Recently, I’ve been starting to get more hypnopompic hallucinations. I was always confused how people couldn’t differentiate between hallucinations, there must be something that throws them off?
I was waking up the other day on the couch and noticed by sibling beside the couch with their head against the wall and side-eyeing me and talking. It freaked me the heck out and it was not until later that I realized I was hallucinating. The shading, the composition, the weight, the voice in relation to how close they were to me – it was all very realistic, nothing seemed off.
How does the brain make hallucinations so real and understand how to make hallucinations interact with the 3D environment? What exactly are hallucinations?
Like, I don’t understand why I’m not able to see through (or what’s on the other side of) the hallucination because technically, nothing is there.
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Hallucinations are basically overfitting. Your brain is always looking for patterns. Under certain conditions, it starts finding patterns in noise.
Go in a closet and turn off all the lights. Put a towel under the door so it is completely black. Wait about 15 minutes. You will start seeing shit (anyone would).
Given psychological states like mania, intoxication, sleep, etc., this effect can be noticed in a weird and wonderful and sometimes scary and alarming variety of ways.
The brain is already quite familiar with how reality appears considering it spends every waking moment interpreting reality. It knows how light and shadows work in a 3D environment because you have spent your entire life in a 3D environment with light and shadow.
But, another factor at work is that your brain is generating its interpretation of a scene which doesn’t exist. Those sensations didn’t happen at all, your brain is generating them from whole cloth. They are “realistic” because your brain interpreted them that way; it wasn’t evaluated based on its merits, it was formed already rubber-stamped by your brain as believable.
>Recently, I’ve been starting to get more hypnopompic hallucinations.
Not a problem, almost 12% of the population wakes up to insignificant visual disturbances. It’s just the perception of minor movement of stationary objects due to poor sleep, insomnia, medications, or eye pressure.
>I was waking up the other day on the couch and noticed by sibling beside the couch with their head against the wall and side-eyeing me and talking. It freaked me the heck out and it was not until later that I realized I was hallucinating.
**Major red flag.** A hypnopompic visual is no big deal, but Complex and multisensory hallucinations that are hyper realistic and tangible constitute a medical emergency.
You may be experiencing a psychiatric disorder or a physical brain related syndrome. You need to speak to a doctor about the most recent hallucination immediately. Like right now or tomorrow for your own health.
>I was always confused how people couldn’t differentiate between hallucinations, there must be something that throws them off?
>Like, I don’t understand why I’m not able to see through (or what’s on the other side of) the hallucination because technically, nothing is there.
An authentic hallucination has nothing to do with your eyes. Your eyes gather light and create tunnel between that light and your brain, which interprets that light as your regular vision. Someone with schizophrenia sees things that aren’t really there.
Schizophrenics who wear glasses can still see the hallucination when they take their glasses off. Everything is blurry except the hallucination, and it’s still there when they close their eyes. That’s because hallucinations are born in the brain, not the eyes. You can’t see what’s past the hallucination because your brain is trying to make sense of it; you can’t see thru people anyway, your brain behaves accordingly when it creates a delusion based visual experience.
I’m sorry that this might not read like a ELI5, but a hypnopompic hallucination is like a wall or floor being wavy like the disturbed surface of a pond for 10-30 minutes after waking, **not complex geometric patterns like the human form**, which is a medical emergency.
**You need to go the ER, like today or tomorrow. If it’s not schizophrenia: brain tumors, dementia, frontal lobe damage, drug abuse, food/sleep deprivation, and extreme stress can cause these symptoms as well. Please, please take care of yourself and reach out to medical professionals for support asap.**
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