Weird, new events - sound hallucinations

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((If anyone speedreads past something they have experience with I would love to hear about it. Please don't torture yourself ))

Historically been diagnosed as many things. Suddenly this year I am having more troubles. When I am stressed, I've always had overreactive reflexes and been startled easily. Or I will see things in my peripheral vision. That is tolerable after the initial scare. I use a fan so I don't hear noise. Now, I wake up in the night to noise and am completely freaked out. I HAVE to go see if someone is in the house. Even that doesn't calm it down. I don't look hard enough! I try to be a logical person, and am aware of how my brain is hearing a sound -- something like the rain starting -- and creating a whole new sound out of it. And it is so scary. If I became a magical thinker I don't know how I'd live with myself (I know this...my best friend is schizotypal... not a bad thing but that is not my specific personality). I had a sleep test last year for my general sleepiness...nothing, 100% normal.

It has been other stuff. 3-5ish year anhedonia (i don't remember actually) and sleeping all the time, my brain feeling puffy, gaining weight, trips to the emergency room for actual physical problems with no obvious or apparent reason, vertigo attack that lasted weeks for first time ever, just not feeling myself at all. My life has been lost since about 2011 actually. I don't find joy in anything anymore, nor do I remember supposedly fun things as having been fun -- always a chore. My boyfriend dumped me for having no personality or interests anymore...that was years ago.

It is getting so much worse and I didn't think it could. I turned down the only job offer I had last week because the manager was a piece of poo. I thought he seemed like this terrible, super-authoritarian, gender-biased guy. I don't get those vibes from most people, and I don't always trust or rely on these instincts (nor do I believe they're superhuman), but now in retrospect I wonder if this is part of the perceptual problems.

Does hallucinating mean 100% you are schizophrenic or is it an indicator of many other things? This does not feel like depression. I have had hallucinations with depression in the past. It isn't anxiety panic attack. It isn't related to known physical health problems. I am not convinced I am the world's savior or antichrist yet but it feels like I am getting there, in a very disabling type of way.

Plan of action is to get new therapists. My psychiatrist gets too much drug company money (I looked it up), and I feel like my therapist of 10 years on and off would be disappointed in me or something if I told her about these episodes/problems. I know I know...but antipsychotics are awful It wouldn't be a first.

I have not talked to anyone besides my best friend about these fears because my therapist and psych have to this point been conservative with their diagnoses as compared with when I was a teenager...they would just say, breathe, do your counting backward... My mom would say, "You can't live like this! Buck up! You just have to go out there!" I have never felt like these things were helpful, but now I feel even greater disdain for this shoveling of stuff beneath the rug. It is too much and I can't handle it. I did for a long time and now something new and worse is going on! They all know it, too, at some level.

Sorry, this looks like a madman outta control, but I am on phone and cannot edit. And am desperate. Hehe.

Hi, these experiences sound really awful, and I'm sorry it's happening to you.

Are the events all somehow associated with sleep, either before or after, or when you are really exhausted from not sleeping? There are things called "parasomnias" and sleep specialists are folks to see for that. Lots of web pages on them. Kids have them more but many, many adults also have them. One website:

https://www.sleepassociation.org/patien ... ing-sleep/

Maybe some of the other issues are connected too, since lack of the right parts of sleep can really mess up our brains and other parts of our systems too.

I did have something perhaps somewhat similar in childhood for a while. It is so long ago now that I can't remember enough of the details to give you a complete picture, but I did wake up and hear nasty hallucinations. Distorted, garbled voices? Also this really awful strong sense of horror. Some subtle visual things that were weird too, but the night awakenings to nasty voices were awful, I was convinced I was going totally crazy.

So, there are lots of other things that can cause hallucinations other than schizophrenia and the sleep disorders. One I know about... Dissociation related to trauma, flashbacks and such, can sort of involve hallucinations. I'd heard of the depression with hallucinations too.

Since lots of autistics have synesthesia, couldn't that contribute somehow? Just a random thought.

Re. anhedonia: one can also squash one's emotions with dissociation, but I think they are different. Being exhausted messes up ability to feel pleasure...

However -- I'm not a professional!! ! So maybe try a sleep professional? Also if your current therapist is good, they shouldn't be disappointed, they actually need to know what you're experiencing in order to help.

If they act disappointed, that's not professional and you deserve a better therapist!! !

Greetings. I, too, have had more auditory hallucinations than before. I posted about them in a post called "Is this a concern?" if you are more curious. Mainly mine have involved people talking to me externally in word(s), and not while sleeping.

Doing some research of my own (read my username), and I have found that there is such thing as sleep hallucinations. It can be hypnagogic (before falling asleep) or hypnopompic (waking from sleep), which yours seem to be the latter. What to do is to see a sleep specialist, since it affects your functioning levels. Also, you said that you had a sleeping test, and apparently, narcolepsy can be a cause for sleep hallucinations, so maybe you could get another one since it has been a year? Maybe even the daytime one called a Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT), which would help diagnose narcolepsy? A sleep specialist will give you more (and probably more accurate) information, but will most likely ask when the hallucinations started, how they affect you, any physical, mental, or sleep disorders you have, any sleep disorders in family, that type of stuff. The main treatment for sleep hallucinations are:
-Get enough sleep
-Keep a regular sleep schedule
-Avoid alcohol and certain drugs and medications

Here are the links I used for this information and can expand your knowledge on this:
http://www.sleepeducation.org/sleep-dis ... view-facts
https://www.sleepassociation.org/patien ... ing-sleep/

Hope you are doing okay