Early warning sign of psychosis-excessive nighttime fear?

DX'd - Other
1

Ok so I know it’s typical of little kids to get scared at night time and sometimes want to sneak into bed with their parents. What I’m suggesting is that EXCESSIVE night time fear may be indicative of issues later down the road. For example even as a very young child I was terrified to be in my room at night. I believed monsters would come to kill me and had many rituals to try to keep myself safe…my parents had to gate me in my room to keep me in there and from sneaking in with them…so when I learned how to take the gate down I began hiding in different areas of the house every night so the monsters couldn’t find me…and this fear at night never went away…not even when I got older…many average kids once they reach around adolescence will go back to sleeping in the dark or get over their night time issues. Not the case for me.

I bring it up as a warning sign because in Elyn Sak’s book (reknowned schizophrenic) she mentions she dealt with the exact same thing, excessive nighttime fear as a young child that did not resolve as she got older, suggesting paranoia may be present from a much earlier age than expected…

What do you guys think? Did you have strong night time fear/paranoia as a child that continued as you aged?

2

I not only had strong nighttime fears and nightmares as a child but I had a very fruitful and active fantasy life. I think I had my first panic attack at 7 when I realized that I was alive, and mortal. I used to imagine snakes and Amazonian crocodiles lying in the shadows in our hallway at night. I would run down the hall to my parents bedroom skipping over the shadows that I thought could bite me. And into bed with them where I was safe.

3

I no longer have nightmares unless I’m really suffering emotionally, but then it’s like waking up thinking i lost my teeth or running from men with guns. Oh. Or my recurrent dream about missing a college class every Wednesday for a whole semester and being in danger of being failed

4

I also had a very strong imagination and created many fanciful and in depth stories in my head…not to mention the strange beliefs I had and how far I got into those…

But I don’t think high levels of creativity is necessarily a marker of psychosis. Maybe in combination with other things…but people with psychosis aren’t always creative.

5

I agree. Sometimes it seems like outright brain damage. I think that my creative mind may have been an indicator of some type of underlying predisposition to mania or psychosis, perhaps A frailty but it took a lot of poking and prodding with drugs to bring out the psychosis.
But no there certainly isn’t always a correlation there between creativity and psychosis

6

As a kid I had ocd, not extreme enough to where I felt unsafe but I kept doing these rituals until I was in my teens. Then it spontaneosly got better.

7

I was overly afraid of the dark and slept in my parents’ bed until I turned 8. I’m still somewhat afraid of the dark, but my fear is more controlled.

8

I actually had an episode at one point when I was 8or9. Sz manifests itself early, be warned.