Fear of waking up

A few weeks ago, I woke up from a nightmare to see the vivid white outline of the top half of a baby floating on the other side of the room. Naturally, I was absolutely petrified and thought I had seen a ghost. As it was the week before my UKCAT, I knew I needed to sleep, so I slept in another room. Since my test I have been sleeping at my Dad’s house whilst my Mum is on holiday in America. During my two weeks at my Dad’s, I have woken three times from bad dreams to see the face of the baby on the other side of the room. It was not as vivid as when I had seen it at my Mum’s house, so I thought it must just be my imagination projecting the image of this baby.

Image: Deviant Art

Tomorrow, I move back to my Mum’s house, which was slightly scaring me. So I decided to have a quick look on Google about hallucinations when waking, which I found were called hypnopompic hallucinations. These commonly occur when waking from a nightmare. They can also occur when falling asleep, which are called hyponagogic hallucinations. There seem to be lots of stories online of people seeing shapes and colours (see below), as well as spiders, dogs and also people. But when you see a person, how can you really know if it’s a ghost or a hallucination? As the experiences at my Dad’s house did not seem as real, it’s hard to know if these hallucinations are now just happening because of what I saw at my Mum’s house.

Image: No sleepless nights

Research suggests that these hallucinations are linked to sleep disorders, particularly insomnia. Since I came back from university 4 months ago, I haven’t been sleeping very well, but this had never happened before. It’s possible that I had been worried leading up to the UKCAT and submitting my UCAS application, so I had not sleeping as well. It appears that these types of hallucinations are part of everyday life for much of the population, with one third experiencing them at least twice a week. However, I hope this doesn’t become a regular occurrence for me. Next week I am starting the training for my HCA job and when I start work I will be doing 12 hour days starting at 7am – so hopefully I will be tired enough to sleep through the night without these disturbances!