For 3+ years now when awakening I have seen spiders, bugs, words, etc. on my bedroom walls that I know are not real, but are very vivid. I've also seen them on my pillow, drapes, lampshade. I only see these things upon awakening in the very early morning before my bedroom gets bright from daylight. I have not been afraid of these things and my doctor put me on a sleeping pill. (Which I seldom take because I don't want to be addicted.) He says I am not coming out of REM sleep. I don't have any trouble sleeping. Anyone ever experience anything like this? It started all at once in March 2002 and is almost a daily happening. I KNOW the things I see are not real, but they seem so because of the detail. It is not like a dream because I am awake.
I've never posted anything to the Internet, so I hope I'm doing this right.
For the past 8 months my mother has been having an almost identical experience as you have described. In the beginning I would dismiss her "stories" as fanciful or tell her she needed to have her eyes tested. But she continued to have these hallucinations, mostly spiders of various sizes. They seem to her to be very vivid and very real. They crawl along the walls, the bed, the pillow and most recently she has seen some that have floated towards her.
She feels as though she is "losing it" and has even visited a psychiatrist about the problem. My mother has also been on and off of medication for depression which started with the onset of menopause a few years ago. She has told me that she also feels like ants are crawling on her face, arms and legs. Both she and her doctor have been exploring the possibilty that her various medications for depression and hypertension may be reacting negatively to each other. But quite frankly, I don't think that is the cause because it would have started years ago. She has been sent for an MRI scan of her brain and is awaiting the results of this test.
She has been very scared of what she has been seeing even though she knows that they are not real. She does not even want to go to sleep at night fearing what she would see when she wakes up. Yesterday, she told me that she has now started seeing stuff that looks like words or numbers on the wall similar to urdu writing and she was almost embarrassed to tell anyone as they would think that she has really flipped now. This is when I thought I would see if I could get any info for her. When I came across your message, your description and those of the other people on this site sounded exactly like she was describing. I showed it to her and she was in tears because she realized that she was not alone and possibly not going crazy.
There are not very medical resources here in Trinidad and if this is a sleep disorder, I certainly doubt that there are any facilities here that deal with this kind of thing. As a family we do not know where to turn for answers on what could be causing it and what can be done to stop it.
I would be very interested in finding any information on this or any links where I could research it for her and possibly know how to progress.
Halucinations - REM sleep
in Dysautonomia Discussion
Posted
For the past 8 months my mother has been having an almost identical experience as you have described. In the beginning I would dismiss her "stories" as fanciful or tell her she needed to have her eyes tested. But she continued to have these hallucinations, mostly spiders of various sizes. They seem to her to be very vivid and very real. They crawl along the walls, the bed, the pillow and most recently she has seen some that have floated towards her.
She feels as though she is "losing it" and has even visited a psychiatrist about the problem. My mother has also been on and off of medication for depression which started with the onset of menopause a few years ago. She has told me that she also feels like ants are crawling on her face, arms and legs. Both she and her doctor have been exploring the possibilty that her various medications for depression and hypertension may be reacting negatively to each other. But quite frankly, I don't think that is the cause because it would have started years ago. She has been sent for an MRI scan of her brain and is awaiting the results of this test.
She has been very scared of what she has been seeing even though she knows that they are not real. She does not even want to go to sleep at night fearing what she would see when she wakes up. Yesterday, she told me that she has now started seeing stuff that looks like words or numbers on the wall similar to urdu writing and she was almost embarrassed to tell anyone as they would think that she has really flipped now. This is when I thought I would see if I could get any info for her. When I came across your message, your description and those of the other people on this site sounded exactly like she was describing. I showed it to her and she was in tears because she realized that she was not alone and possibly not going crazy.
There are not very medical resources here in Trinidad and if this is a sleep disorder, I certainly doubt that there are any facilities here that deal with this kind of thing. As a family we do not know where to turn for answers on what could be causing it and what can be done to stop it.
I would be very interested in finding any information on this or any links where I could research it for her and possibly know how to progress.