Similar. When I am feeling particularly stressed or anguished about something, while drifting off to sleep I have weird visualisations and physical sensations. Sometimes I feel like I’m enormous; other times I feel like I’m tiny and if I’m looking at someone I’m really up close to them, like I’m the size of a gnat and looking at the surface of their skin or a facial feature takes up my entire field of vision. Sometimes I go from one sensation to the other. I’m not dreaming, because I can think “I’m having that feeling again”, and just opening my eyes doesn’t get rid of it unless I change positions in bed. But then as I’m trying to drift off again, it comes back.
I tried explaining this to my parents once when I was a kid. I think that was just one more indication to them that I was touched in the head.
Nope. Just the jerk, and only in my teens. Although, since the jerk was a sensation that I had startlingly dropped about two inches, it would retroactively feel that I must have been floating that high.
My parents used to have a house way out in the country with practically zero light pollution.
In the back yard they had a hammock I would often lay on and stare up at the starry night sky. Sometimes when I would stare long enough I would lose my depth perception. I felt like if I stuck my hand out I could actually touch the stars. A very weird sensation.
I also sometimes get the feeling that my body is slipping away into death rather than to sleep. THAT’S a rather disturbing sensation.
You know when you’re floating in water, and there’s a wave that lifts you, and you’re pushed along a little bit but then drift right back into the same spot you just were?
Sometimes I have that sensation just before falling asleep. I usually am totally unaware of the minute or so period of when sleep is about to commence, but sometimes a noise or distraction makes me peripherally alert, so I experience awareness, then drift into a dream.
I don’t think I’ve felt anything I could specifically describe or nail down, but when I am ‘drifting off’ I definitely feel it. I WELCOME it, entice it, TRY to go ‘there’, because that’s sleep, something I chase every single night, lol. And now these posts have given me something to focus on and try for, so thanks
That happens to me all the time. I won’t be sure where my hands or feet are until I move them. And it’s not that they’re asleep, because there’s no pins-and-needles sensation to go along with it.
When I try to chase that ‘drifting off’ feeling so that I can acknowledge and enjoy it, I end up missing my sleep window because hanging onto that awareness keeps me from getting lost in the drift. And them I’m awake until 3:30. Sleep has to sneak up on me like a villain and club me over the head when I least expect it.
I had this happen to me a few years ago when my neurologist had me try taking Topamax to prevent migraines (I took it for two days. I had such a bad reaction to it that I decided I would rather have migraines.) I was trying to sleep when I felt this massive hand on the side of my face. I thought it must be my husband’s hand, but it was actually my own.
And when an invisible cat jumps up on my bed when I’m trying to sleep, it’s not a kitty ghost, it’s also that sort of hallucination. They take all kinds of forms.
I think an integral part of a hypnogogic hallucination is that one must be in some stage of pre-sleep. My thing happens when I am still fully awake, lying there waiting to get sleepy. But whatever.
I get this, too, and yes, it is VERY disturbing. I actually have a conversation with myself in my head where I keep telling myself to get up or I will die. I am absolutely positive (in my head) that death is imminent. It usually ends in me sitting up with a gasp, as though for air. I had night terrors as a child, and have wondered if this is some form of that. I don’t have sleep apnea (per the sleep lab), but the sensation I get is that I cannot breathe and will just fade into death. It’s creepy.
A lot of hypnogogic dreams involve people thinking they’re fully awake when something strange, like a hag sitting on their chest or aliens coming into their bedroom, happens. We don’t really know when we’re in the earliest stages of sleep.
Not exactly, but similar, and it seemed to be when I was at the point of drifting off to sleep. I’d be up at the ceiling looking down on myself in bed, but the ceiling would be much higher, and looking down was like looking through a wide angle lens. I don’t remember having a feeling of being suspended or supported by anything, just that I was floating. I don’t think I’ve experienced that for some time now that I remember, which is just as well because I didn’t really like the sensation.
I’ve experienced in withdrawal the feeling that my arms and legs were going to float off towards the ceiling, and it was a very disconcerting experience. And I’ve felt like I was floating when I relax far enough. But I’ve never felt like I was close to the ceiling, any more that derealization meaning I felt like I had an actual out of body experience (as I can’t see myself).
