Has this ever happened to you? You’re tired. You go lay down to rest. While your body isn’t moving, your brain is racing. You’re thinking about many things at once. Your thoughts are moving at incredible speeds. You’re not quite asleep, but you’re not fully awake either. Your mind is focused on the busyness in your head. The ideas, the thoughts, the thinking, it just keeps moving faster and faster… until… boom!
After that explosion in my head, the thoughts are suddenly silenced. It’s kinda like touching something metal after dragging your feet on a wool carpet. It’s also surprising loud, like a jet raced from one ear and out to the other. I suppose another way to describe it would be like a somewhat painful sneeze in your brain. Usually what happens next is that my mind just rests. My mind is cleared of all the clutter and I’m ready for sleep. Sometimes these brain resets will happen a few times in a row. It’s like a cycle. Lots of thoughts – Zap – Lots of thoughts – Zap – Lots of thoughts – Zap – relax – sleep. While the loop is rare, it tends drop in intensity with each blast.
These brain explosions, zaps, sneezes, resets… whatever… they seemed like a natural occurrence to me, so it’s not something I usually discussed. But today, I felt like writing it down. It’s because I realized something. Certain things are hard to search for online. That’s what everyone usually does when they have a question — they go to Google… or Bing… or DuckDuckGo… etc. I tried searching for an explanation, but I wasn’t successful. It’s hard to find something if you’re not sure how to describe it.
Today, I tried “Brain Zap” and I found something about SSRI discontinuation syndrome. Um, no… that’s not it. I’m not suffering from antidepressant withdrawal. I don’t even take aspirin. (If I get a headache, usually a good nap will make it go away.)
Certain search phrases can have a lot of noise associated with them. Searching the web is a skill. Additionally, the search engines themselves have improved. I decided to keep at it. Eventually, I found something related. Not surprisingly, Wikipedia had something on the subject…
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome
The funny thing is, I haven’t had the exploding head thing in a while. I remember what it was like though and I was wondering what it was. The Wikipedia article cited a page on the National Center for Biotechnology Information website. It was cool to see that someone did some research on the matter. I wasn’t really worried about it. I was just wondering if I was the only one. Nope! Apparently lots of people have experienced the same thing.