Exploding head syndrome. I kid you not. | Hacker News Reader

Exploding head syndrome. I kid you not.

en.wikipedia.org

19 pointslisper25 comments

Thank you for posting this. I "suffer" from EHS but never knew there was a name for it.

Just as the WP entry says, I experience it just after lying down to sleep. Probably happens 10 or 20 times a year. A loud banging, crashing, or tearing sound occurs in my head. My heart rate goes through the roof immediately, but it's not scary at all. It's very odd. :D

Yeah, I actually have this too apparently, though it's very infrequent for me. I'm not sure what's weirder, that it happens, or that it has a name.

Just for the record, I actually found out about this here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/nrf8s/iama_26_year_old...

sound occurs in my head

What does that mean exactly? Could you describe it? Does it sound like physically outside but you realize by logic that it "didnt happen", or is it clear right away that it's an imaginary sound?

For me, it's usually like an electrical buzz. But sometimes it's more like a gunshot, a tearing sheet of paper, or an indecipherable vocal shout.

The sound does not feel dreamlike at all (like sounds you imagine while in a hypnagogic state.) I can imagine a first-timer might mistake it for an external event and rising in shock to look for the source of the disturbance.

The sound is of short duration (about 0.2s) and is loudest at the end of the sound, cutting off sharply into total silence ("...wwwWWWHOMP!") It's very loud, but not painful like a real report in a quiet room would be. The loudness feels like 120 dB or so. The sound is absolutely "pure," missing environmental cues like position, echo, and pressure. I perceive the location to be smack-dab in the middle of my head, not anywhere outside my physical body (a bit like headphones.) Because of this, and because I have been cued to the impending sound (see below), there is no danger of mistaking it for something real.

The chronology when my head goes boom:

T minus 30 seconds: I'm in bed, eyes closed. It always happens before or at the beginning of hypnagogia.

T minus 10 seconds: I get a feeling somewhat akin to a sudden pressure drop in my ears (but without any popping or physical symptoms). This is a cue that tells me to expect an explosion.

T: The pseudo-aural pressure cue suddenly ends by "transforming" into a short, explosive sound. Heart rate starts to rise rapidly. My eyes remain closed and my musculoskeletal system usually don't react, as the sound doesn't scare or surprise me.

T plus 5 seconds: Heart is beating as fast as it can go. At this point it feels almost exactly like right after snapping awake from a night terror, but without the fear component.

T plus 60 seconds: Heart rate begins to decline to normal levels.

this occurs with me periodically. It scares me in the same way someone hiding and going boo scares me. The first time you're really scared, after that it's just something that happens sometimes.

To answer your question, it doesn't sound like it's in my head. It sounds as if I were to play someone screaming or buzzing over some headphones.

It sounds like a real sound that happens outside me. For me, it sounds like a loud "whack" as if someone hit a baseball in my bedroom. It only happens as I'm falling asleep and it usually wakes me up. It takes a little while to figure out that it wasn't real, especially the first few times it happened.

Same here. It doesn't happen often, once or twice a month but has been happening since as long as I can remember so I always thought it was actually normal... I do seem to have it more when I'm very stressed.

It seems that you fall prey to the "typical mind fallacy". For example, some people thought imagination was just a metaphor, not something that people actually do. Turns out that people have different capacity of imagination.

I don't experience exploding head syndrome though.

Speaking of atypical mind, sometime I experience my vision become white entirely for a few moment. They are so brief that I am not sure that they occurs or they are just my imagination.

I occasionally experience the same thing during sleep as well - never knew there's a name for it. It used to scare me a lot when I was a kid, but after some time I've learned to control my fear when it happens.

It also seems to be triggered when I'm attacked by ghosts or monsters in nightmares, or when I jump off from a building in dreams - my brain seem to use that to simulate death in dreams. After which I'd either wake up or transition to another dream.

Looked though Wikipedia a bit.. apparently this may be related to something quite common call Hypnagogia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

Look under the "Sounds" heading - makes a lot of sense to what I'd experienced. The loud sounds happen when I'm either transitioning from or to sleep.

Jumbled speeches is another thing I'd experienced during such a state - it feels like it makes perfect sense when you're in the state. But if something wakes you up or you're somehow able to summon your conscious thoughts, you'd find the speeches you just heard were just a random stream of words.

