Woman needs therapy after three week coma, for her it was years and she even started a family but it was all in her head

When Clélia Verdier awoke from her three week medically induced coma her first thought was to ask after her children. The problem was that Clélia had no children. Upon waking up she was faced with the tragic reality that the perfect life and loving family she had dreamed up in her head simply did not exist.

Verdier, a 19-year-old woman from Lyon, France, explained to the Daily Mail that she had vivid memories of giving birth to triplets. All of it felt so real to her, from the pain of labor, to the feeling of holding her babies for the first time, and even the feeling of grief when one of her children died shortly after being born. The false reality her brain had created while her body was in a coma was frighteningly realistic.

Sometimes dreams are hard to explain. In this case, while she may have only been in a coma for three weeks, in her mind, it was seven years. Seven years of making a life and building a family, she had even named her three children, Mila, Miles, and Maïlée. Verdier described how she “felt an overwhelming wave of love,” towards her children and how she watched them grow up. 

She described the distinct personalities of her daughters, claiming that one was “quite shy,” while the other one was “a bundle of energy.” Verdier also claimed to remember walks, meals they shared, and bedtime stories too.

The brutal reality for Clélia Verdier

After experiencing all of that it’s no wonder Verdier struggled to adjust to reality after waking up. She described the shock she felt after doctors told her that her children weren’t real, but the dream had been so convincing she was certain they were, “I was so convinced it was real that the first time I saw my parents again, I told them they were grandparents.”

Coming to terms with the loss of her dream life and children has not been easy and Verdier has had to seek therapy and grief counseling to help deal with the loss she experienced.

This isn’t the first time someone has experienced a whole life in their coma-induced dreams. A woman by the name of Caroline Leavitt went through a similar experience in 2015 while in a two week coma during which she described visiting Alaska in her dreams. Another somewhat famous example comes from a Reddit post 15 years ago. The OP claimed that they dreamed of having a life and family after being knocked unconscious while playing football. They woke up after noticing a lamp in their living room that looked odd.

The strange phenomena is somewhat terrifying to think about and raises many questions about consciousness and reality. For Clélia Verdier it’s something that will stay with her forever. While she hopes to have real children in the future she still felt and experienced being a mother and the memory of her dream children will always hold a place in her heart.