Hypnogogic Hallucinations: Causes, Symptoms & Treatment (2024)

FAQs

Hypnogogic Hallucinations: Causes, Symptoms & Treatment? ›

They often happen because of an underlying medical condition or during periods of poor sleep and stress. Getting advice and treatment for an underlying condition can help to reduce the frequency of hypnagogic hallucinations. Making changes to a sleep schedule and getting more rest will often resolve the condition.

Keep a regular sleep schedule in which you go to sleep and wake up at the same times each day. Practice good sleep hygiene, such as sleeping in a cool environment. Avoid alcohol, drugs, and medications that may be causing hypnagogic hallucinations.

While hypnagogic hallucinations occur as you fall asleep, hypnopompic hallucinations occur as you wake. Hypnopompic and hypnagogic hallucinations are often associated with other sleep disorders. They're often found in people who also experience sleep paralysis, narcolepsy, or insomnia.

Can anxiety cause hypnagogic hallucinations? Anxiety typically doesn't cause hypnagogic hallucinations, but experiencing hypnagogic hallucinations frequently, especially if you find them disturbing, can cause anxiety or sleep anxiety.

There is a tendency for hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations associated with narcolepsy to be associated with certain HLA phenotypes ⁶ . Tricyclic antidepressants have been reported to be associated with hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations ⁷ .

Hypnagogic hallucinations are vivid experiences that occur as a person falls asleep. Hallucinations can involve visual, auditory, or physical sensations, and can be quite intense and realistic. Although harmless, they may be triggered by increased stress, sleep deprivation, or medications.

Hypnagogic hallucinations are vivid visual, auditory, tactile, or even kinetic perceptions that, like sleep paralysis, occur during the transitions between wakefulness and REM sleep. Examples include a sensation of impending threat, feelings of suffocation, and sensations of floating, spinning, or falling.

Charles Bonnet syndrome refers to the visual hallucinations caused by the brain's adjustment to significant vision loss. It occurs most often among the elderly who are more likely than any other age group to have eye conditions that affect sight, such as age-related macular degeneration.

The images, sounds, or other sensations may last a number of minutes. They may prevent a person from falling asleep. These hallucinations may happen at the same time as sleep paralysis.

Generally, hypnopompic hallucinations are considered harmless and normal. Their presence alone doesn't indicate that the person experiencing them is unhealthy or facing an underlying disorder. That said, some people with underlying disorders are more likely to experience them.

What is the spiritual meaning of hypnagogic hallucinations? ›

Hypnagogic phenomena may be interpreted as visions, prophecies, premonitions, apparitions and inspiration (artistic or divine), depending on the experiencers' beliefs and those of their culture.

Hypnagogia occurs during the transitional period of wakefulness to sleep, when alpha waves are decreasing but you haven't yet reached the first stage of sleep. During this period, your sense of “here” and “now” transitions from the real world to the dream world.

The major characteristics that we found associated with pseudohallucinations were “lack of objectivity” and “presence of insight” (differing from hallucinations). Illusions are unanimously taken as distortions of real objects.

In some cases, treatment may focus on education and reassurance because episodes may resolve over time without additional treatments. If a doctor determines that hypnopompic hallucinations are caused by narcolepsy, treatments for narcolepsy may reduce the frequency of hallucinations.

A number of psychiatric medications such as olanzapine (Zyprexa), quetiapine (Seroquel), and haloperidol (Haldol) have all been associated with causing hallucinations, in addition to zolpidem (Ambien), eszopiclone (Lunesta), clonazepam (Klonopin), lorazepam (Ativan), ropinirole (Requip), and some seizure medications.

Stage 1. Also referred to as the comforting stage,a person may begin to experience a sense of anxiety, loneliness or guilt that can cause them to focus obsessively on thoughts that will relieve those feelings. However, the sufferer realizes the thoughts are their own and finds that they can control them.

A meta-analysis comparing exogenous melatonin to placebo in healthy adults suggests a decrease in sleep onset latency, increase in total sleep, and improved sleep efficiency. The decrease in partial arousals from these effects may explain improvement in patients' hypnagogic hallucinations, but this remains speculative.

Reduce stimuli: turn off radios, televisions, bright lights, or anything else that may cause stress. Address the person by name or, if you don't know it, ask them how they would like to be addressed. The immediate goal of your response should be to help the person focus on reality rather than the hallucination.

When a person is awakened during stage 1 sleep, a period during which most hypnagogic hallucinations occur, they typically don't even realize they've been asleep. By contrast, REM sleep is the deepest stage of sleep and is fertile ground for intense, more narrative-driven dreams.