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.