I think I have exploding head syndrome
Written by emma
Maybe you aren't familiar with this, most doctors I've brought the symptoms up to don't have much to say about it. So here's the wikipedia article if you'd like to read that first: Exploding Head Syndrome - wikipedia
With that out of the way, I think I have this, but there's not a lot one can do about it. The name alone suggests that there's not a great deal of research and wikipedia suggests most people don't bother with reporting symptoms. I always found the name funny because I don't really associate it with my head exploding. It is a loud sudden bang with no echo. I also have the visual part of this as well. When falling asleep I can see a white light sometimes as bright as daylight. It is quite distracting and requires me to open my eyes to make it stop.
That's kind of the weird thing about this, it is quite jarring and alarming in the moment. But you shake it off after a few seconds. For me they rarely occur more than once every so often. The visual light part is more common for me. Tonight was odd though, as I began to feel my body relax into sleep, I was anticipating the sound of an explosion. I don't know how to explain it, I could hear it without hearing it. My ears were responding to the sound of it, but the sound wasn't being made. It became so intense I had to take a deep breath and get up. Robbed of a cozy bed because of imagining the bang rather than hearing it.
But is there really any point in getting help for this? It doesn't seem worth it really. It happens every so often, I am aware it is something my mind is creating and not a noise happening in life around me. When the audio part of this occurs, while jarring it is over in seconds and I know what happened and can relax and usually fall asleep again. But it is just such a weird thing to deal with. I don't like it, but I put up with it. I imagine a lot of folks are in this situation. It doesn't really cause much harm to me besides shortly interrupted sleep. That's not really something I want to start medication for. I've thought about running a fan in my bedroom, perhaps focusing on ambient noise can allow my brain to safely go into sleep mode without need to make noise by itself.
There's no real point to this other than to publicly log tonight's occurrence for myself and perhaps shed some light on what this is if someone out there experiences this too.
Later Gator