TRIGGER:
Anyone else have night terrors? When I was younger I would get them if I didn't sleep well at night, I would go to sleep the next morning or afternoon and from what my family tells me I would walk around saying 'help me' loudly (I don't have the ability to scream... my vocal chords don't work that way, another story) I don't remember this the beginning of the night terrors, but I do remember begging my parents to show me my 'real' parents, feeling that my parents were either aliens or evil spirits messing with me, or that I had awoke in the 'real world' and having the thoughts in my head that my whole life was just a evil genius's virtual reality, having the thoughts that everyone I knew and loved were not real or actually evil, or the same entity.

I also had night terrors when I was in middle school following staying up late (at the time late was 11pm) after watching Black Hawk Down, the Matrix or anything else that had to do with 'numbers'.

The definition of a night terror is usually sitting up out of bed, screaming (thus alerting the whole family) being non-responsive, going to sleep and having no recollection of the event in the morning. FOR ME, I am half-asleep, and I DO remember partial events of my 'episode' as mentioned above. The thoughts of 10101010101010 go through my head, and the concept of infinity terrorizes me. I must say that these episodes are HELLISH, and the worse anxiety, fear that I have ever experienced. It felt like I had just been told that I was going to hell, or that I was in hell all along.

I have told various psychiatrists, doctors and they seem to think that what I am experiencing is not a night terror, but more of a non-specified 'near-sleep flashback state'. Many psychiatrists have ruled out schizophrenia or psychosis, and seem to think it has to do with stress or even post-traumatic stress.

The only other person who I have met with a similar experience was a close friend of mine who had been molested a lot throughout her young childhood. Her experiences were more intense; falling asleep in the bathroom from exhaustion (fear of sleeping and dreaming) and waking up an hour later to banging on the door from her mom while still half-asleep, propelling her into a state where the bathroom actually grew "infinitely" and she was had foreign thoughts in her head telling her that she had to clean it all before she was allowed to see her family again. It makes sense that this is PTSD, since she was molested and although I have been in the US throughout my teenage years, as a child I grew up in a pretty violent place in the world, had multiple things happen to me that I don't wish to share just yet. Seems we both wake up a couple hours after sleeping (through exhaustion) and we don't actually see or hear anything, but we have foreign thoughts in our head, we both have the awful concept of numbers and infinity, and the worst fear imaginable. I know she isn't lying because she was telling me about it one day and my jaw dropped because it was so similar and I had never shared my story before. She also had one at my house once, screaming for her mom and walking around with her hands over her eyes.

Any thoughts or stories to tell? Any similarities? Night terrors are pretty rare and whatever we are experiencing is even rarer.