Hallucinations and nightmares
 

One day I had a nightmare and when I woke up I saw a spider on my pillow,but it wasn't real.I don't know why I am so sure it wasn't real,I just know it.
I told my psychiatrist about this and she only said I should sleep with my mum (yeah,great piece of advice,thank you).
This morning,when I woke up from another nightmare,I saw one gigantic spider on the ceiling and then on the curtains.
Anyone experienced the same things?It's very confusing and it scares me.I take anti psychosis meds (Olanzapine/Zyprexa),but I know it's not psychosis.I don't know what triggers it or what it really is.I tried to google it,to not open an useless thread,but haven't found anything.
My nightmares are not about monsters,but about someone raping me (I've never been abused in any way,so it makes it even creepier).
Can someone explain this to me,please?

you could just be picking up on shadows that your tired eyes transform into something else :/ i donno

I have a lot of r*pe dreams too but although I have SA issues it didn't go as far as that. I don't understand it either, all I can say is that the mind works through subconscious issues through sleep, but remember that dreams are just dreams, they aren't real life.

When I wake up it takes a while to adjust to reality after being in dream world and there's usually a period of time when the two blur and cross over. Maybe seeing the spiders is part of that - you haven't quite woken up fully and left the dream.

Have you spoken to your psych about this?

Sometimes I find it helps to immediately write down what I dreamt. Otherwise, the bad dream lingers with me all day, but writing it down means that I don't have to feel like I need to remember it for the next therapy session and it also kind of purges me a bit.

Are the bad dreams triggered by anything during the day?

Sounds to me like hypnopompic hallucinations, basically hallucinations that occur during the transition from sleep to wakefulness. The opposite is Hypnogogic hallucinations which occur as a person makes the transition from wakefulness to sleep.

They're actually quite common, around 12% of the population has had experiences hypnopompic hallucinations and up to 40% has experienced hypnogogic hallucinations.

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/...ticlekey=24173
http://www.patient.co.uk/doctor/Hypn...ucinations.htm
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1...ations&f=false
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=q...ations&f=false (page 253 right hand corner - page 254)


They're not a sign of psychosis. It's not really anything to worry about and not usually something that would be treated by a mental health specialist such as a psychiatrist, it's more in the realm of doctors who deal with sleep disorders hence why your psychiatrist may have been dismissive.

These kinds of hallucinations sometimes also co-exist with the condition commonly referred to as sleep paralysis, although since you didn't mention being unable to move when awakening I'll assume that you don't have that :P They can sometimes be a side effect of antidepressant medication either during the initial stages of settling on it or during withdrawal. But they can also be triggered by anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, narcolepsy, etc.

Hope my post has been of some help, just to reassure though they're nothing to be worried about :)

I experience similar things to what you described, odd hallucinations just after waking up from a dream or nightmare (insects, floating balls, etc). Hence why when I read your description I knew exactly what it was straight away. Unfortunately there's not much information available on the subject though really. So it's understandable that your searches on google didn't find anything. Unless you know the specific name for it, nothing tends to come up!

Thank you so much for your answers!It cleared it all up.
I'm so relieved that it's nothing to worry about.
And again,thank you!