correspondence on nightmares and afterimages
----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Matt
Date: Feb 26, 2006 2:51 AM
Hi Josephine,
Last night I had a rather rare and interesting experience. My memory may be cloudy and untrustworthy on the details of the dream imagery, but my memory of it is all I have left. I think in the dream I saw this multi-colored energy thing coming my way, engulfing everything around it but still exposing the details of that which it engulfed. As it got closer to me, I awakened, opened my eyes, and absolutely vividly saw this bright, arcing jumbled, jagged line of electricity (or something) about 7 feet long that reminded me of a cross between images of ball lightning I had seen earlier in the day, and the inside of those plasma balls they have at Radio Shack & Sharper Image. It was passing over a few inches above the surface of the bed, and was parallel to the ground and to my body, approaching me from the right hand side of the bed (I sleep on the left). When it had just about reached the center of the bed (and me), like a startled rabbit I jumped out of bed backwards onto the floor, and landed on my ass sitting with my hands catching the floor behind me. From the time I opened my eyes to the time I hit the floor was less than 5 seconds. Maybe less than 3!
Something similar happened twice during a short period of time about 8 years ago, but the images were much more frightening, although still brightly lit on at least one occasion. I think once it was some kind of shriveled spooky somewhat feminine energy head in the bed with me, and the other time it was a scorpion in the bed. Those two experiences within about a week of each other convinced me to give up on trying to pay my credit card bills (which was the source of stress) and simply declare bankruptcy. That turned out to be the right move.
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Hey Matt-
Sleep afterimages are a very interesting phenomena indeed! There are a lot of studies about waking life and unconscious life (and movies.. and 'philosophy'... I say 'philosophy' because I really think it's an excuse for passing intelligent conversation off as academia, as if that's the only place it belongs). Here's what I've gathered that might help you make peace with your nightmares:
There's an underlying physical phenomena to a lot of the weird sensations we have when we are dreaming. For example, when we dream that we are running, the same neurons in our brain fire as when we are actually physically running in real life. 'Normally' (I guess I don't believe in the word 'normally' either) when we enter this sleep phase, the pathway between your motor cortex (which is saying, "Hey body, you should run now!") and the nerves which actually instigate that movement are inhibited. So it's like the brain is sending the message, but your body isn't getting it. There are a lot of interesting disorders associated with conditions where this mechanism malfunctions (animated flailing in bed, sleepwalk murders).
On the other hand, a few times I've heard people report the terror of feeling completely paralysed after waking up abruptly, and not being able to move their body. They consider it a kind of cosmic disembodiment, and THE scariest thing they've ever experienced. I learned that when this happens, it is because the aforementioned mechanism has a natural delay to it- that is- when you emerge from deep sleep, the inhibition of your movement always lags slightly behind. You don't normally notice because instantaneous shift from deep sleep to waking state does not happen very often. When it DOES happen though, you are awake but it seems like you can't consciously get your body to follow suit. Scary feeling, strong mechanism.
Similarly, I would hypothesize and probably some study somewhere would confirm that the same thing happens with the visual cortex. When we see things in our sleep, it is as if we are 'actually' seeing them. Everything occurs physiologically in the brain as if that were the case. This brings up a lot of interesting questions as far as what our definition of 'reality' is, but that's a whole other issue.
It logically follows that if there is an abrupt shift from deep sleep to waking state (say, due to a stressful dream, or just stress), that these images will register in our conscious minds as real, and it can be very startling and disconcerting. This happens to me very often, as I am particularly prone to nightmares.
This manifests in a few ways. During REM sleep, we have what are generally 'situational' dreams. I'm going here, I'm doing this, I'm talking to this person. They usually involve realistic or surrealistic imagery. Think something that you can put a name to, something you can 'see'.
I often wake having a very real feeling that I was just talking to someone who I no longer have contact with, or who is dead.
The other way, which I think you just experienced, is the one that occurs when there is a cognitive crossover during the alpha phase of sleep cycle, where 'dreaming' manifests itself in abstract sensation (feels like rolling hills... sounds logarithmic, looks like electricity) It's very hard to explain these sensations to other people and I'm doing a terrible job about it, but I hope you get the point!
So you experienced a very real sensation of a disembodied feminine presence and as you awoke, your brain registered it as if your eyes were actually reporting it. You 'saw it with your own eyes', which makes it very real to you. That's effin' scary, you're right! I think these are the most frightening types of dream afterimages because they seem otherworldly, as if they should not be there.
As far as dealing with things like this, I find that it helps me to understand the underlying mechanisms of these things. Then when I wake up, even though the instinctive limbic part of me will continue to be freaked out, the logical part gets all excited. So instead of "Eek! Call the shrink!" I'm thinking, "aw.... neat. afterimages."
Stress is a tricky thing. I attribute a lot of things to being stressed out and I think the universal question is how to best alleviate the condition. I always (try, at least, to) experience the negative as therapeutic and necessary, because no matter what we will always have stress in our life.
In this case I always think of my nightmares as my brain's way of efficiently purging stress from my mind. Ever have dreams where something crazy is happening to your teeth? I've found that this is the most common anxiety-related dream. I'm still not sure why. Regardless, anxiety often manifests itself this way in deep sleep, and generally fades into the morning. You vaguely remember being pretty stressed out about it in your dream, but later in the day all you're thinking/feeling is 'man that was weird. I'm glad it was JUST A DREAM', as if that erases the fact that you experienced it in a very 'real' way. It's as if we inherently know what our dreams are cut out to do.
Everyone knows that when you dream, it's very difficult to remember what you dreamt the next day, and it fades more and more as the day goes by (unless you write it down or talk about it, which is also constructive in a completely different way). So when you have nightmares/ nightmare afterimages, just know that your brain is handling stress in it's own way, and chances are, without even having to be conscious of it, a lot of stress relief has occurred.
I know that in the times people have left my life in a painful way, I often have dreams that we are still on good terms. These are cruel dreams, but the more I have them, the more the painful memory fades. It's like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for people without fancy theoretical gizmos.
I don't know if this helped at all. Damn, this is a long ass e-mail- but just try to think of these experiences as things that relieve you of your stress, not add to it. It works well for me!
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