It’s night time, and your young child is in bed, asleep. Suddenly you hear crying, or maybe even a scream. You rush to the room to see your child sitting up in bed crying as if she awoke from a frightening dream. You ask what’s wrong, but she doesn’t seem to be aware of your presence and continues crying despite your efforts to console her.
She is having a night terror.
They occur more frequently in children than adults. They are rarely understood, and more frightening to observers than to the ones actually having the experience. In fact, very few even remember the experience the following day. Most of the time the episode ends with the person falling back to sleep.
My experience with night terrors
I experienced this several times as a child (we called it “waking up crying”). What was it like? Well, the distress wasn’t from a nightmare or anything that you might typically expect to be frightening. What I remember were vague, abstract, feelings and situations that my mind wasn’t able to wrap itself around. Imagine a massive boulder balanced on the tip of a pin, or sweeping a large room with just a pin. For some reason these concepts caused me so much distress. But I can see how these night terrors are related to sleep walking because sometimes I would get up and walk around. One time I walked to my parent’s room and started talking to them; in that espisode my visions involved drinking something and I was listing everyone who drank a certain drink and then I pointed to my parents and said (rather accusingly) “and you drank some, too”.
As I got older, the night terror episodes just stopped. Later I learned that many children experience them – including my own son. Maybe it’s genetic. Fortunately, I was familiar with the phenomenon and wasn’t alarmed the first time my wife and I witnessed it. It can be very distressing to watch if you don’t understand it. From the outside, it is very similar to sleep walking, except the person appears upset – maybe crying or even screaming. His eyes are usually wide open, but he is not awake. He is going though is own ordeal in his own mind and is not fully conscious of where he is or who you are, or if you are even there. He might mumble things that don’t make any sense, and maybe move his arms as if to interact with an environment that only he can see.
So what can you do about night terrors?
This is what psychologists currently understand:
- Night terrors usually occur in the early part of the night, about 1 to 4 hours after going to sleep.
- It is a partial arousal from non-REM sleep, so the person is not in the middle of a dream, is not fully conscious, and yet somehow is acting as if he is awake.
- Most children outgrow night terrors as they get older.
When you encounter someone having a night terror, your first instinct might be to talk to him so that he’ll be comforted. But that doesn’t work. You should just hold him gently to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself, and then ride it out with him. And it’s best not to try to wake him up, as that only creates confusion. The episode usually doesn’t last too long and soon he falls back to sleep. Most of the time he won’t even remember what happened.
Most children eventually outgrow them, but there are a couple of things you might try in order to minimize the occurrence, especially if there seems to be a time when it’s happening frequently:
- Make sure the child is getting enough sleep. Children who are overtired are more likely to have night terrors.
- Try waking the child an hour or two after he’s gone to sleep. This is typically just before night terrors occur, so the idea is to interrupt the process before it happens.
Night Terrors and Consciousness
Conventional science would say that during these episodes the person experiences a confused and distorted perception of reality. But there are alternative conclusions. Recent experiments with the mind altering substance DMT provides hints that our brains might in fact be interacting with alternate “realities”.
When large doses of DMT were administered to test subjects, most reported common experiences such as being visited by other beings, and also felt strongly that the experiences reflected a reality that was not just in their heads.
DMT is a substance produced in our brains, but there appear to be mechanisms in place to prevent our brains from producing or releasing large quantities under most circumstances. While not yet proven, it’s hypothesized that the brain releases larger quantities of DMT at various stages in life – such as birth, death, and sleep. Could some release of DMT at a certain stage of non-REM sleep be responsible for night terrors? If so, then perhaps the experience involves an awakening to another reality.
Another clue is the similarity in behavior I’ve noticed between those experiencing sleep walking/night terrors and those under the influence of another mind-altering substance – salvia divinorum. Salvia divinorum has been compared to DMT in its effects, and recent studies have demonstrated how quickly the active ingredient, salvinorin A, is processed by the human brain – just like DMT. In both the salvia and the night terror experience, the person is unaware of his surroundings, and many on salvia are distressed to some extent. Having experienced both (many do not remember their night terror experience), I can say that the feelings are very similar. You find yourself involved in a story-like environment that is not this reality and your brain has a difficult time making sense of it.
And I can attest to the unmistakable feeling that this alternate world is real.
Note to any salvia “sitters”: treat the salvia user as you would someone experiencing a night terror – let him ride it out quietly, making sure he remains physically safe during the trip. Don’t try to interact or engage with him in any way, other than to be quietly reassuring if needed.
Science may one day discover the link between sleep processes and substance-induced altered states of consciousness, leading to a better understanding of our minds and our perception of reality.
My boyfriend smoked salvia several years ago. Since then he has had night terrors would you have any idea on how to counter act these night terrors? Any suggestions are welcome.
@Cherish: I can only direct you to the information in the article under “So what can you do about night terrors?” And, of course, stay away from Salvia. Hopefully, your boyfriend will experience them less and less as time goes on. How frequently do they occur? True night terrors are typically not recalled by the person, so it would be other people who would be affected the most by having to deal with the situation.
This is interesting, because I used to have bizarre and surreal nightmares as a child that used to cause me absolute terror to a degree I’ve never experienced since. The memory of these dreams faded over time until about 5 years ago I started studying shamanism and came across the stories of DMT, some of which corresponded to this terrifying dimension I used to dream about. I would wake up dripping with sweat with my heart pumping, or I would go sleep walking to try and escape the place I was in. Once I remember coming too in my mothers arms and I was crying my eyes out. But I could never explain these dreams as they were so surreal, similar in no way to this 3D dimension. They were unbearably intense. This place was filled with 2D fractals of living light with super intelligence, there was no time or space, there was only foreground and background, and the nightmare would usually end with a humongous triangular light fractal coming into view and it was colossal and terrifyingly intense. That was usually so unbearable I would wake up. The last time I had this dream I was around 14 years old, and I still woke up dripping with sweat with my heart racing, but as I was older I identified it as a dream, and due to the fact that I hadn’t seen this bizarre dimension for so long my main thoughts were to write down what I just experienced, of course I didn’t, and like all dreams the memory of it faded out of grasp.
Also it was interesting reading about the ‘boulder balancing on a pin’ dream you had, because I also have vague memories of some of these night terrors being of abstract paradoxical concepts.
Anyway I came to the conclusion that either my brain was producing a high amount of DMT for some reason, or that this was my experience of my mind dissociating whilst something terrible and traumatic was happening to me (I was raised by a man with a mental illness who was psychologically/physically abusive). Either way the terror was real and I think it has had a negative impact on my life in terms of feelings of survival/safety. However the profoundness of the DMT dimension also seemed to have had an effect on my intelligence.
Thats really interesting. I’ve been having the very similar things you have. The thing about a boulder on a pin. i remember something like that exactly. It was like I was just soooo uncomfortable with the concept that i just couldn’t take it in. I was so distressed and tried so hard to wake myself up because i could clearly see the room but not awake. It never worked. I also saw very disorented shapes when i closed my eyes. Sometimes continuously circles jumping at me one after another and I asked my mom recently and she said I would stand up on my bed and start touching the wall and reaching out for it. It’s weird. I remember once my parents even tried to turn on the TV for me so that i could calm down and it didn’t work at all. Then i would scream “I WANT TO THROW UP! IM GONNA THROW UP!” they bring a bowl for me and i try to throw up but i can’t .
Thank God it’s stopped now. I think my last experience was when i was 12