Happy Girl

I found out today from my psych professora that I, indeed, have hypnogogic hallucinations. "What the heck is that?", you might ask.

In sleep, there are different stages. One of these stages is REM. It is the deepest, most restful part of sleep. During REM your brain sends out a chemical to paralyze you temporarily so you wont harm yourself during the night (That brain's a smart one!).

Occasionally, while I'm sleeping, I'll wake up into what seems like a dream, but my eyes are open. I'm fully aware of my surroundings but I'm rendered completely immobile. I can't move anything but my eyes. It has a dream like feeling and sometimes it's black and white but what I see is complete reality. The hallucination part comes in when a dream aspect comes into play with reality. I've noticed mine are usually about bugs.

Example #1
It was in the early morning. I opened my eyes to see a mosquito net overhead with tons of crazy, bug, scary bugs on the outside of it. I couldn't scream or anything, but in my peripheral I saw My friend Mallory. After a few minutes in this "dream", "dream" me fell asleep and when I woke up, I was fine.

Example #2
One night, I went to sleep on my side with my unoccupied pillow in my field of vision. I starting having, what I thought was a dream. I can't move. I open my eyes and on the pillow next to me I see hundreds and hundreds of huge, ugly spiders crawling all over it. I'm laying there, completely unable to move, but trying desperately to move my arms or to sit up and get away. At the time of this "dream", I had had about 5 of these occurrences and I realized what was happening. I didn't panic, I just tried to go back to sleep.

I've had these for quite a while and I have at least two or three a month, but I never knew what it was until now. Hopefully it wont cause me any trouble. It's just extremely creepy.



PS- My cat left gaping slices on my leg yesterday. :(
PS#2- I'm moving.