Visual hallucinations

[kirsten]

I've never discussed my visual hallucinations with anyone with epilepsy and I'm curious to know if mine are the same as others'. For me, my hallucinations are completely real and completely normal--they could be happening but there is evidence that they aren't. And I've also had ones that were quite clearly not real--I once saw soccer ball sized pink bubbles floating all over my garden. It was pretty magical and I just stood and stared for the longest time. Usually, though, it's stuff that could just as easily be real. The one day I saw the curtains blowing and my cupboard door slamming when all my windows were closed and there was no wind, so I knew it hadn't really happened. Recently I saw about 5 black birds just plunging from the sky too quickly to be real but when I looked out the window there was nothing there. Most often, I see things moving that can't be moving. I saw a car pulling into a parking spot but there was nobody driving it. And the things in my flat are pretty much always moving. It's all quite unnerving. They have shown me how powerful the brain is, though. I wouldn't have believed it otherwise.

They don't drive me crazy like my auditory hallucinations--I really can't tell if they are real or not and they can be really repetitive and annoying. Like water torture. Often I'll step into the lift or into some other room and when the sounds don't go away I know they aren't real.

 

[Penny]

I have visual hallucinations but they are always out of the corner of my left eye and when I turn to look at what it is head on it disappears but it can be enough to temporarily scare me. I don't have auditory ones though.

 

[kirsten]

Penny, do you know what sort of epilepsy you have (as in temporal, frontal etc)?

 

[sjconner]

I started with visual, oral, and olfactory illusions. I would see people who weren't there. They would be talking to me but I couldn't understand what they were saying. At the same time, I could smell everything ... very stong ... like every scent was shoved up into my nose. I really and truly thought I was going crazy.

 

[Penny]

I have temporal epilepsy.

 

[kirsten]

Me too. I was just wanting to know how different sorts of epilepsy compare, but then we are all different with where our seizures end up going in our brains, so i guess it isn't that simple.

 

[masterjen]

I've had hallucinations. In particular I've woken to see hundreds of mosquitos buzzing around me and have even swung at them, and I've woken to see people in my room: the brick on one of my walls would form odd images somehow. I was told many times our hallucinations are medication-induced. Look up side effects of your medications, particularly effects of toxic levels, as the level of med. in our bodies can fluctuate in and out of the toxic range depending on how they are being metabolized on a give day. When one of my medications was reduced I no longer had hallucinations.

 

[giveasmile]

I seem to have less of the ones (simple partial?) that I am concious for-- less hallucinations as I've gotten older, but more generalized seizures. Your post, though, brings me right back.

Visual ones for me were usually real stuff at times that made no sense. In college, if I was studying on my bed, I might see my desk chair move across the floor or my pen up and moving. When things moved I'd try to make up excuses like "wind" but it was impossible for wind to move things that were moving. I mentioned in another post that I'd see what I can only describe as spinning dust forming into figures that often looked like ordinary things or ordinary people. The only reason I'd know they were not real was because none of the things I saw could have possiby formed from dust!

I've only recently realized that all of my partials seemed to EITHER be involved with visual, OR auditory, OR offactory, OR touch senses.

Has anyone else noticed that their senses are always separated from each other during partials?

 

[JaneC]

Hi Kirsten, my daughter has seen dogs in our kitchen and the people she was with the previous evening on a train when she was alone. She has generalised epilepsy.

 

[kirsten]

I'm REALLY glad I've never seen people. That would really freak me out.

My sensory hallucinations often coincide. Definitely no strict rule about them being separate.

 

[kirsten]

BUT yesterday in the bath I was ultra-sensitive to smells and that was nice. I could smell all the soaps and shampoos and stuff more strongly. I felt like I was on cloud 9.

 

[Nakamova]

Different areas of the temporal lobes can produce different symptoms: Visual auras such as hallucinations or illusions can originate with the area at the border of the temporal and the occipital lobes, or at the base of the temporal cortex.

See http://www.coping-with-epilepsy.com...auras-determine-location-seizure-focus-18572/ and scroll down a bit for a post listing other auras/symptoms that may be associated with particular areas of the brain.

 

[juzzyk]

I have temporal lobe epilepsy. I have seen floating flowers, jellyfish, a lady with mickey mouse ears on, and a boy running in our house. He was fully colourful and so real I got up and called out to him as I thought he was real. Mostly I see flickering lights and things moving when they are not moving, and shadows out the corner of my vision. Mostly the complex visions are nice but I have had some really disturbing ones in the night such as a big ogre next to my bed and a huge black spider made of lego. During the night I also saw Mother Theresa's face and roman sandal footprints walking up my wall. So bizarre!

 

[kirsten]

Juzzy, these all sound very similar to mine, other than that I never see people. Maybe we have the same sort of epilepsy. Or the same imaginations. lol

 

[juzzyk]

It's good to know someone else has seen weird things. I don't tell many people about that either. It is amazing how the brain works isn't it? When I saw the boy I was so scared that I was getting schizophrenia or that he was a ghost! I'm fairly sure Mother Theresa wouldn't be haunting me though as I'm not a catholic

 

[kirsten]

I don't want to be presumptuous but I'm going to assume you don't belong to the church of the latter day jellyfish either lol.

 

[juzzyk]

Lol. You presumed right. I had just been to an aquarium and the Mickey mouse one happened after a visit to Disneyland, so they are not completely random. Almost like flashbacks.

 

[kirsten]

Ah, I seeeeee. When I saw pink bubbles, I didn't have any pink bubble experiences that day. (I guess there aren't any to be had lol) Out of curiosity, do you also have dreams in animation/cartoons? Because I do, so I'm thinking that must be how my mind works and so it's what sometimes makes me see such bright and happy hallucinations.

 

[juzzyk]

No, no cartoons, that sounds pretty though. Are you quite an artistic person?

I should add, I am not anti religious by any means, my comment above was to illustrate how random these visions can be. I hope nobody will take offence to that comment. I think actually with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy a lot of visions can be religious and in fact people can become hyper-religious. I've certainly become more spiritual I notice.

 

[kirsten]

I'm very artistic but in the writer way more than in a visual way. Still, I'm very aware of visual beauty. I can become quite obsessed with it at times, which is why I've just taken up photography--although I'm pretty shocking at it at the moment.

Yes, hypereligiosity is fairly common in temporal lobe epilepsy, although I don't have a millimetre of it in my bones. You'll find the rest of the symptoms by googling Geschwind syndrome. Have you read The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong? If not, I highly recommend it. She has TLE and her religious visions led her to become a nun. At last, she was seen having a tonic clonic seizure and got treatment, and had a spiritual crisis after treatment when her visions went away. She stopped being a nun but went on to study anthropology, after which she won the Pulitzer for her book, "God.A Biography."