I have never heard anyone e say a symptom like this, I feel like I am in on this one alone. I honestly do not think it is a side effect from a med because it has happened for so many years now, no matter what I am taking, and when I am off meds, it is like watching a horror show.
ìwas know I am wide awake, but I can see things around me with my eyes closed, so etc especially it is just ordinary things, like I will be sitting on the bus stop and I will close my eyes for a couple of minutes and I can see people walk passed, I can remember what they are wearing, what they look like, ect. UT sometimes it can get so scary I can see blood r u Ning down their arms or their face. A better example ple, I did not go to sleep last night because when I tried, I closed my eyes, and while my eyes were closed I was still awake, I saw written on the wall “your the next to die” I opened my eyes and it was gone, but it is so scary when it happens.
Has anyone ever had this happen to them.?Like I said, it does not happen to often, but it is like I a having a nightmare while I am awake.
there is a theory that this is exactly what is happening inside your brain, that your language, visual, olfactory, gustatory, tactile centres are sleeping and awake at the same time. so you may well get nightmarish imagery in your mind whilst awake. i get it all the time though not so negative. it is a symptom that’s well noted but it doesn’t seem to have a name other than intrusive thoughts but to me that doesn’t accurately describe it. it’s more like being permenantly stuck in a nightmare or day dream within the mind and you see those images all the time. hope this helps as a way of describing what you’re experiencing x
I’ve had this one time very intensely. At the time I had been awake for over 30 hours or something, and really wanted to sleep. When I got to bed I closed my eyes and the most horrific pictures were flashing before my eyes, Christ on the cross and people being tortured and everything. (I am not at all a religious person btw). My auditory hallucinations would jump in and suggest they were transmitting these to me. Visualizing other happy or harmless stuff would help a bit but took so much concentration that I couldn’t really let go and fall asleep.
Although it doesn’t fit this topic, this experience connects to possibly the scariest episode I had during psychosis. I was at a hostel abroad at the time and what happened straight after the flashing images was truly scary. I decided to get up and do something else for a bit since falling asleep wasn’t easy with these horrific pictures running through my mind. I wanted to go outside for a smoke and went for the staircase. When the door of the staircase shut behind me and I walked down I found that the door on the floor below was locked. In fact, there were lots of doors in this staircase on 4 or 5 floors and all were locked from the outside. Some doors the handles were even fixed, and some doors had windows in it through which only pitch black darkness could be seen. It was very scary and dream-like and it reminded me of some movie (I think Reconstruction, possibly Inception has a staircase sequence in it as well but I can’t recall). This is when I was inclined to think I was stuck in a dream controlled by my auditory hallucinations. The evil thing was that there was a way out of this staircase. On the top floor there was a window - but it was obviously too high to jump and not possible to climb out, so it dawned upon me after a while that the only way out was to risk harming myself by jumping out of this window. A very scary episode and it all seemed very much constructed, since it was such a ‘perfect plot’, very much a scenario. Fortunately some people walked by down the window and I asked them to contact the guy at the counter to tell me I was locked in. Unfortunately, these people thought I was on drugs (that’s what I heard them say when they walked away, might have been hallucinated) and nothing happened, they just walked by since apparently, this was sufficient a reason not to help someone in need. It was like I was teased with a glimmer of hope, only to find out that no-one would help me, losing a bit of faith in my fellow humans along the way. It was already after midnight on a monday, and it was a small alley so it was unlikely many other people would come by the window. Luckily another guy went by about 15 minutes later and he released me with the reception guy. It turned out I took a service staircase with big warning signs on the doors that I had ignored.
The neurotransmitters which are responsible for sensory experiences are all ■■■■■■ up in our brains. I see people say things, like I will watch people’s mouths as they say something that they probably didnt because it is usually things that I dont tell people, so they couldnt have known, so I blame the obvious explanation, following the law of parsimony- I have chronic paranoid schizophrenia. An example is how I wrote in my journal about some sexual frustration, well not quite sexual frustration, I’ve been having sex for the past year, more like problems with getting subconsciously fixated on certain people, who come up in my dreams or I will look at pictures of them when I am drunk and on xanax, that sort of thing. I called myself “■■■■■■■■” and this old friend at a party said “youre a ■■■■■■■■” while we were standing outside smoking cigarettes- clearly a hallucination. That’s just an example. Go read up on the schizophrenic brain for a thorough explanation. Our brains actually do hear voices, for example, we show up as having activity in that part of the brain under scans while hallucinating.
I could go all neuroscience babble, but it wouldnt make sense to you and I dont feel like going to my bookshelf and quoting textbooks, I havent even had my coffee yet. I’m a psychology major, I started off as a neuroscience major, so feel free to private message me if you have specific questions. I like being of service. Im just 21 and far from a Ph.D. or M.D. but hey, I know schizophrenia pretty well from the inside and I have very strong “insight” as the shrinks call it when you learn about your illness.
But yeah, that symptom sounds like ■■■■. I would take a higher dose of medication if I were you, or at least tell your doctor about it. You don’t deserve to live with that ■■■■. I can’t take any more medication or it makes me sleep too much and get erectile dysfunction, I already have some trouble with erections some nights so yeah no more meds for me. Don’t even get me started on how hard it is for me to have an orgasm with a girl. My meds make it harder to have an orgasm, girls like it because the worst thing is premature ejaculation, but hey I dont like taking an hour to come. I actually really dont like it and I prefer oral sex or uh the third type of sex. Im seeing a guy right now so its not a problem.
Oh Im sorry I just told my life story. Oh well. Maybe it’s entertaining? Funny? Scary? All of the above?
I have those all of the time. They’re called closed eye hallucinations. I also have them while my eyes are open. That’s how I see my demon. He’s always with me. I used to have visions too where I would suddenly be transported to another reality and a scene would play out. I’ve seen some pretty scary stuff and am forced to see it. I hate it. ECT is the only thing that gets rid of them. I would definitely tell your doctor about it. Good luck! 
I would like to pm you mortimer mouse but I am not sure how to pm, I have done it once ce, but now cannot seemake to find that function. Please feel free to e mail me if you do not mind and explain a little further on how I can stop this from happening without having to raise my meds. I tend to think of all of these happenings as spirits, except it never e ds.
I’ve had closed eye hallucinations. I always thought I was having flashbacks from the LSD I used to take.
I used to have a theory like that. It fits really well. Like when you go to sleep you are immediately placed in a story that was already in action when you fell asleep. Eg. There was no true beginning to your dream; it’s as if it existed before you fell asleep, you just weren’t aware of it.
This also explains why all my hallucinations are almost identical to any hypnopompic hallucinations I get. Same for thoughts, often I feel like someone’s after me and I have dreams of someone being after me. It’s as if our dream selves are actually in an alternate world and it is only our consciousness that switches back and forth. But for us, we have a problem with our worlds merging.
yeah i think it makes sense too. when you think about your dreams…all these characters that your brain makes up whilst you dream, you interact with them, they can talk, laugh, joke, threaten, whatever and you can feel sensations, see, hear, touch, taste, smell. all these things are present in schizophrenia. i hear voices and they can talk about anything. it just feels like i’m dreaming yet wide awake at the same time with these characters my mind has created. dunno…it just seems like the explanation that best describes it.
This sounds really similar to what’s been happening to me occasionally before bed lately. I’ll be laying in bed, then close my eyes and it’s like an image of wherever I was looking in my room is burned into my brain and can still see it with my eyes closed for a few seconds. It’s not scary, though, and nothing is added to the image that isn’t actually there. I’m still not sure if I’m just drifting into a dream or what when this happens.