Sleep paralysis
For many years now I've had these really disturbing occurances happen now and then in my sleep where I wake up, open my eyes, and can see the room where I'm sleeping, but I can't move and I vividly hallucinate. And it takes a lot of effort for me to break out of it and truly wake up, after which I feel this sense of fading panic and terror.
It turns out this is simply called 'sleep paralysis', and it's apparently well-documented.
According to Wikipedia:
Sleep paralysis is a condition characterized by temporary paralysis of the body shortly after waking up (known as hypnopompic paralysis) or, less often, shortly before falling asleep (known as hypnagogic paralysis).
Physiologically, it is closely related to the normal paralysis that occurs during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, also known as REM atonia. Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain is awakened from an REM state into essentially a normal fully awake state, but the bodily paralysis is still occurring. This causes the person to be fully aware, but unable to move. In addition, this state may be accompanied by hypnagogic hallucinations.
More often than not, sleep paralysis is believed by the person affected by it to be no more than a dream. This is the reason why there are many dream recountings which describe the person lying frozen and unable to move. The hallucinatory element to sleep paralysis makes it even more likely that someone will interpret the experience as simply a dream, as one might see completely fanciful objects in a room alongside the normal vision one can see.
Actually, that last paragraph is completely the opposite for me. After I first started having these 'waking dreams' it took several occurences of them for me to realize I actually was dreaming. For several months I seriously thought I was just going insane! One thing that has never varied for me when going through these occurances of sleep paralysis is that after my eyes have opened and I'm seeing at the room in which I'm sleeping, the accompanying hallucinations have always taking the following form (with variations on the general theme): I sense some malevolent presence intent on doing me great harm. This entity knows that I am unable to move. And I feel that it is critically important that I get up and out of my bed, out of my room, even out of my house before the entity can reach me. And I frantically try to move my frozen limbs as the malevolent presense manifests itself and begins to close the distance between it and me. The first time I had one of these waking dreams, the entity took the form of an icy, glowing hand reaching out of a portal from a parallel universe that I could only see vaguely out of the corner of my eye because the portal had opened right beside my head (which I was unable to move). It was the hand of a ghost that was seeking to pull me into his own universe. Several other times it has been a thin man, probably not even human, dressed all in black, wearing a cloak and a gas mask, patiently shuffling one inch at a time toward my bed.
I've always managed to sit up before these entities reach me, and at that point everything that I've been hallucinating instantly snaps out of existence, but my heartrate is up, my breathing is labored, and my eyes feel like they're about to bulge out of my skull from pure fright. I've learned that it's very important to get up and stay awake for a while after having these dreams; if I lay back down, the dream usually resumes from where it left off, and it's just as hard to wake up again. On one occasion I began having one of these dreams while two of my friends were in the room. I could see and hear them talking to each other casually, but I could also sense a malevolent force taking form somewhere nearby. I realized immediately that I was having a waking dream, and I frantically tried to tell them, begged them even, to wake me up. To shake me, lift me onto my feet, or pull me by my legs, anything. But I couldn't move my jaw and all I could do was moan and sputter gibberish. They turned and looked at me, then left the room. I managed to wake up on my own with considerable effort shortly afterward. My friends later told me that they thought I was just talking in my sleep, and it had been too dark in the room for them to see that my eyes had been open.
Anyway, I really really don't want to have these dreams anymore. Nothing I've read offers many useful cures, but for now it definitely makes me feel a bit better that this is a known condition and that it's not just me going bonkers.
It turns out this is simply called 'sleep paralysis', and it's apparently well-documented.
According to Wikipedia:
Sleep paralysis is a condition characterized by temporary paralysis of the body shortly after waking up (known as hypnopompic paralysis) or, less often, shortly before falling asleep (known as hypnagogic paralysis).
Physiologically, it is closely related to the normal paralysis that occurs during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, also known as REM atonia. Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain is awakened from an REM state into essentially a normal fully awake state, but the bodily paralysis is still occurring. This causes the person to be fully aware, but unable to move. In addition, this state may be accompanied by hypnagogic hallucinations.
More often than not, sleep paralysis is believed by the person affected by it to be no more than a dream. This is the reason why there are many dream recountings which describe the person lying frozen and unable to move. The hallucinatory element to sleep paralysis makes it even more likely that someone will interpret the experience as simply a dream, as one might see completely fanciful objects in a room alongside the normal vision one can see.
Actually, that last paragraph is completely the opposite for me. After I first started having these 'waking dreams' it took several occurences of them for me to realize I actually was dreaming. For several months I seriously thought I was just going insane! One thing that has never varied for me when going through these occurances of sleep paralysis is that after my eyes have opened and I'm seeing at the room in which I'm sleeping, the accompanying hallucinations have always taking the following form (with variations on the general theme): I sense some malevolent presence intent on doing me great harm. This entity knows that I am unable to move. And I feel that it is critically important that I get up and out of my bed, out of my room, even out of my house before the entity can reach me. And I frantically try to move my frozen limbs as the malevolent presense manifests itself and begins to close the distance between it and me. The first time I had one of these waking dreams, the entity took the form of an icy, glowing hand reaching out of a portal from a parallel universe that I could only see vaguely out of the corner of my eye because the portal had opened right beside my head (which I was unable to move). It was the hand of a ghost that was seeking to pull me into his own universe. Several other times it has been a thin man, probably not even human, dressed all in black, wearing a cloak and a gas mask, patiently shuffling one inch at a time toward my bed.
I've always managed to sit up before these entities reach me, and at that point everything that I've been hallucinating instantly snaps out of existence, but my heartrate is up, my breathing is labored, and my eyes feel like they're about to bulge out of my skull from pure fright. I've learned that it's very important to get up and stay awake for a while after having these dreams; if I lay back down, the dream usually resumes from where it left off, and it's just as hard to wake up again. On one occasion I began having one of these dreams while two of my friends were in the room. I could see and hear them talking to each other casually, but I could also sense a malevolent force taking form somewhere nearby. I realized immediately that I was having a waking dream, and I frantically tried to tell them, begged them even, to wake me up. To shake me, lift me onto my feet, or pull me by my legs, anything. But I couldn't move my jaw and all I could do was moan and sputter gibberish. They turned and looked at me, then left the room. I managed to wake up on my own with considerable effort shortly afterward. My friends later told me that they thought I was just talking in my sleep, and it had been too dark in the room for them to see that my eyes had been open.
Anyway, I really really don't want to have these dreams anymore. Nothing I've read offers many useful cures, but for now it definitely makes me feel a bit better that this is a known condition and that it's not just me going bonkers.