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anon171224
Post 65

I've suffered from this for the past 5 years (age of onset: 25). I usually get them just as I'm falling asleep and I'll get them a couple of nights in a row & then nothing for months but I definitely think stress is a factor. The two most intense bouts have occurred when I was getting little sleep while working a very stressful job, and more recently while in the throws of writing a PhD thesis.

Things I've "seen" include spiders crawling towards me on my bed, an 'infrared' net falling on top of me, a woman holding on to my lamp shade spinning around really fast and a gremlin-like creature standing next to my bed pointing something at me.

I wake with a start and experience a full blown anxiety reaction and have screamed out occasionally. I can usually reassure myself fairly quickly but with that sort of sympathetic nervous system arousal, it's hard to get back to sleep.

I plan to start keeping a diary of when these hallucinations occur and note down potential contributing factors. I also use a sleep talk recording app as I occasionally sleep talk and want to see if sleep talk is in anyway correlated with these hallucination episodes.

Very reassuring to hear other people's experiences. Thanks!