Night Terrors

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 10:59pm
Some of you may get these things and some of you may not. They are awful. Essentially it's a nightmare that wakes you up just enough to know you're having a nightmare, but not enough to snap you out of the nightmare. Usually you'll have an impending sense that if you don't wake up you will die in your sleep. But your mind won't let you wake up. It's as though your brain has jammed. Usually you feel completely frozen, and know that if you could just move or scream for help you would wake up and everything would be fine. It's so horribly real that unless you've had them, you really can't imagine the terror. I've talked to a lot of people about them, and those of us that have them always seem to have pretty much identical experiences. The dream contexts might be different, but the feelings and the progression of things seem to follow a familiar path. I'm writing about them tonight because I heard a great tip for getting out of them.
I've always tried to scream or to move my arm or my leg to snap myself out of these things, and it's just a hideously terrifying feeling to not be able to in the face of immediate and impending doom while gripped in a deep panic. The reason for this immobilization is that the brain, when it sleeps, purposely disconnects the large muscle groups so that they don't act out the actions of the dream, such as running or jumping etc. It's a protection mechanism, but in this case it locks you into the dream.
The tip that I heard tonight is that instead of trying to move your arms or your legs, try to wiggle your toes or wiggle your fingers. Apparently the sleeping brain puts less of a lock on the smaller muscles, as they don't present as much of a threat, and a simple little pinkie wiggle is usually enough to unlock the rest of your muscles. Neato huh?