Hypnopompic.

[zotz]

I was back in Ayr seeing my folks yesterday evening, and got back today. After getting an early night, I woke about one-o'clock from a dream in which I was in a wood dodging an unknown but not unfriendly other person. I realised there was a third person very near, and woke with two loud shouts. I hope I didn't wake the neighbours.

I'd earlier had a strange dream which seemed to be partly influenced by LJ and partly by Vurt (cf Tony's essay, of course), which had the weird-erotic-charge bit of sleep paralysis but not the waking-in-panic bit. This isn't something that's happened to me for several years, which is why I'm noting the point here.

And now that I'm awake, of course, I'm nice and rested and can't drop off again - hence the toast and LJ session.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

You get a weird-erotic-charge bit? Lucky bastard - I just get "ohshitohshitohshiti'mgoingtoDIE!".

[zotz]

Not before. And not both times last night, either. There's a first time for everything.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Heh. In that case I shall look forward with great anticipation to the experience. Since thinking/talking about sleep paralysis is often enough to trigger a series of attacks, wechsler and d_floorlandmine may also find themselves with something to look forward to! *grin*

Or I might just get the screaming heebie-jeebies as usual.

[technotom.livejournal.com]

After giving up pot I've found my dreams have returned and become really vivid and some of them are very scary (I suppose these could be called 'nightmares'). What's happening recently is that I find myself climbing something very very tall and either I slip, drop or get pushed off and find myself hurtling towards the tarmac (it's never soft ground beneath), I can feel the wind and the cold as doubtless you can imagine. As the ground rushes up to meet me, I'm thinking "shit!! this is really going to hurt!!" the fear used to wake me up, but not anymore. I feel the pain and the shock of the impact and the freezing concrete and I know I've critically damaged myself. I can't move and just lie there freezing and dying and in loads of pain. I usually wake up then.

The scariest one I have is driving a car, but I'm so tired I can't see the road properly, I can't focus my eyes and there's pauses and in the sounds I'm hearing because I drop in and out of sleep. Usually there's someone else with me like Emma, screaming at me to stay awake and I know I have to but I can't. I wake up as the car leaves the road and my passenger screams. It's truly horrific.

[zotz]

I've fallen and stayed asleep past impact once. It didn't hurt, but I was aware of being badly damaged and needing an ambulance. Disconcerting rather than upsetting. Apart from that I seem to get away very lightly with my dreams. I don't usually remember them.

[technotom.livejournal.com]

I think after a while you expect to wake up, so you subconsiously go a stage further to get the.. release, or whatever it is you get from dreaming of a long fall to the unyeilding ground.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I had a dream in which I jumped out of a window in a high building, intending to kill myself (there was a long involved plot leading up to this, something like a 19th century Russian novel). As I hurtled towards the ground I thought, "God, I wish I hadn't decided to do this!" But there was no turning back. I struck the ground, and felt my awareness leave my body and rise above it, like in an Outer Limits episode. But since I'm an atheist, there was no tunnel of light to an afterlife; instead, I felt my consciousness gradually dissipating, evaporating into the air. I had time to think, "So this is what dying is like. I can't do a thing to stop this happening..." before my sense of self vanished completely and I woke up.

So I maintain that I have died in a dream, and not in real life, as people sometimes claim never happens.

[zotz]

Excellent. I shall have to remember to bring that one up in argument, should the point arise.

[technotom.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine said close to the same thing to me in 6th form college once. He dreamt he was in the Somme marching across the battlefield with his classmates and was shot down. He couldn't move and could just stare in one direction at everyone moving past his field of view, before sinking slowly through the earth and into nothingness.

Sorry to mention drugs again (I always seem to :-\ ), the legal high salvia is a lot like this (so long as it's strong enough), as is ketamine. Both invoke this feeling of leaving the body, the consciousness rising up or floating away, through the fabric of the universe.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

I do a lot of the middle of night toast and Lj sessions too :-(

Do you agre with well known lucid dreaming trope that even if you realise you're in a dream you can't turn lightswitches on and off?

[zotz]

I've never tried it, I'm afraid. People claim this and have a plausible explanation of why it might be the case, but I've no personal experience.

[technotom.livejournal.com]

I have, but I've never had occaision to busy myself with lightswitches, being conscious of dreaming and being able to do anything I want. Its simply dark if I feel it should be or light if I want it to be, then I carry on with whatever I want to do.

I do, however, believe that if you expect something very regular and normal to occur in a dream then, generally, it wont, especially if you give a lot of attention to whatever it is.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I've never tried turning light switches on or off in a lucid dream. I'll have to try it next time. Usually I spend most of my lucid dreams trying to convince myself that it really is a dream, rather than reality. My tests include examining objects very closely for corroborative detail (rock texturing, reflections of things in water or mirrors, that kind of thing) which TBH my subconscious usually renders very well; asking other people in the dream whether it is a dream (they are usually convinced it is real and I am being strange at them); jumping in front of cars and seeing whether anything bad happens (I have to be quite desperate before I try this one!); and trying to read text. This last test was pretty effective for years - the letters would shift about or be blurred or the words wouldn't make sense in a dream. Unfortunately, it stopped working at last (perhaps my subconscious had a hardware upgrade :-) and dream text became legible and sensible. My final test was rather philosophical: if I seriously wonder whether I am dreaming, then I am. (Though this test might not work for people who take a lot of drugs IRL.)

[technotom.livejournal.com]

That's odd. In my dreams, I'll first of all not really know I'm dreaming, then there'll come a point where I think, "hey, wait a second, this is a dream" and then i can do things and its great. Fine balance though, sometimes realising that makes me wake up!