What are these weird dream flashbacks?

December 5, 2023 2:06 PM

For the past few months I've been having spells where I remember dreams I've had and I briefly feel like I'm living in the reality of the dream.

It's hard to describe, but it's like I'm the person I am in the dream, and I'm remembering it as if it really happened. It only lasts for a few seconds, and if someone talks to me while it's happening I snap out of it, but it's quite disconcerting. I don't remember the dream when it's over, but I think they're usually about people I knew as a kid. I also sometimes get what feels like a hot flash at the same time. Has anyone else experienced this?

posted by Chenko to Health & Fitness (10 answers total)

Best answer: I experience something almost exactly the same as that, and they are seizures from Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. Which is pretty benign in my case. And the clinical explanation is so boring in comparison with the very intriguing experience of the seizures themselves.
posted by asimplemouse at 2:18 PM on December 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'm not sure if I understand what you're describing. If you mean that you remember something as if it really happened and then you think, "Wait, no, that was a dream I had the other night," I think that's a fairly common occurrence. It's happened to me all my life and it's maybe happened a little more intensely as I've gotten older. It seems especially strong early in the day, when I can still be rattled by a nightmare or I'll have to remind myself not to be mad at somebody for a shitty thing they did in my dream. It can be weird but it's never felt like something I needed to worry about. I've mentioned the phenomenon to other people and it seemed like they'd experienced something similar. If you mean that you'll forget where you are for a moment and find yourself kind of hallucinating the dream around you, that's something else and I'd leave it to others to tell you what might be going on there.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:47 PM on December 5, 2023

Response by poster: It's somewhere between those two. I'm aware of where I am and I don't hallucinate, but there's a definite shift where I feel like I'm living in a different reality.
posted by Chenko at 3:17 PM on December 5, 2023

Best answer: Déjà rêvé (from French, meaning "already dreamed") is the feeling of having already dreamed something that is currently being experienced.[

With deja reve one has the distinct impression that the uncanny familiarity one is sensing has come from a preceding dream, but one not usually remembered until the experience is taking place.
posted by yyz at 3:26 PM on December 5, 2023 [15 favorites]

Well I feel kind of silly admitting this, but in case it helps: I used to subconsciously hold my breath when stressed and tried to make up for it by breathing in a lot. Turns out breathing out completely is pretty important too. I had experiences similar to what you described when I did this.
posted by Eyelash at 3:53 PM on December 5, 2023

Best answer: Yes? That is to say, I think I experience something similar, but it's happened for as long as I can remember. Occasionally I'll (mentally) be back in my dreamscape, "remembering" things that happened there. I have a set of connected-ish dreams that sort of happen in the same space. It's as if my subconscious maintains an entire parallel world, which sometimes I dip into. Not ALL dreams happen in that space, mind you.

I can tell the difference between the dream memories and non-dream memories... for now, anyway.
posted by inexorably_forward at 5:20 PM on December 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

By the way yyz, thanks for 'déjà rêvé'! I was already familiar with the related terms deja vu, jamais vu, and presque vu, but not that one.
posted by inexorably_forward at 5:23 PM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Not to be pushy, but if you look up others' experiences with Temporal Lobe seizures, you will see many, many people describing this exact thing using the exact words you used in your question. Nothing you wrote, however strange or vague it may sound to others, is even slightly unusual for this type of seizure. You describe it identically to everyone else.

Please see a neurologist, because it is strange that it had a sudden onset. Mine have occurred all my life and it has been fairly steady and consistent, but the fact that this is new for you is cause for more concern.
posted by asimplemouse at 5:52 PM on December 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

And inexorably_forward, that is also how I describe my experience of these seizures, a sense of a parallel (dream) world, which I'm sucked back into and suddenly 'remember,' in a jamais vu way. That is the defining nature of Temporal Lobe seizures for most people. I'm not saying one has to pathologize it, and it's fun to consider other more mystical and poetic explanations, but they are almost definitely seizures.
posted by asimplemouse at 6:07 PM on December 5, 2023

This sounds quite similar to something I asked about here.

I came around to the TLE explanation but my symptoms faded before my doctor could do any tests.

This was six years ago and there doesn't seem to have been any long term consequences.
posted by antiwiggle at 3:12 AM on December 6, 2023