I have a rare sleep disorder. In my early 50s I started occasionally having dreams in which an animal would attack me. In my dream I would fight back, kicking and fighting to defeat my foe. Unfortunately I was actually physically fighting and kicking. My body was acting out my dream. To avoid injury to my wife, we got a king-size bed, later pillows down the middle. The frequency steadily increased from perhaps once a month to two or three a week.
Visiting our son and his wife in Mexico City, I was attacked in a dream by a boar-like creature I did not recognize until I saw it the next night in the movie The Two Towers. I was on top of a refrigerator. It was leaping up at me over and over. Finally when it was high enough to hit, I swung with all my might. I don’t know what happened to the creature but the force of my swing pulled me from my bed, crashing me to the floor, waking all in the apartment. Fortunately I was not injured.
Back home, I was catching up on my reading. The New York Times Magazine, January 7, 2003. When I started reading “When the Brain Disrupts the Night”, I immediately recognized the article was describing and discussing my disorder! And there was a medication over 90% effective! I made an appointment with my physician and he prescribed it: clonazepam. The frequency of my REM behavior disorder dreams dropped to two to four a year!!!
Dr. Carlos Schenck and his colleagues (1986) at a Minneapolis medical center were first to identify and describe REM behavior disorder. Normally when we dream, our muscles are paralyzed. However in this disorder, this is not always the case. These disorder dreams are usually violent. For me animals attack, though a few times it has been a person or people. I punch and kick. Once a bear attacked me and I fought back until I awoke standing in our bedroom punching a standing fan.
Why this blog: My guess is that there are people reading this blog who may have undiagnosed REM Behavior Disorder or know people who might. When I have shared this with graduate students, I found this to be the case. More often it is a husband or dad. In some cases partners started sleeping in different rooms for safety. For some people REM behavior disorder may be an early indication of a neurodegenerative disease, such as Parkinson’s. REM behavior disorder is physiological, not psychological. If you think you may have REM behavior disorder, talk with your physician. If you know someone whom you think may have the disorder, suggest they talk to their's. I am not a medical doctor. As a patient I have found one pill at bedtime and my disorder is controlled.
Schenck, C.H., Bundlie, S.R., Ettinger, M.G., & Mahowald, M.W. (1986). Chronic behavioral disorders of human REM sleep: A new category of parasomnia. Sleep, 9(2), 293–308.
Image by satheeshsankaran from https://pixabay.com/illustrations/tiger-wildlife-animal-predator-8692808/
© John Ballard, PhD, 2025. All rights reserved.
_________________________
Decoding the Workplace. “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education. The best-selling audiobook and CD are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.
Visiting our son and his wife in Mexico City, I was attacked in a dream by a boar-like creature I did not recognize until I saw it the next night in the movie The Two Towers. I was on top of a refrigerator. It was leaping up at me over and over. Finally when it was high enough to hit, I swung with all my might. I don’t know what happened to the creature but the force of my swing pulled me from my bed, crashing me to the floor, waking all in the apartment. Fortunately I was not injured.
Back home, I was catching up on my reading. The New York Times Magazine, January 7, 2003. When I started reading “When the Brain Disrupts the Night”, I immediately recognized the article was describing and discussing my disorder! And there was a medication over 90% effective! I made an appointment with my physician and he prescribed it: clonazepam. The frequency of my REM behavior disorder dreams dropped to two to four a year!!!
Dr. Carlos Schenck and his colleagues (1986) at a Minneapolis medical center were first to identify and describe REM behavior disorder. Normally when we dream, our muscles are paralyzed. However in this disorder, this is not always the case. These disorder dreams are usually violent. For me animals attack, though a few times it has been a person or people. I punch and kick. Once a bear attacked me and I fought back until I awoke standing in our bedroom punching a standing fan.
Why this blog: My guess is that there are people reading this blog who may have undiagnosed REM Behavior Disorder or know people who might. When I have shared this with graduate students, I found this to be the case. More often it is a husband or dad. In some cases partners started sleeping in different rooms for safety. For some people REM behavior disorder may be an early indication of a neurodegenerative disease, such as Parkinson’s. REM behavior disorder is physiological, not psychological. If you think you may have REM behavior disorder, talk with your physician. If you know someone whom you think may have the disorder, suggest they talk to their's. I am not a medical doctor. As a patient I have found one pill at bedtime and my disorder is controlled.
Schenck, C.H., Bundlie, S.R., Ettinger, M.G., & Mahowald, M.W. (1986). Chronic behavioral disorders of human REM sleep: A new category of parasomnia. Sleep, 9(2), 293–308.
Image by satheeshsankaran from https://pixabay.com/illustrations/tiger-wildlife-animal-predator-8692808/
© John Ballard, PhD, 2025. All rights reserved.
_________________________
Decoding the Workplace. “Is this a must-have for managers and would-be managers? Yes.” Academy of Management Learning & Education. The best-selling audiobook and CD are narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon.
RSS Feed