nightmares, hallucinations and spirits

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Sometimes weird things happen to me at night. Weird things happen to most people at night I know but of and on through my life, I go through periods of time when I have violent nightmares that are incredibly real, I fight, yell out loud and kick (sucks to be my wife when this happens. I feel so sorry for her.)

I even hallucinate. When I was a truck driver, I would often find myself waking up at night with the frightening sensation that the sleeper berth on the truck was closing in all around me to do me in. I would pound my fists on the back of the sleeper while yelling.

Lately, I have woke up the the sensation that someone...or something, perhaps a spirit or ghost (at least that is my perception). I;m not saying that is what it is, more likely it is part of an autistic mind, but being autistic, my mind does not rule out the possibility that it might be a spirit of sorts trying ie: contact me, be my friend or even take me home to heaven (or hell, if it works out that way). I try to talk myself back to reality. This is all explainable, I have HF Autism. Sometimes our brain does weird things....OK, most often, our brain does weird things.

Am I alone in these conditions? Please say that I am not.

Maybe you should see a psychologist? It sounds like bouts of anxiety and paranoia.
Our brains can do weird stuff, when trying to handle subconcious conflicts.

No, you are not alone on this. At all. The dreams I have are without comparison.

I once dreamt that aliens were after me but disguised themselves as penguins so that they wouldn't stand out in public. They kept trying to shoot me with their ray guns but couldn't get a straight shot at me as I was wearing a ring made of black hole material that was bending gravity. And yes, the dream was in colour.

I won't go into some of the things I've seen from time to time fully awake - I don't want to be locked up. I take some comfort in that occasionally I haven't been the only one along for the ride who saw them.

All I can say is that there is far more to things than what is obvious.

Or, either one or both of us just might be right off our rocker - I just don't know.

(PS - my sister-in-law is a psychic. You should hear the stories she tells. Makes my skin crawl sometimes).

I don't know if you have Sleep Paralysis or not but most people who suffer from it (look it up!) feel like there is something horribly evil in the room at night with them.

Also look up hypnogogic and hypnopompic hallucinations. You aren't crazy, you just have issues with what is happening with your brain at the borderline between awake and sleep.

I hope this helps.

It's the exception when I don't wake up in a cold sweat struggling to breathe. Thue most common dream is of being chased by zombies, some of whom are deceased family members.

Night terrors and seeing dark shadowy figures out of the corner of your eye are symptoms of salicylate acid sensitivity, which I've read that 70% of ASD people have. Chances are that if you cut out SA's from your diet & detox your body via epsom salts (topical) you may stop having this happen to you.

When I first read the description of these night terrors and shadowy figures 2+ years ago it was a "eureka," moment as I realized that's what went on with me as a kid, and also happens to my cousin's kids present day.

If you're willing to do it, eliminate SA's & detox them and see if you feel much calmer and no longer have nightmares like these.

Shadowy figures out of the corner of the eye and salicylate acid sensitivity? That´s a surprise. I see these shadows in periods, and I feel sick, if I get acetylsalicylic acid painkillers.
Is that the same?

Yes.

Aspirin is simply a strong Salicylate Acid.

SA's are plants' natural pesticide and preservative. They're boosted sky high in GMO foods for those properties. They're very high in herbs/spices and many fruits/veggies and other food and drinks. I avoided them completely (from diet or topical use) for the better part of a year before reintroducing any as the herbs and oils that I used to treat myself were very high in them, but by that time my sensitivity to them had greatly decreased and the only real side effect of overdosing on spices was that the SA's caused me to have to urinate a little more frequently - but I didn't suffer the mental/neurological affects any longer. I attribute this to my digestive tract having healed up some by then, as well as to the fact that I continued to use epsom salt lotion on my skin daily (still do) to keep them constantly detoxing.

Wow - this is good to know.

I had been on low dose aspirin (ASA) therapy for a suspected health condition and they had to take me off of it due to a drug intolerance reaction (I became really dizzy and my tinnitus went thru the roof). I now take omega-3 fatty acids instead.

Read the thread in my sig for a lot more info on what causes salicylate acid sensitivity & amplifies autism symptoms and what I've done about it if you haven't read it before.

For me, dreams states are intensely real such that I cannot separate it from reality. Now, as an adult, I have learnt to separate these two disparate states. I am not psychotic, of course, and doubtfully you are (although I don't know you, but you know what I mean). AS is the antithesis of psychosis in that we are hyper-real. Ironically, this may be why nightmares are so hard to cope with, precisely because they are perceptually real as they are occurring!

So, I do understand.....sorry for your predicament. Incidentally, quite a many Aspies take melatonin for sleep - it is helpful and without the effects of typical sleep preparations. But we warned that melatonin induces sleep by stimulating cerebellar release of the transmitter GABA. This translates into potential problems with sleepwalking (if you are prone). From my experience, melatonin can make the perceptual distinction between dream and awake harder to discern.

Seconded. I was on Bupropion for a while which helped a lot with attention etc but I got similarly weird dreams and false awakenings to boot.

I have very rarely experienced hypnogogic states, but when I have, it is absolutely terrifying.

Spirits? If you read ancient literature, seeing spirits means that someone is trying to cast a curse on you or is in the occult. Often times, meeting spirits, the person would be told they would be brought to heaven, but they would end up being tricked.

Hallucinations. Okay, 1) Do you take meds? 2) Do you think you have schizophrenia?

I have nightmares all the time, mostly anxiety caused.

I need to reiterate again -- hallucinations on the border between sleep and being awake are more common than you might think and are NOT a sign of schizophrenia. They could be a sign of narcolepsy though.

http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2013/12 ... tmare.html

http://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-hypnag ... ations.htm

^ Precisely. Interestingly, teenagers are more prone to experiencing hypnogogic states (which are merely the transition between sleep/wake) as their nervous system is yet developing. I do know that AS individuals are prone sleep disturbances and why good sleep hygiene may be especially paramount for us. If/when I am stressed and exhausted, then it's a downhill slide of sleep problems

An important point is that all human beings require productive sleep. Sleep deprivation induces a psychotic state in even the most normal/healthy individual - it's not a sign of mental illness (e.g., schizophrenia), but merely a function of the role of sleep to our health and normal functioning.