existential questions

[ickaimp]

What is the difference between a vivid dream and a halucination?
Does it matter if you do not know if you are awake or asleep?

I got visited by a big dark grey doggie today, who wanted her belly scratched then curled up and took a nap with me. And promptly took over the futon. Yay happy doggie time.

... except that there was no dog.

-caught a bit of that bug that Ysabet and MOrgan had a few weeks ago. Evidently it has a two week incubation period. Think I've been awake all of three hours today, every time I think we've got the energy to run errands, we fall over and go to sleep.

My basis for reality for today is kinda tweaked, so apologies if I have talked to you. Or think I've talked to you and didn't. Something. Yay fever dreams?

... I'm gonna go back to sleep and see if I wrote this when I woke up again, okay?

Comments

[tdei.livejournal.com]

^^;;; You did write this. ::HUG:: Rest well. Hope the bug passes quick. :X ::love::

[mmoneurere.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember (was it in Carl Sagan's book?) that the dreaming-while-awake sort of hallucinations are actually pretty common; it only has the potential to be a problem when you can't sort out what's external from what's internal.

[loqi.livejournal.com]

I thought for a minute there that you were talking about the new holic chapters, but guess not. ^^;;;

And you didn't hallucinate this post! Get well soon! *huggles*

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

Dunno so much about dreaming-while-awake, but I used to have "am I awake or not?" moments all the time, to the point where I devised a test to see if I was. If I took a step and stuck to the ground, I was awake. Funniest part is that sometimes I WASN'T.

[saitaina]

I actually had to look this up, all hail the failing of remembering psycology classes.

Not sure if you really want to know, but I found it intresting to learn/re-learn (note, the scientific wording has been re-written by me in my words)

In reality there is no real diffrence between dreams and hallucinations, in fact they are classified together, the only distinct seperation being one happens while awake and one while you're asleep.

Both contain elements of reality that have been...twisted. Laws of gravity, physics and general order are lost, though often in cases of awake hallucinations the normal (not suffering from a mental illness) person can eventualy realize they are hallucinating, as what they are seeing does not reflect the reality they know to exist (this can also, though lesser occur in a dream state).

Hallucinations occur when the sensory areas of the brain are over active in relation to the stimulus processing centers (umm, can't think of a way to simplify that without dragging out water logged text books).

So basically, you were dreaming, and weither you were awake or not at the time doesn't matter. Neither are harmful in a 'normal' person, especially if said normal person is sick. *grins*

Just try to stay away from things like the stove, flames, possibly taking baths (you could dream you got out and didn't, I've done it while dead tired and if you actually do fall asleep for a bit, you'll slide under) until the sleep/wake period is more regulated and you're not 'zoning out'.

*hugs* Get better soon!

[morgan-idril.livejournal.com]

How come you got doggie? I didn't get a doggie, *pouts*

[snickerer.livejournal.com]

Wow. I've actually been more annoyed that I've been testing things when I'm dreaming and getting the 'normal' results, and so the fun things like flying don't work properly.
Good luck with that, and hope you feel better!