ponderings of tv treatment of mental stuff

[burntcopper]

Okay, we've just had the Van Gogh ep of Dr Who, where by several accounts they treated his depression pretty well.

Which makes me ponder something.

I get, occasionally, but haven't for years (got it mostly as a child) the type of night terrors which are a kind of sleeping sickness. Mediumly well-catalogued,and generally understood to be what gave rise to in medieval times the myth of the succubus/incubus, the black hag and in current times alien abduction. (Didn't turn off the tv as a teen once, it segued into a program about this condition and I started counting off symptoms on my fingers and went '...other people get this? Seriously, you're narcissitic enough to delude yourself into thinking it's alien abduction?') Essentially, you're partway through lucid dreaming, you think you're awake, you know damn well you're still in your own room, but you're paralysed. Add floating sensation, the feel like your body is expanding/contracting/doing some very weird shit, but you have no control over this. Sound is magnified but partly like you're underwater, and lights are either very bright or dark. It is utterly fucking terrifying. Oh, and you wake up completely fucking exhausted and it's not uncommon to go through a few days' worth.

So, not uncommon for sci-fi and fantasy tv to have this, or to be investigating this. However, every damn time it turns out to be mental control/aliens/succubus.

For once, I want it to turn out to be simply night terrors. If only to *not* pander to the alien abductees.

Comments

[crystalshard.livejournal.com]

This happens to other people? Phew.

I haven't had it in years, but I do remember one from my childhood. I was in bed, convinced I was awake, and looking out of my bedroom door. There was a man standing there in a trenchcoat and fedora (not that I knew the names for those pieces of clothing at the time). I couldn't see his face, which was all in shadows, but I was terrified. I remember trying to scream and being unable to . . . and then I could. I was still in the same position (up on my elbow), but definitely awake, as the man had vanished. I just remember being paralysed and being convinced that I was awake.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

yeah, it turns out it's not ...uncommon, exactly. Mention it in a group and you'll often get one person who goes 'oh, hang on, *that*?'

Everyone's heard of alien abduction/succubus/black hag, but since it's not often that said 'victims' ever break down the experience properly and tend to add a whole bunch of fantasising over the top, the people who aren't attention seekers tend not to tell anyone else, having dismissed it as bad dreams once they properly woke up. (the program I watched also went through the personality type of the ones who insisted they'd been abducted. A bit lonely, intelligent, often not quite social, and a whole heap of attention seeking.)

[minim_calibre]

I used to refer to it in my head as getting trapped in sleep before I knew anyone else had it.

I'd add to "wake up completely fucking exhausted" "and the last thing you want to do is go back to sleep" but that last part may not be as universal.

For once, I want it to turn out to be simply night terrors. If only to *not* pander to the alien abductees.

Me too.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

not wanting to go back to sleep is completely understandable.

I think I heard it referred to as sleep paralysis once, but is there a technical term for it?

[minim_calibre]

I think that is the technical term for it.

[peterjevans.livejournal.com]

I think it’s one of those phenomena that’s common enough for a significant number of people to experience, but still rare enough for few people to know about it. The lack of intersection between the two groups is what gives rise to folklore.

I’ve had it a few times, but not regularly. The one I remember best was absolutely classic Incubus: I was seemingly conscious, aware of my surroundings, but paralysed by a crushing, invisible weight on my chest. And I was convinced, while in that state, that I was being attacked by Yog-Sothoth, which only goes to prove that it’s your own mental landscape that provides the ‘cause’: in times gone by, evil spirits, and aliens these days.

Once I’d awoken, and was lying there trying to remember how to breathe, I remember the small area of my brain that was still rational connecting the experience and what I’d read about the Incubus legends and so-on, and thinking: “Well. That explains a lot…”

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

Yog Sothoth sounds a lot more interesting than succubi.