That site has a lot of info about these sorts of experiences and sleep paralysis.
Basically it is when part of your brain wakes up from REM (dreaming) sleep, but has not received the chemical signal to unparalyze your muscles. This is often accompanied by terror, feelings of a presence, seeing an evil presence, and other hallucinations, sometimes floating, that seem totally real because they are sensed while you're kind if half-concious. The hallucinations can last up to 7 or 8 minutes, but even if they don't actually last that long, you may percieve even really short episodes as having lasted a long period of time, similar to dreams.
I remember a dream I had one time where I don't remember exactly what was happening, but it seemed to last a couple hours and all these things were happening that were building up to this important phone call I was supposed to get and in the dream I was sitting there by the phone when it was time for me to get this phone call and it rang and BANG I woke up and my alarm clock was going off. It turns out what happened was my brain percieved the alarm clock going off while I was in REM and kind of retroactively created this dream/experience in the few seconds between hearing the alarm and waking up out of dreaming, even though it seemed like hours long.
So, yeah, when you're between waking and dreaming, sometimes your brain can get mixed up and weird things happen. Of course, why this happens is still not totally understood. that page also charts out that most of the "first times" this has happened to people is between the ages of 15-20. It is often attributed to either the emotional stresses and anxiety that teenages go through or may be caused by hormonal changes or maybe the hormones exagerate normal stress and anxiety and that disrupts the brain's switches from REM to conciousness.
So, you are not alone in your experiences Chance! Look at it this way, if you don't have these things happen anymore, it may be because you have less stress or get more sleep.
check this out: http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P2.html
That site has a lot of info about these sorts of experiences and sleep paralysis.
Basically it is when part of your brain wakes up from REM (dreaming) sleep, but has not received the chemical signal to unparalyze your muscles. This is often accompanied by terror, feelings of a presence, seeing an evil presence, and other hallucinations, sometimes floating, that seem totally real because they are sensed while you're kind if half-concious. The hallucinations can last up to 7 or 8 minutes, but even if they don't actually last that long, you may percieve even really short episodes as having lasted a long period of time, similar to dreams.
I remember a dream I had one time where I don't remember exactly what was happening, but it seemed to last a couple hours and all these things were happening that were building up to this important phone call I was supposed to get and in the dream I was sitting there by the phone when it was time for me to get this phone call and it rang and BANG I woke up and my alarm clock was going off. It turns out what happened was my brain percieved the alarm clock going off while I was in REM and kind of retroactively created this dream/experience in the few seconds between hearing the alarm and waking up out of dreaming, even though it seemed like hours long.
So, yeah, when you're between waking and dreaming, sometimes your brain can get mixed up and weird things happen. Of course, why this happens is still not totally understood. that page also charts out that most of the "first times" this has happened to people is between the ages of 15-20. It is often attributed to either the emotional stresses and anxiety that teenages go through or may be caused by hormonal changes or maybe the hormones exagerate normal stress and anxiety and that disrupts the brain's switches from REM to conciousness.
So, you are not alone in your experiences Chance! Look at it this way, if you don't have these things happen anymore, it may be because you have less stress or get more sleep.
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