Dreams and auditory hallucinations

Okay, so, first off, I do know how ludicrous this is, it just rattled me a bit and my opportunities to deal with it are limited before 5am.

I know dreams bear no relationship to reality, however, earlier in the night when I thought I was awake, I heard my father telling me very clearly that (my mother's name) died yesterday evening - just those four words, nothing more. My mother is 84, and our relationship over the years has been a bit fraught (she was severely emotionally abusive to me for very many years) and so this has brought up a whole mess of complex emotions, not least because I can't really call my parents and explain.

Um, yes. Not sure what I want here, it's just early and I'm tired and I'm torn between vague concern that the dream was true and annoyance at myself that I'm not more upset about it.

Don’t do that to yourself. Your mom was not a good mom. You don’t have to make up feelings that normally would be there cause she did not do her job as a mother.

have you read Toxic Parents by Susan Forward?

I haven't, no, I'll have to look it up.

She's become a lot better over the past few years, but it's only been a recent thing and I'm still feeling quite conflicted about her.

I really don't see anything concerning here, other than the fact that the experience in itself is not pleasant.

I don't have a good relationship with my Mother either. She wasn't massively abusive at all, just incredibly difficult to be around and regular attempts at driving a wedge between myself and my partner(s). On more than one occasion she has 'confided' to my partner(s) that I was a liar, and that if they wanted to talk to her they could......what.....the fvck. You know, that kind of thing.

Anyway.

The first time I excluded her from my life I had a dream that she was falling out of a window, and the dream was very vivid, I could see the fear in her face as she fell. The dream was very upsetting and made me feel very guilty, even though I still know I made the right choice. I think it's common for guilt to produce a lot of difficult emotions, even when you know excluding them is the right thing to do.

As far the auditory hallucination, well I've had hundreds of those. All of them in that state between sleep and wakefulness. For me, always voices. I haven't had one for years, but during my peak stress/anxiety years, it would happen at least once or twice a week.

Thanks, Joe. Feeling much better now that I'm in work and doing stuff but still a bit spacy; I spent way too much of yesterday in front of various screens (did get out for an hour or so to listen to the birds in the park nearby, though!)

You're either not mad, or we all are.

Either way..... good company :yahoo:

Fab post from Joe (the longer one above), I can't add anything more....hope you are ok now though, which you seem to be. ;o)

Stupidly tired today - the depression has been staging a flare-up these past few weeks, which accounts for a lot - but I'm basically fine now, yes. Sat at work making a display for the board and sporadically heading out to offer technical support :)

Hallucinations during sleep onset or waking are completely normal sleep phenomena as Joe says. Everyone can have them and whilst anxiety isn't a root cause it is known to make them more frequent. It's just the Hypnagogic and Hynopompic stages of sleep. There are many phenomena you can experience during these stages and auditory and visual hallucinations are well known. It is believed to be because the brain is working very differently during these stages.

If you find yourself thinking about your parents mortality more they age then it makes sense your mind is more likely to use this in dreams as it does other things we have put priority into thinking about. And losing loved ones being a common fear only adds to that importance for the subconscious to latch onto.