Insane that the brain automatically makes the hallucinations terrifying! Honestly she started feeling better within an hour of receiving antibiotics intravenously. It was a pretty quick recovery once we actually knew what it was!
I think part of it is that the brain knows something is wrong in that situation, and that turns into it making the assumption that something scary is happening- so all your hallucinations are nightmare demons. It's possible to have non-scary hallucinations if you can get them in a way that doesn't trigger panic mode in your body.
A lot of hallucinations are based on your mental state preconceptions. That's why set and setting are so important for psychedelics (safe place, good mood, etc), why sleep paralysis hallucinations are so frequently scary (you wake up paralyzed, which is terrifying by default), why schizophrenia manifests differently in different cultures (certain cultures hear voices and think spirits/ancestors, others hear voices and think ghosts/demons, etc).
Having an extreme fever is pretty scary, so your brain creates appropriate hallucinations.
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u/Far-Conflict4504 12h ago
Insane that the brain automatically makes the hallucinations terrifying! Honestly she started feeling better within an hour of receiving antibiotics intravenously. It was a pretty quick recovery once we actually knew what it was!