What differentiates night terrors from nightmares

I could have written this. I can't always say what the night-terror has been, I often don't remember what it was when I finally snap out of it. I do know that I feel overwhelmed with shame and embarrassment.

Mine started about 13 years ago, at age 29. They were mostly the same back then: I would think my condo was on fire and I HAD TO GET OUT NOW AS FAST AS POSSIBLE OR I'M GOING TO DIE.

I learned to keep a clear path between my bed and the door. I learned that locking the door was a bad idea; I would struggle so hard to open it that I'd injure myself. I learned that I would generally snap out of it within a minute or so, but there have been occasions where it must have been longer based on where I woke vs where I went to sleep.

The night terrors I have now involve imminent danger to me or my wife. Sometimes it's sort of normalish. Like I would think the ceiling fan was about to fall on my wife and so I would try to push her out of the way. I would usually wake up in the middle of trying to shove her.

Sometimes it's more bizarre. My God, the ceiling! It's a bunch of junkyard cars smashed together!? How can it stay up!? I freak out at the creaking sound of one of the cars breaking loose, its going to crush us. I wake up trying to push my wife out of the way. I'm very embarrassed and ashamed it has happened again.

Sometimes it's "the house is on fire." And probably a million other things I can't remember.

I've seen a sleep doctor, he's a neurologist. Graduated with honors from stanford. He's a really cool guy, my favorite doctor. We decided that stress was probably creating a favorable environment for a night-terror event, and something disturbing my sleep (noise in the room, etc.) would set it off. Something like ambien would only make it worse as when the terror started, I'd have that much more difficulty snapping out of it.

I tried clonazepam (klonopin). It seemed to help, but we had to titrate to get things under control. It took 2mg a night to essentially stop the terrors. It was a huge relief...I regained confidence and trust that I would be able to sleep through the night. That by itself reduced my stress level.

Night terrors can be worsened by stress, and they are in fact a stressor themselves. Downward spiral into the abyss.

After a couple years at that dose I started noticing memory problems. I'm sure my wife noticed them long before me. It wasn't just forgetting, I believe the memories didn't form in the first place. The worst episode, I was writing some code for work, and went to implement something only to find I had already done it. That's strange, I thought. I looked at the git history, and i had done it about 45 minutes earlier. That was bad.

I take a number of medications, and hadn't really had any issues with the clonazepam, so I didn't associate the two. I told my GP about the memory issues, and she said it was a classic side effect of clonazepam. So over a long period of time, we titrated back down to 1 mg.

Memory issues seem to be resolved, although if I take the clonazepam too late, and it's still in effect when I wake up, I can have memory problems until it's metabolized.

Clonazepam is a relatively benign drug in the short term. Not much studying has been done for long term, so that's iffy. I'm dependent on it now. If I go without, I have incredible difficulty sleeping. I won't necessarily have a night-terror, those are still rare now, but I feel like my brain just won't shut off and go to sleep.

Mild "night terrors" are occasionally a side effect of taking melatonin for me. I will wake up and see a swarm of aggressive insects flying towards me, or a large rat in my bed, or a person in my room who is trying to kill me.

The first few times this happened I reacted strongly, jumping out of bed and running out of the room. It would take me about 30 seconds to convince myself that what I saw was not real, making for interesting conversations with my roommates who sometimes saw me exhibit this behavior.

Now I typically realize quickly that what I am seeing is likely not there, and try to wait to see if it will go away before acting.

I used to have night terrors as a child and pre teen. It is the scariest thing one could imagine for those who have never experienced it. For myself I would be partially awake but unable to move hypersensitive to noise light and dark. The whole room would stretch away from me. The hum of the fan or the window unit would ramp up to a deafening squeal. The darkness would turn to a plague of spotted bugs and the light would flicker like a fire. All taunting and terrible, worse then any nightmare.

I had something like this as a kid.

One episode I remember vividly was where I woke up, looked around, and the room was filled with metallic flying saucers each about the size of a large potato, whizzing past my head, clanging as they bumped into each other, and I "knew" they would kill me if they noticed me. It was fascinating but terrifying. It didn't feel at all like how "waking up in a dream" does—I was definitely conscious—I checked, introspectively observing that I could control my thoughts. I hid under the blanket for what must have been at least a few minutes until the whizzing and clanging suddenly stopped, then anxiously checked that the saucers were gone, and fell asleep again.

Probably unrelatedly, I would also occasionally unexplainedly faint, so I was tested for epilepsy and sleep issues because of that. Both came up clean.

The sleep terrors thankfully stopped partway through primary school. I still have the unexplained fainting, but that's a story for another comment.

I sometimes wake with night terrors where I feel like it's the part of the matrix where the helicopter lowers down outside the window and the minigun fires off. I've lept out of bed with the comforter (for some reason) in hand and slammed the door behind me. 40 seconds later I realized that there would prolly be bullet holes in the panel door from the chain gun that I thought was after me. Same for snake in the bed, xxx.

those don't bother me much and are kinda fun.

The ones that used to get me were the nameless horror coming for me or sucking me down into the depths of a basement or whatever. I learned to yell myself awake. not scream, yell... and I put my right hand up to wake me. You feel paralized for a second or so then your hand moves and you wake up.

Then I learned the real trick. As I told my wife, I learned from the matrix... "Tank... I need guns... lots of guns" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mbkWMEMB9s)...

I've gotten good at it so I literally/mentally reach behind me with my hand and then pull forward and dive into sleep... It's really funny actually because I start chasing the dream... or it swaps...

Anyway I told my wife this a while ago... she swears I'm a dream genie or something. She does it sometimes but last week she was being chased by a bear "I don't know why"... I said "why didn't you a) rocket launcher or b) porridge... or you know you love harry potter... levioso!"

But yeah now I will purposfully go back into the worst dreams I have and confront them. It feels super ninja esp when you're not actually awake enough to realize it's just a dream you're fighting.

It also feels very ninja when you are cackling chasing down the nameless horror with a infinite round rocket launcher or a proton pack.

We changed the baity title, bound to raise the usual objections, to a phrase from the article. If anyone can suggest a better phrase (i.e. accurate, netural, and representative of the article), we'd be happy to change it again.