Feels like a speeding locomotive rushing through my brain, while you're fully aware of the roaring fury of it and yet totally paralyzed. I can't even open my eyes. When I was 17 I'd get them quite often. One time in that period, my experience could have been described as paranormal. My eyes somehow opened, and the "energy" tore through of my body in a green light that swirled and floated throughout my bedroom. That particular type of experience only happened that one time.

I'm really glad I have come across this... I've had this for a couple of years, about once or twice a month. For me it feels like something is applying a lot of pressure to the side of my head, accompanied by a very loud tingling sound... Only lasts for about two seconds, but not something I enjoy

I too have this occasionally, never really thought it was odd though, I just get a loud bang which is always accompanied by a flash of white in my vision. I suppose exploding head is an apt name for it :)

I also experience sleep paralysis quite often, does anyone else? I wonder if that's related.

Yes. Along with my exploding head, very occasionally I wake into a hypnagogic panicked state where I cannot catch a breath or move. I'm not sure what it is, perhaps sleep apnea.

In my case the two tend to cluster together. I've found that the EHS is usually triggered by a small physical sound in the environment, like the house ticking as it cools. It was scary as hell for me when it first started happening, but I've grown accustomed to it.

I've never gotten used to the sleep paralysis, but thankfully it is much less common for me. Both seem to be triggered by stress in my case.

I used to get that all the time as a kid while waking up. A loud buzzing noise or a bang followed by paralysis, which freaked the hell out of me at the time. It reduced in frequency and eventually stopped when I was 15. I didn't know it was abnormal and never told anyone about it though.

I'm hearing drums sometimes. Weird. Or knock on a door.

If it's not really, really loud and sudden, I would guess that not exploding head, but a hallucination common to hypnagogic states.

In the bible this is referred to as the sound of the river Jordan - its considered a spiritual experience. I used to get it in deep meditation. Blew my mind.

That seems improbable. The Jordan river is mentioned only once in the Bible (Mark 1:5) and it has nothing to do with sound. Nowhere in the Bible do the words "sound" and "river" occur in the same verse. "Sound" and "Jordan" likewise are never found together in the same verse.

I count 179 mentions

http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/index.php?search=Jordan&...

There are many translations.

"A voice of the howling of the shepherds! For destroyed was their robe of honour, A voice of the roaring of young lions! For destroyed was the excellency of Jordan."

Anyway I didn't come up with that idea. Its just something I read the meditator Yogananda say when I looked it up. He said that hearing the head exploding sound is this spiritual thing and that the bible among other spiritual text alludes to it esoterically when it mentions the roar of the Jordan and the crossing f the Jordan.

My head exploding experience sounded like the tremendous roar of a river inside my head. Happened a few times before I found that spiritual interpretation re: meditation. I haven't done much meditation since then.

You're right. I thought the unqualified mentions of Jordan were referring to the country, not the river. But the country of Jordan didn't exist (at least not by that name) until 1921.

Reminds me of some other condition, I don't recall the name. I want to say "night terrors". My oldest had serious sleep issues when he was little. So I checked some book out of the library to try to get a handle on it. Most of it was drivel, like "god, I can't believe you thought someone would need that told to them". But it did have one piece of information in it that was useful, and that was about my oldest son occasionally getting up all upset after sleeping for roughly an hour. I eventually realized he only did this when physically exhausted but not mentally exhausted. So he would fall asleep but his mind was still racing. After an hour, he would sit up basically screaming, due to very vivid mental stuff going on. The book indicated he probably wasn't really awake at such times, but was reacting while asleep. I learned to not let him get so physically exhausted and it went away. The problem never returned.

I think it would be neat if someone who has EHS kept a diary/journal and tried to determine if there was some pattern, some trigger event or whatever, for them personally (my assumption being that triggers would vary from person to person but enough such data might yield some generalizations anyway). It sounds like it may be an auditory version of the visual stuff my son experienced.

I've snapped awake from night terrors many times, and my personal experience is that exploding head is an altogether different phenomenon (although the adrenaline rush is the same.)

Thanks. Though my recollection is that in theory people do not wake up from night terrors. They are asleep while sitting up screaming. I might run it past my son sometime and see what he remembers, even though he was quite young.

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