometimes you wake up during the nghtmare and can't move because you are still under the effect of that substance. Similarly, there are people who don't produce enough of that substance and end up having a lot of gestures, shouting, and even sleep walking while they are dreaming.

works??? woRST

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Hello

I use to suffer from sleep paralysis but only on rare occasions now if im overtired.

Ususally happens to me shortly after i drop off, as i drop off or if i wake in the morning and doze off again. My mind would wake up but by body would still be paralysed as it normally is when your asleep so i would not be able to move or open my eyes, sometimes i can hear sounds, the scary ones are when i wake and im paralysed and cant even scream, i see things. As soon as I relax it stops. My dh does not suffer from sleep paralysis, his problem is very different. he will be asleep having a nice dream and suddenly come to and notice a person standing over him, he is now awake as he is screaming and trying to attack them. I said to him I am impressed by his bravery, if i experienced this i would be shaking under the covers. He can always move and always scream, but the hallucinations stay alot longer in reality than nightmares, night terrors or sleep paralysis episodes.
we did see a few documentarys about sleep problems in the last year but none were really similar to his.

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He has not been to a doctor since we have been together - i have spoke to my gp about him and she said she could refer him to someone if he went to see her!

he always says "im ok"... men

This happens to me but I see spiders. Takes me a while to realise they are not there and as it was dark I couldn't have seen them anyway. dh is used to it now. It only happens when I am really stressed and upset about something.

K

i have sleep paralysis. Its awful. i also see figures now and then and more often hear voices, in various different accents. it always happens when i am sleeping badly or over tired and stressed. I had a run of very bad nights for about four months after ds was born. I think it is just stress and the amazing workings of the imagination. But if you feel your dh may do something dangerous [like pull down the wardrobe!] he should see his gp. My father has medication to prevent his dreadful nightmares. Now he sleeps much better.