Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Dreams vs reality - difficulty discerning

My DD mentioned to me that she often has trouble knowing if she is awake or dreaming and it worries her a bit. Has anyone here come across something like this? Is it a typical symptom with ADD and severe sleep issues? Diet? I am thinking maybe it's related to lack of quality sleep possibly caused by psychic seizures or maybe its the psychic seizures themselves that cause this feeling. Any thoughts/suggestions?

Zhuang Zi pondered this question centuries ago. "Am I Zhuang Zi dreaming I am a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am Zhuang Zi?"

And Patti Smith intones, in the song "It Takes Time", "Sometime you can't tell if you're waking up or going to sleep."

So, we might say she's picking up on something in the collective unconscious.

How old is your daughter?

Is the problem that she doens't know if she is dreaming or not?

Reality checks work, in that case.

Watches and mirrors don't work in dreams.

Tell her to glance at a digital clock or watch. Wait a few seconds and then do it again. If the text or time inexplicably changes, then she is in fact dreaming.

With respect to mirrors, tell her to look in a mirror. If the image is inexplicably distorted or bizarre, it's a dream.

She is 18 chronologically, 12 emotionally and about 100 intellectually.

Hmmm, she did start talking about "brains in trays imagining life" and something to do with that she knows regardless when she is in the world and that the walking around her does things there are consequences for in the world...Maybe she is just having thoughts too complex for my pea-brain to deal with?

I'll suggest the clock and mirror tricks, thanks.

From your original post I am making an assumption that she has ADD and insomnia.

Our child has a dx of ADD and insomnia that we treated fairly successfully with alternative therapies for several years, until the beginning of this year. My ten year old PG child started saying things like the example you gave, and for whatever reason, in our particular situation, it concerned me enough to find a child psychiatrist.


Our child now has an additional dx of anxiety; the anxiety was causing some sadness due to it being untreated; I was sad to learn how difficult her situation had become from her perspective.

It wouldn't hurt to speak to a good child psychiatrist for an evaluation, especially since the teen years are before you.

A good psychiatrist will set you at ease as to how he or she rules out or diagnoses conditions; when he or she would recommend medication; also he or she will keep what you said and what your child said in confidence, but also meet together to explain what we all agreed has to be known among us.

edited to add: I read the ages you posted backwards. I thought you meant 12 was her age and 18 emotionally. I'm sorry.

She hasn't just been watching the matrix or something has she? Sorry, that's probably not helpful.

But is it existential, like the Zhuang Zi, or practical, as in she has dreams and can't tell when she wakes up if it was a dream or real?

Yes, she has a formal dx of ADD and PDD-NOS and situational depression stemming from the lack of earlier diagnosis. She has had sleep issues for as long as I remember (never slept much as a baby or toddler), but the sleep issues became very problematic as a teen. Now with ADD meds and melatonin, she is trying to take control of her sleep schedule.

I don't know know if it's purely existential or practical, I think it's both but leaning more towards practical or at least, it's the practical part that's upsetting her. She has told me that she can read and take math tests in her dreams and when she wakes up she can remember and check her answers and they all make sense. She said the clock trick doesn't work since she has a very poor sense of time to begin with and even when she knows she is awake, she loses time (we are pretty certain she has been having psychic seizures, she described being able to recognize if she is tuning out and pause her movie or game when they start to come on so she wont miss too much, but her sense of how long they last is fuzzy).

Maybe the "brains in trays" was a matrix reference? Maybe something in the matrix helped her describe part of what she was feeling, I don't know. She hasn't watched it recently as far as I know and she said this problem has been going on as long as she can remember.

She doesn't want to go to a psych, I think partly due to anxiety and partly fear of being told she's nuts or something.

I'd go for the mirror trick. If you look in a mirror in your dream, it will appear quite distorted.

And with math, yes if you do math in your dream, your answers will be right if you are good at math. Your mind still works quite well when you are dreaming. It's what's producing the dreams.

You could have a sleep study done. She can find out if her sleep pattern is odd with respect to her brain wave states when she's asleep, which may be causing some of the problems.

I am planning on asking for a sleep study once I have reasonable insurance or enough savings to pay for it out of pocket. I have suspicions that lack of quality sleep is causing extreme drowsiness and an on-going dreamlike state.

