The offspring of Lilith, the first wife of Adam, are known as lilin. They assume male and female form, as incubus and succubus respectively. Lilin are portrayed as both intoxicatingly attractive figures with ghastly deformations and ape-like demonic fiends - in all depictions, though, they possess unnaturally large and cold genitalia.
Manifesting at night, they seduce their sleeping victims within their dreams. In medieval European folklore, repeated bouts of unholy fornication with demons caused degraded physical and mental health, or ultimately death.
Recall back around 4th or 5th grade getting a Precious Moments bible from a family member who was a Southern minister, n me grams lending me Stephen Kings ‘It’ since I loved, & still love reading. In her defense, she never actually read the book.
Switched back n forth reading them. When 'It’ got too scary would switch to the Bible hoping it was less so, and it was totally boringly, zen during those many begets, until the stories sometimes seemed more horrifying than Kings.
Oh the interesting ways my brain made sense of all that! Such vivid, memorable dreams, night wanderings (or oft was so told) n feelings, n experiences!
Not sure if having a night-light made it better or worse?
Lying on your stomach, only able to open your eyes n look around. Feeling this weird buzzy, vibration in your noggin, n then you notice the sensations of being grabbed by the ankles, and slowly dragged towards the end of your bed, and you can just lie there, heart thumping, wondering what’ll happen when you reach the end. N what does the thing that’s holding you looks like?
Or feeling helpless whilst feeling like you’re being lifted up in the air, and then feeling yourself crash back onto the bed.
Trying to escape a dream by sitting up and feeling arms grab you from behind and pull you back into it, and then you actually sit up in a panic finally wide awake n realizing it was a dream in a dream.
The creepy whispering n occasional words heard.
Feeling the scream trapped in your throat n remembering the dream that caused it.
Scaring the crap outta yourself cuz you woke yourself up with your own screams, but the dream is gone.
Dream control therapy classes would’ve been nice to take as a younger human. Would’ve been like the dream master from earlier on.
At least now in the older years learned some skills to avoid, get out of, or to change the course of a dream.
It’s strange the things that stick in your mind, no matter how long the passing of time.
My dreams have been everything from repetitive, vivid n blurry, nightmares or night delights, sleep walking, day or lucid dreaming, even a combination of things….
Recall in a dream having to close my ‘dream eyes’ so I could squint thru to read the words in the dream book. So very hard n frustrating to do!
Yet, what really are dreams? Just head noodle nonsense, your brains way of organizing?, enlightenment? blips?
Some humans sadly (luckily?) don’t even recall their nightly wanderings! So, then do dreams really mean nothing?
So far, dreams have been everything from amazing, to horrifying, confusing, predictive, n making me feel so many conflicting n confusing emotions, n even caused me to doubt reality, cuz sometimes the dreams are so real, they’ve been confused with memory at times, n so many feelings of deja vu.
I can still recall the recurring nightmares that took my grandparents away from me. Over, and over again….
Being trapped inside my own body watching or even experiencing horrid things happening around or to me that I couldn’t control. People have told me about conversations, n things I’ve done, all when I thought I was asleep, n oft have no memory of happening.
Rarely, had some recollection of what happened during a 'sleep-walking episode’, but if remembered, it always felt/feels surreal, or even hyper real, if that makes sense?
Growing up n being advised by a religious family member, I thought I was tainted. Vile. Evil. The thing to be avoided. Cuz you know Wilson Phillips is the devil’s music n no one has ever heard of sleep paralysis!
Tho, even the horrors of dreams are worth it, methinks. When one can rewind a dream to make it better, yet stay fully in the dream, or to spend time making new memories with those long lost, sitting up laughing from a happy dream that’s already faded from your mind, but the overall feeling left from the dream n the belly laugh pain is real n comforting….
The rare, but wonderful feeling of being one with everything, n wondering if you ever actually sleep n 'shut down’ or, the experience of connecting with that 'one’ feeling is so overwhelming, it causes a forgetfulness akin to a drunkards blackout?…
—– In the Woods Somewhere is a surreal-horror, slice of life, LGBTQ comic about arson, ghosts, power-outages, storms, and a high-school student with Narcolepsy called Andrew.
Child sexual abuse can be hard to detect for several reasons. Children’s bodies tend to naturally heal very quickly and sexual predators are known to extensively groom their victims to ensure that little or no evidence of the assault took place.
While this list is by no means exhaustive, it can serve as an initial tool for a concerned party to evaluate whether they should report a possible case of child sexual abuse to the police or local child protective services.
A sudden regression to infantile behavior in a child that does not normally exhibit such symptoms. These include thumb-sucking, excessive crying and bedwetting.
