My mother is 90 years old. She is in poor health but there is nothing major going on with her right now. She isn’t taking any new medications. She is not as sharp as she used to be but hasn’t really suffered from cognitive decline. She sleeps poorly, waking up often to go to the bathroom. She often falls asleep in her recliner during the day.
She told me Sunday that in the last couple weeks she has had a few hallucinations when waking up in her recliner. She feels that someone touches her shoulder and wakes to find a beautiful, well-dressed women standing by the chair. She asks “how did you get in here?” and she disappears. Usually the woman is just standing there but once she held a bag of groceries and once was wearing an apron and stirring something in a large bowl.
My mother is not frightened by these visions and understands that they are not real. I explained to her that this is something that can happen when you are in the between state of sleeping and waking. I asked her if she feels as if she can’t move but she can’t be certain about that. In my research the last two days, I’m not finding anything that really matches how specific her hallucinations are. Mostly, I’m coming across references to the paranoid hallucinations of Alzheimer’s patients and that is not what this is.
Has anyone had experience with this themselves or with their parents?
I have suffered from sleep paralysis since childhood. It’s not all the time, mainly if I’m napping and have not set an alarm (so I try to be good about setting alarms). I’m not sure exactly what you’re looking for in the responses, since all you asked for is experiences. If she sleeps poorly and falls asleep in her recliner during the day, this could absolutely be the reason she’s starting to experience what she is, as long as this is a recent change in sleep patterns.
If she’s not frightened by these visions and understands they’re not real, what is making you concerned enough to post this?
I will add that I would never refer to my experiences as “hallucinations.” They are dreams in which I know that I am dreaming and cannot wake up from them. I think of hallucinations as something you see when your eyes are actually open. But of course, your mother may be experiencing something different than I.
After checking the internet for similar experiences that might help explain what is happening with her, I thought I might find some here. I’m always amazed at the new things I learn in these forums. I’m not concerned, yet, but at this point I’m not really sure what I’m dealing with and any information can be useful. I’m mainly curious if anyone has had visions that are so specific in these circumstances and not just random visuals, which is what I’m finding in my research.
You might want to look into the possibility of sleep apnea. Before mine was treated I would often have hypnagogic hallucinations. I kind of miss them, but not the high blood pressure, weight gain, and risk of stroke that are also associated with sleep apnea.
It doesn’t need to be hypnopompic. It could just be exhaustion related dreaming. There have been periods in my life when I was chronically just not getting enough sleep. I remember one Saturday morning when I was trying to sleep in. The kids were watching TV in the living room and developed a dispute that they just had to have me settle. So they came in and woke me up.
I remember listening to them explain their problem and rendering judgement, and the whole time I could see my dream keep running as a transparent overlay to what was actually happening. They accepted the answer and went back to the TV and I slipped right back into the dream.
If your mother’s not a lucid dreamer, she wouldn’t recognize a bit of dream hanging on as she woke up.
Could her dream consist of sleeping in the recliner, waking up (in the dream), having the conversation with the woman and then waking up for real? Granted, that’s a little Inception-y but it exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening
Or her sense of time what exactly came before or after waking up could be off.
Talk to her Doctor. It may be a symptom of something neurologic. My MIL, who had dementia, dreamed some outlandish things in her last months. She was convinced these things were true. She got mad at me for something she dreamed, and stayed mad till she died. It was sad.
I’ve had hypnogognic hallucinations and sleep paralysis for years. The biggest problem with them is that they’re exhausting. I haven’t had one since I started taking Xyrem.
Remember, hallucinations aren’t the problem. Delusions that the hallucinations are real-- THAT’s the problem. Sounds like your mom knows it’s not real, so that’s a good sign. If she’s tired because of these episodes, that’s not.
That and narcolepsy are things I’m looking into. Since it’s only been two weeks or so I don’t want to go the doctor route just yet. When I said she wasn’t frightened by these hallucinations, I didn’t mean she wasn’t concerned. So I’m hoping that maybe by giving her as much information as I can to ease those concerns, she will be more relaxed and they will stop.
Thanks for the interesting website! I’ve realized that I didn’t ask her if she goes back to sleep after this happens or gets up. If it is a dream within a dream, it just seems strange that it’s always the same dream.
This is what I suffer from. (Interestingly, it looks like it might not be the same thing as sleep paralysis? In which case I lied, I have false awakenings instead of sleep paralysis.) Anyways, it doesn’t sound like what the mother is experiencing, because in the dream you’re going through typical morning/waking up rituals, and I can’t imagine that having a stranger touch your shoulder is a typical waking up ritual. On the other hand, I don’t really know what I’m talking about, and even the scientific research on this gives me the impression that scientists don’t have too good of an idea about what’s occurring with this phenomenon either, so maybe I’m wrong and you’re right.
When I am overtired, I have very specific hypnogogic hallucinations that are similar to the ones experienced by your mother. I have seen a young child in a nightgown standing by my bed (ooh, ghost!), a beautiful vase of flowers, and even a video camera mounted on my ceiling. They are weird since they are so realistic, but knowing what they are, I am just amused by them and try to remember as many details as possible. As long as your mother knows that they are not real, I don’t think there are any issues.
Mine come just as I am falling asleep, and I usually fall asleep shortly after having them. I haven’t had one in a while, probably because I have had good sleep hygiene lately.
I remember seeing a newspaper story about these that said they are fairly common in elderly people but people don’t talk about them because they don’t want to be seen as insane. It also said that they are harmless. Can’t remember exactly where I read it, though.