I keep doing odd things in my sleep, what could it be???

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For about 5 years now I've been doing odd things in the night when being half asleep. I don't do it every night, and there is no pattern either, it just happens on random nights, sometimes more than once a week, sometimes once a week, sometimes none at all.

I know I'm doing it but can't control myself doing it, until I wake up fully and then I realise what I'm doing and quickly get back into bed again and go back to sleep. I do things like being so sure that I've seen a spider and quickly running up to switch on the light, then wondering what the hell I'm doing and shamefully turn out the light again and get back into bed. Or it isn't always spiders - it's sometimes creatures that don't exist that I've been dreaming about, and then I half wake up and something in my head tells me that it's really in my room and that's why I unintentionally run up and switch the light on, only to realise that there is nothing there.

Other things I do is half waking up and feeling around for something that isn't there, and then laying back down feeling all upset that I ''can't find it'', and I either fall back asleep again or wake up enough to realise that there was nothing to look for to begin with, and then I fall asleep again. Also I sometimes half wake up thinking that something is about to fall and make a big crash in the night and wake everyone up, so I rush up to whatever I think is going to fall and stand and hold it or if it's a small object I place it on the floor so that it can't fall (though sometimes I do actually knock it down because it's dark and I don't exactly know what I am doing or why I am doing it really). Thankfully I know I'm doing it at the time, but again I am not exactly controlling this because I am just half-asleep and so still partially dreaming and just physically reacting to the dream. Last night I found one of my teddies that was on my bed been put in a box that was near my bed. I have no idea why I done that, and I worryingly don't seem to remember doing it either, which is a first because I usually remember doing these stupid things in the night.

Sometimes I've even jumped out of my bed in a massive panic and ran out into the hall with my heart thumping (my room is downstairs). I have no idea why I do that because I don't often dream about things chasing me and even when I do I don't usually jump out of bed like that.

I am so worried as to why I do this in the night. I'm not prone to sleep-walking or anything, I've never slept-walked in my life. And it'd be really embarrassing if I got a boyfriend and I slept in his bed and I started doing these stupid strange things in the night. Has anyone else experienced this? Like I said, it doesn't happen frequently, just very randomly, usually happens only once in the night, and sometimes weeks could go by without doing this in the night at all, whilst other times it can happen 2 or 3 times in a week or more. Could anything be causing this?

I know I'm not the type to go associating everything I do, think and say on having AS (like some people here), but since this sounds a little queer and I have doubts that it is common in most humans, could this be something to do with having a mental condition of any sort, or is it just perhaps something some people have an uncontrollable habit of doing? Could it be due to stress, or reacting too much from a dream? I'm worried, please read and reply, please?

First of all, I would like to reassure you that this happens occasionally with myself, too. Not exactly spiders, but quite often I'll be dreaming that I have been given something - an item in my hand - and I wake up with my arm in the air wondering where it has gone, thinking it was real.

When I was much younger, I used to have sleeping issues with lights. For example, the lights from the cars that drive past, projecting grille-looking shapes as they move. That used to scare me alot too. Plus there was other things, like seeing the shapes on certain items and being really scared - (one night I woke up and put my hands over my ears with my eyes tightly closed, after being startled by a towel that was on the chair next to the bed - it had a circular shape with sun-beam style lines coming out of it).

I know it sounds rather strange, but dreaming that things are present in the room with you or something you are holding can happen quite often with some people. For me, it is usually items I want, but then when waking up and realising they are not actually there, saddens me.

As for running around terrified, I did used to do that alot too, when I was younger. quite often I'll get to the top of the stairs when it is dark, where the grandfather clock would be at the bottom. I would walk down the stairs, look at it, and become scared and curl into a ball on the floor. I would wake the following morning in the hallway and remember the action vividly, like it was a dream. But, it had in fact happened.

I am not insinuating you are a child, but that I guess this can happen to anyone, regardless of their age.

I hope someone else can provide some useful into on this if they have found a way to ease it down a little :) but hold in there.

I don't do these things because I'm scared of objects. I just do these things without being able to control it, and it takes a few seconds after the action for me to come back to reality again, and I get straight back into bed and fall asleep.

I never used to do this as a child, but I remember one night when I was a teenager I was half-asleep and I reached my arm onto the shelf above my head and pushed off a lot of heavy books. I then woke up with a start and saw all the books on the floor, but I thought ''I'll pick them up in the morning'', and went back to sleep again.

But anyway, these strange actions aren't really a disruption to my sleep, since I usually can fall back asleep again soon after, but it still worries me. And with the spider thing I half wake up really quick and I'm so sure that I saw a spider that I jump out of bed as quick as I can and turn on the light, standing there in fear and then suddenly realising that there was no spider there to begin with and then I tell myself that it was dark and I had been asleep so even if there was a spider there I would of been none the wiser. This also happens with people - I always half wake up thinking there are all these strangers in my room staring at me in my bed, and I've often panicked and quickly put my head under the duvet, wishing they would all go away.

If I remember rightly, last night I think I woke up worrying that I was asleep somewhere in public and didn't have anything on and I had to get up in front of everybody in the nude, and I laid there for a few minutes panicking and not knowing what to do (I was actually naked in my bed, except for my knickers, because I got hot). But then I woke up fully and realised I was just alone in my room, and went back to sleep happy and comfortably.