Posted on 07/10/2006 4:15:05 PM PDT by pcottraux
And, of course, tonight’s Dinklemeyer:
A phrase you never want to hear in school is “Character Eductation.”
So, I'm sitting here watching Cops on Court TV.
This drunk kid drives his truck through a brick wall, and the paramedics come and take him away in an ambulance. While this thug is in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he rips his IV out, tears his neck brace off, attacks the female paramedic who's trying to take care of him and jumps out of the ambulance going about 35 mph, and runs! The cops finally catch up to him and arrest his ass. While he's getting arrested the police question him about why on earth he would ever attack an EMT worker, and the little twerp has the gall to claim total amnesia. (“Who? Me? I don’t remember anything that happened. I never did that.”)
Phil?
Phil?
Phil?
Wow. What a total moron. I imagine he must have been pretty intoxicated and unaware of what exactly he was doing. Maybe he thought he was being abducted by aliens?
Present and accounted for.
Alright! Now I'm prepared for the worst.
Have I ever told you my theory explaning "alien abductions?"
Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnope.
You share yours and I'll share mine...
I believe that most alien abductions can be easily explained by a medical condition called sleep paralysis. It's a very neat fit. When a person is asleep, their brain turns their body off, so-to-speak, so they won't act out their dreams. During SP, someone jerks awake in the middle of the night but their brain doesn't turn their bodies back on...so they wake up suddenly and can't move or feel anything. And the subconscious dream brain is also turned on, so they'll normally have frightening hallucinations.
Okay, your turn.
I have SP a lot when I nap on the couch. I’ll dream that hubby, or fictional people, are walking through the front door and talking to me or shaking my shoulder.
When hubby was in Iraq and I was in the house by myself I had a re-occurring nightmares that someone was breaking into the house, night after night after night. It was always during SP that I thought I was getting out of bed and reaching into the bottom drawer of my dresser to grab the gun. Sometimes (in my dream) I would manage to fire off a couple rounds, getting the bad guy and going back to sleep. Other times, the magazine would be empty and all the bullets would be rolling around the bottom of the door and I’d have to fish them out. Sometimes I’d start having the weirdest conversations with my fictional assailants. It felt very, very real, and I could swear I could really and truly hear them talk, or feel them grab me, but I always knew it was a dream afterwards.
After a while, I would realize in my dream I would be dreaming and I would wake myself up. Other times, I would pretend I had magical superpowers and blow my attackers away with a flick of the wrist. Then I’d go fly off through the air somewhere.
What you're describing there is called lucid dreaming. You can actually become a full-time lucid dreamer, who embarks on fantastical adventures that seem completely real every night. I've tried to do it myself but the results are marginal at best.
I started having these "lucid dreams" when I was about your age. They were really fantastical. I don't have them as much anymore. What's really nice is that when I realize I'm dreaming in my dream I can do whatever I want. If I really don't like the dream then I tell myself to wake up, and I do (about 90% of the time). Other times, I'll decide that if I'm actually bored with my dream, I'll go do something fun like fly. Sometimes, I dream that I've woken myself up from a dream, but I really didn't. After about 15 minutes or so of thinking I'm awake, I'll realized that I'm still dreaming when something ridiculous, illogical, or improbable happens. Usually, I am able to wake myself after that.
I'm not very good at it. I have no control. When I try to fly, I end up falling on my face. When I try to snap my fingers to make something amazing happen, it doesn't happen. I always wake up mad because of all the fun I COULD have been having.
Sometimes I have to take three steps in order to fly. Other times I can only hover about 5 ft off the ground. Other times I fall back down.
When I run, I'll either run really really fast and leap from rooftop to rooftop, other times, I can't get my legs to move right and I either run in slow motion, or do this strange skipping or hopping to get moving. Same thing with walking. Sometimes I dream I can't walk correctly. It's really weird.
It actually takes practice from dream to dream. If I had them more often I might be better at it.
Well, everyone dreams, my dearest Phil. It's just remembering your dreams that can be tricky. Usually, it's only the last dream you have that you remember, and the only time you tend to remember the dream is when you wake during the process.
Yeah, to fully enjoy lucid dreaming, you first have to work on your dream recall. That way, the dream becomes like something that really happened to you. I haven't been able to do that very well, either.
I could order expensive tapes and seminars and training books on how to become a lucid dreamer. I could, but...
Naaaaah. Personally, I think we're all better off not remembering any of our dreams. There's enough drama in the waking world to deal with. Am I right?
If you're having lucid dreams, sure.
Otherwise, if you have nightmares or something a lot, you're probably better off.
Yeah, but sometimes I get a worn-out feeling after I wake from a lucid dream. Not sure why that is, but it could be from shuffling around a lot in bed.
I used to work with a girl who had what's called Night Terrors, which included not just sleepwalking, but wandering from room to room, going outside, and talking in her sleep. It's so bad for her that she has to be locked in her room every night. She's been in and out of those sleep labs for years. She works as an Executive Assistant like I do, and is very normal during the day. She says it doesn't happen every night, just a few times per week. She cannot be alone at night, someone must always be around. What a scary/sad way to live, IMO. The good thing is that she remembers little or none of them and has to be told by loved ones if she had another episode.
My Granny has SP sometimes. She denies it, though. Even though she has all the classic symptoms. She thinks that demons are attacking her in her sleep.
A classic description from her goes something like this: "I woke up in the middle of the night, and I couldn't move, and I felt a pressure on my chest, and a big ol' figure was standing over my bed, and I just knew it was that demon coming back for me! And then I felt like I was falling out of my bed, but then I woke up and I was back in it...it was the devil!"
She would virulently deny it was anything else.
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