Disturbed sleep patterns, sudden fear of the dark, or excessive nightmares.
A disturbance of appetite.
Behavioral differences such as fearfulness, withdrawal, and crying for no apparent reason.
Lashing out in school or a sudden decline in grade performance.
A marked increase in aggressiveness and/or anger.
A marked intolerance of being touched, even hugged.
Suicidal thoughts and behavior.
Strange clothing, such as turtlenecks or long sleeves in the summer.
First I want to say I hope you’re doing well, and this blog is quite helpful (thank you for running it)!
Second, I saw you put a post covering nightmares in relation to ptsd and c-ptsd, and I was wondering if I could ask a further question on that? Firstly, what’s the difference between nightmares and night terrors? Secondly, would a dream still be categorized if it had nightmare stuff in it (gore or other upsetting things) but you don’t get super stressed over it?
I ask this because I was curious if having a ton of nightmares over years could desensitize someone to them, and therefore make what could otherwise be categorized as nightmares only dreams (if that makes sense?)
There’s no pressure to answer, and please take care of yourself! I hope life is treating you well and to anyone else who may (or may not) read this. Thanks
Thank you! I’m glad you’re finding it helpful. :)
Question 1:
Here’s what I found on the difference:
Nightmares are coherent and vividly realistic dreams that become increasingly disturbing as they progress and result in waking from sleep. Nightmares commonly involve impending danger or distressing themes and provoke emotions such as fear, embarrassment or anxiety upon waking.
Night terrors are episodes of screaming and agitated movement such as flailing or thrashing, accompanied by intense fear. They typically last between seconds and a few minutes and begin whilst still asleep.
A person who experiences a night terror may be mobile, leading to episodes of sleepwalking, and provoke aggressive behavior if restrained. Upon waking, the person may be confused, disoriented unable to recall the night terror episode when fully awake. (source)
Question 2:
So my opinion is that you can have nightmares and not feel (or not realize you feel) distressed by them. There’s a phenomenon called alexithymia, which is an inability to “feel your feelings” or to recognize and put a name to your feelings. It’s very common in situations of complex trauma beginning in childhood, partly because if you don’t have someone in your life teaching you how to identify and deal with your emotions, you tend to not be very good at it, and partly because traumatized children find that their feelings are too overwhelming, so they stuff them down and learn to ignore them rather than dealing with them.
For example, I have had a habit since childhood of bouncing my knee when I’m sitting. For YEARS, people would say to me, “Oh, you’re bouncing your leg. Are you anxious?” And I’d go, “No, no, I’m just naturally fidgety.” It was only once I started to learn to recognize when I was feeling anxious that I realized: when I bounce my knee, it’s because I’m anxious! Those people were right after all! I was anxious, and my body knew it and responded accordingly, but I didn’t consciously realize I was feeling anxious.
I think the same thing can happen with nightmares. I wake up a lot in the middle of the night, and I also tend to remember my dreams really well. So I’d wake up from dreams at like 2 am and lie awake for two hours, and then go back to sleep. In the morning I’d start telling somebody about the dream I had, and they’d go O_O because the story I was telling them was so creepy or disturbing. And I’d say, “But it wasn’t a nightmare, because it didn’t scare me.” Only in the last couple of years have I realized that I wake up in the middle of the night because those ARE nightmares and my heart rate goes up and my adrenaline starts pumping, and it wakes me up. My body responds to the anxiety that my conscious mind isn’t feeling.
So I don’t have any scientific proof for this answer, but that’s my belief, based on my personal experiences: alexithymia can lead to people experiencing nightmares, and their bodies even responding to the fear of the nightmare, while they don’t FEEL like it’s a nightmare because they aren’t consciously scared.
By the way, if you think you might be having difficulties with alexithymia, I recommend the book Being in My Body by Toni Rahman. It’s about how alexithymia and such problems develop and how to learn to feel your body and your feelings more.
We watched the second episode of Obi Wan Kenobi last night, which was great, then decided to follow it up with the premiere of Stranger Things, which let me TELL YOU WAS A BIG OL’ FUCKING MISTAKE.
The ending scene had me hyperventilating and on the verge of an anxiety attack and the only thing that calmed me down was Michael hugging me, three mgs of xanax, and an episode of Bridgerton.
DO NOT RECOMMEND. FUCK THAT SHOW.
The best part of the night is I got to reconnect with @monckey64 who’s one of my oldest friends from tumblr and we chatted for quite a bit. So, you know, that was nice.
Still regret watching Stranger Things though. Don’t think I can stomach the rest of the season. Oh well.
