Dear Dream Doctor,

I am 29 years old and have had night terrors since I was five. In the past 10 years, I have 2-3 awakenings a week due to night terrors. Most often I will see people in the room, coming out of the wall, spiders, cats, and movement under the covers.

Often times my fiance will tell me what I said or did because I don’t remember what happened at all. He will hear me talking (when he’s in the TV room) and come in. Like another letter I read on your site, the light coming on awakenings me. But, it also serves as a preventative measure. When he is supportive and calmly agrees with me and is not challenging, I readily go back to sleep.

I have had many embarrasing situations related to my behavior during a night terror. I awake frightened and shaking, sometimes insisting that it was real. Other times I don’t recall it at all. I have slept walk into other rooms and gone back to bed and had no recollection of it.

Is there a book that you would suggest I get for added information regarding night terrors? It is such a strange phenomenon and I would really like to learn more about it. Another note that you may find interesting, I fall immediately back to sleep about 90% of the time. Only a few times have I had to calm down to go back to sleep. These usually occur withing the first 20 minutes of sleep.

I could go on and on and share stories with you. Please keep up this web page as it adds “normalcy” to those of us who deal with this sleep disorder.

—Kim, Age 29, Female, Engaged, Baldwinsville, NY, USA

Hi Kim—

I am delighted to hear from yet another “night terrors” sufferer who finds that keeping a light on either helps to prevent an episode, or has a calming effect during an event. Leaving a light on is not a well known “treatment” for night terrors, and it certainly is welcome news to anyone who experiences these bizarre “attacks.”

Night terrors often are confused for nightmares, but the two arousals from sleep actually are not related. Nightmares occur during dreaming or REM sleep, and usually have long plot lines involving chase, attack or other distress. Nightmares also usually are remembered vividly, as we are forced into an abrupt awakening at their conclusion.

Night terrors, on the other hand, occur during very deep, non-dreaming sleep (usually in the first three hours of sleep), and typically are characterized by a single, dominating feeling or dream image. The sufferer of a night terror may feel like the walls are collapsing and that he is in danger of being crushed. Or, like yourself, she may see spiders or someone in the room. Night terrors, however, most often are not recalled, because usually the sufferer never fully awakens during the event.

Night terrors occur when the brain gets stuck, as it were, between sleeping and waking. Part of the brain wakes up—this is the arousal we see—while the other part remains deeply asleep. This awake/asleep state explains the confusion and disorientation of people during a night terror, and it explains why it is so difficult to wake them to calm them. (They’re very deeply asleep!) Indeed, much of the panic of a night terror appears to be caused by the disorientation of this “half-awake, half-asleep” state, which often is relieved by light.