Do you know if a sleep study will reveal possible night time seizure activity too?

I don't know. You would need to ask a neurologist.

Aww, that must be hard! I think being extremely sleep deprived probably could have that effect!

Hi,

This is my first post in this forum. I've been browsing the internet - doing some research on a whole host of seemingly interrelated topics - and just happen to stumble upon this thread.

I was formerly-diagnosed as a gifted child and placed in a bunch of gifted programs, competitions, etc. It is strange to me that there seems to be multiple high-intelligence profiles. A few of which bearing no resemblance to the others (linear/visual thinker, high-digit/low-digit span, etc). To discuss this more in-depth would be to deviate from the topic of this thread (if I haven't wondered to far already :P) and be irrelevant, but all of this is truly fascinating to me.

I can attest a many things pertaining to this, but I'll condense it to a few short points:

1.) As a former polyphasic sleeper who clocked about 1 1/2 hours of sleep per night at one point, I do see some similarities between what you described and extreme sleep deprivation.

2.) I think that it is a point of interest, even if not conducive to finding pinpointing your answer, that heavy-duty image-streaming, which is also claimed by its proponents to raise IQ -even in adulthood, also causes these same effects.

I'm not suggesting that unbeknownst to you that your daughter is secretly an image-streamer :P. I believe, however, the link between different modes of consciousness may be stronger in certain types of gifted individuals. Perhaps, her giftedness and the symptoms you mentioned go hand-in-hand. As one of the earlier posters mentioned, a visit to the neurologist might not be such a bad idea.

I was wondering if hypnosis would help her; if all else fails.

Interesting bmwoodson, I had never heard of polyphasic sleeping or image-streaming.

After googling image-streaming, I seriously doubt that is something my DD would do. I couldn't get her to try the brain exercises that are supposed to improve her short term memory which is problematic for her, so I don't see her doing that kind of work to improve her IQ which is already high enough to cause her problems and alienate her from most of her peers.

Her sleep habits could be described as involuntarily poly-phasic, I see NASA commissioned some studies on polyphasic sleeping, I wonder if they found similar side effects?

I do think all of the symptoms are related to her giftedness somehow, but I don't want to go to even one "professional" that might miss-diagnose her as nuts, her self esteem is fragile enough right now.

Ametrine: I fear hypnosis, probably because I don't really understand it, but the thoughts of allowing someone to "mess with your head" terrifies me. I would be open to hearing more about it though.

Nik, if you think she's having seizures of any kind, you should get her to a neurologist. The rate of seizures is higher among people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders, and if you see signs, she really should be treated. It could really improve things for her, and help her know that what's going on isn't her fault.

DeeDee

I am torn, it could really improve things for her, or it could make things much worse.

I have not actually seen any thing other than an out of control sleep schedule (which she is trying to get under control) and daytime spaciness/zoning out, but she doesn't lose consciousness and she can be instantly brought back to alertness if I notice her glazing over. It's like her brain isn't getting enough sleep at night and is trying to compensate during the day.

Once she figured out that her symptoms were very well described by "psyhic seizures", we did some research to see what the normal course of treatment would be, should she get such a diagnosis. It seems as though this is a fuzzy area where doctors don't agree, and the seizure meds and their side effects sound horrifying from what I have read on the epilepsy forums. I would rather avoid going down that path if at all possible.

It's a matter of quality of life, she has been dealing with this for years and now she knows other people have the same symptoms and there are treatments she could try if she wanted to pursue that path. She knows what's going on isn't her fault but only she knows if it's disruptive or unpleasant enough to warrant pursuing medical attention and risking whatever side effects may go with that.

I am straddling the line between trying to help her figure out what's going on and how best to handle the things that are causing her grief and hardship on the one hand and trying to avoid making her feel like she is defective and needs to be fixed on the other.

She leaves for college in a week, I am hopeful that having a strict routine and a healthy diet at school coupled with the ADD meds and Melatonin will help. I think her "happy factor" will go up exponentially at school and I pray this will have positive healing effects on her brain chemistry. I may try to get a sleep study scheduled for Christmas break as I will have insurance coverage for her by then.