# Maybe this isn't DPD for me?



## Realiity (Apr 26, 2009)

This is just a thought.
Maybe it's narcolepsy?

SYMPTOMS..
Hallucinations: Some people with narcolepsy experience vivid, sometimes frightening, visual or auditory sensations while falling asleep or upon awakening. 
Sleep paralysis: Sleep paralysis is the inability to move or talk at the beginning or end of sleep.

Microsleep: Microsleep is a very brief sleep episode during which people with narcolepsy continue to function (talk, put things away, etc.), and then awaken with no memory of the activities.

Nighttime wakefulness: People with narcolepsy may have periods of wakefulness at night, with hot flashes, elevated heart rate, and sometimes intense alertness.

Rapid entry into REM sleep: Narcoleptics have unique sleep cycles. They enter the REM, or dream, phase of sleep right after falling asleep, whereas most people take about 90 minutes to enter the REM phase. Someone with narcolepsy will experience the characteristics of REM sleep (vivid dreams and muscle paralysis) at the beginning of sleep, even if that sleep is during the day.

Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS) is the feeling of persistent fatigue, mental cloudiness, and lack of energy, that may contribute to feelings of depression and an inability to maintain concentration.

I can't say that Microsleep happens to me. I don't know.
Ever since I got DP, I have woken up a couple of nights a week in a complete panic.
I am always tired!
I mean, maybe I'm being a hypochondriac, or would prefer this over DPD.. but maybe this is the cause and it's just gotten worse over the past few months?
As I said in my last post, I have been suffering from severe sleep paralysis hallucinations. 
I actually just woke up 10 minutes ago. My room was going up in flames, I could smell the smoke and feel the heat. I couldn't move. I tried screaming. It took me a while to wake up. I could actually feel the pain as the flames were travelling.
I am probably just freaking out and none of this makes sense! I had to search up causes of severe sleep paralysis hallucinations and it said Narcolepsy is the main cause. 
ugh my DP is very bad right now.
IDK.. Thoughts??


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## PhoenixDown (Mar 3, 2011)

crazy nighttime stuff is horrible. I had this at the beginning of DP? Is your DP persistent. If your symptoms are mainly confined to sleep related issues maybe it is something else? I know I had a lot of fear during my sleep when DP first hit, but it subsided. Hope you start feeling better.

best,

Phoenix


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## Totally DP'D (Jun 8, 2011)

the first step to beating sleep paralysis fear is to realise what it is when it happens. If you can think to yourself 'this is sleep paralysis, none of this is real' you can relax and go back to sleep instead of fighting it. It worked for me.


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## baking_pineapple (Apr 27, 2011)

I too experience extremely vivid dreams and hallucinations (music, voices) in the intermediate sleep-wake state. Sometimes I actually rather enjoy it... probably because it's just so much more damn interesting than my typical waking life. Other times, I'm terrorfied and just want it to go away.

Can't really comment on the narcolepsy/DP issue because DP doesn't really make sense when you try to look at it outside of your relationships with other people/yourself. Could be that the sleep isssues make sense in light of other things going on in your life?

I find it very interesting that you described the feeling of being "engulfed" in flames in one of your dreams. I recently read that being engulfed in flames or drowning were the sensations most typically described by dissociatives to explain their experience of being known (and thereby exposed) by other people. This is part of what it was in case your interested:

"A firm sense of one's own autonomous identity is required in
order that one may be related as one human being to another.
Otherwise, any and every relationship threatens the individual
with loss of identity. One form this takes can be called engulfment.
In this the individual dreads relatedness as such, with anyone or
anything or, indeed, even with himself, because his uncertainty
about the stability of his autonomy lays him open to the dread lest
in any relationship he will lose his autonomy and identity. Engulfment
is not simply envisaged as something that is liable to happen
willy-nilly despite the individual's most active efforts to avoid it.
The individual experiences himself as a man who is only saving
himself from drowning by the most constant, strenuous, desperate
activity. Engulfment is felt as a risk in being understood (thus
grasped, comprehended), in being loved, or even simply in being
seen."

"_The image of fire recurs repeatedly. Fire may be the uncertain flickering
of the individual's own inner aliveness. It may be a destructive
alien power which will devastate him. Some psychotics say in the
acute phase that they are on fire, that their bodies are being
burned up. A patient describes himself as cold and dry. Yet he
dreads any warmth or wet. He will be engulfed by the fire or the
water, and either way be destroyed._"


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