The Difference Between Nightmares and Night Terrors

We all have nightmares. When your friend tells you "I had a nightmare last night" you nod your head in silent acknowledgement, remembering the last time you visited the dark stomach-churning, frightening, chaotic and disorienting nightmare world. A nightmare can be simple - showing up to your old high school naked, or having all your teeth fall out in into your hands in a bloody mass. They can be as fearsome and complicated as a horror movie, complete with creatures coming to life in a cemetery, hiding around every corner, or chasing you so close on your heels that you can feel their hot fetid breath on the back of your neck as you charge recklessly through an impossible maze.

When you have a bad nightmare you may wake with a gasp, your heart pounding, needing a sip of water and a deep breath; a little time to reassure yourself that it was only a dream. It was not real and you are safe now. It may disappear like a wisp of fog in the sunshine, or it may remain vivid in your mind, lingering like a bad virus for hours or days afterwards. The thing is, once you are clearly awake, you know it was a dream, a nightmare. You know that those things don't really happen and, even if you fall back to sleep and pick up where you left off, you will soon reawaken into a safe reality where you have solid footing.

"Nightmare" by artist Clearly Ambiguous https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

A night terror is an entirely different experience. During a night terror you not only forgot where you are and who you are, but you forget what you are. You disassociate with your physical body and your physical mind. All that is left is terror in its purest form. You unwillingly emit animalistic screams because you not only cannot form words, you do not know what words are.

You cannot rest assured and catch your breath because you're back in your familiar reality now. You were Elsewhere. You were with Others. Your safe version of reality will never be the same again.

Another person watching someone having a night terror will be bewildered and may try to calm the person down. This can backfire as the person experiencing the event does not know what's happening to them, does not recognize the other person, and may lash out with flailing fists and screams. It's not like a sleepwalker who you can calmly tell to return to bed and they will. The person having the night terror is experiencing an entirely different reality.

I started waking up screaming at age 4 according to my mother. I remember faces, just faces everywhere staring at me. The faces held me frozen in their grip until at last they disappeared and I could scream. Not a roller-coaster-ride scream, but a horrifying shrieking agonized scream emanating unwillingly from a deep primal unknown place in my psyche.

After years of neurologists, EEGs, CT scans and blood tests, therapists and medications, the night terrors and waking up screaming continued unabated. Sometimes I went for years without incident. Other times I'd have three terrors in a single week. One doctor told me that night terrors only occur in adults who were sexually abused as children, but I can promise that's not the case with me. All I knew was that I would be asleep, sometimes deeply asleep, when I sensed something close. Real close. My body was frozen to the bed but I opened my eyes to see a face, a face with huge black eyes, starting into mine so deeply and so close that the eyes pierced my very soul, leaving nothing of my Self except the ability to emit a guttural scream.

I understand now that I was experiencing a different reality that my meager human brain couldn't grasp. Here and now, we use our five senses to interact with our reality, to communicate, to keep our bearings. Our five senses keep us grounded and aware. When they are suddenly swept out from under us and we experience a reality that is not interpreted by any of our human senses, it leaves a terrifying void. I understand now. And I will continue to explain and share my experiences so that others can grasp the Other reality too. It's not terrifying at all. It's just alien. Conversely, our reality is alien to them; thus we are learning from one another.

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