Let me first start by saying that I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell (link for those who don’t get the reference)… ok no really I’m not crazy, but this is what happens to me occasionally at night. After reading a recent conversation on Reddit, it made me really think about whether I am having sleep paralysis or night terrors. I never seem to wake up screaming or anything, but my breathing does become heavy and I do freak the hell out.

I cannot pinpoint when this all started, but I would venture to say it was about 5-6 years ago. Nothing too dramatic happened beyond a break up a few years before that. I don’t remember being too stressed about anything and I am currently not stressed out except I guess occasionally thinking about money and how I am going to pay for this or that. Other than that I cannot think of anything beyond what I read on Wikipedia about sleep paralysis possibly being a symptom of migraines, which I tend to get quite often. I attribute those to either not having a healthy sleep schedule (maybe another cause of the sleep-terrors) and/or working on the computer plus my glasses/contacts. Anyway let me get to the point of what happens to me.

At night for the last few years I will be sleeping peacefully when I, for what seems like no reason at all, will open my eyes to see in the dark what appears to be either spiders crawling down from the ceiling or a mysterious person/thing standing in the corner staring at me. Now when I say “spider” I mean a big fucking spider like creature that looks like it is dangling from a web coming at my face or my sons. And when it appears to be the person I see them either at my closet or the corner near there and they appear to just be staring at me then slowly fade away. The same thing happens with the spider. After a few secs or being like WTF, starting to panic, and breathing extremely heavy my mind seems to realize the objects aren’t there and they begin to fade away. I do occasionally jump up and turn on the lights to make sure that no one or thing is there, but that has become less frequent as I seem to have trained myself to realize that it is not there quicker.

hypnagogia.com

Now let me get this straight, this shit is freaky. If you have never experienced it, and I hope you don’t, to all of a sudden wake up and feel like something is watching you or coming to get you is a bit scary. I have never screamed or reached for a weapon, but I have “jumped” or been startled and can tell you for 100% fact that I know my heart has sped up on multiple occasions. Let me say that this does not happen every night, well not to an extreme. I do almost every night, wake up to feel like I am at someone else’s house or that someone else is at my house, but maybe that isn’t related as it doesn’t freak me out, it just feels weird. Now I don’t know if these events/episodes would be classified as sleep paralysis or night terrors or maybe even Hallucinatory Sleep Disorder (HSP).

Night Terrors Symptoms: Sudden awakening from sleep, persistent fear or terror that occurs at night, screaming, sweating, confusion, rapid heart rate, inability to explain what happened, usually no recall of “bad dreams” or nightmares, may have a vague sense of frightening images. Many people see spiders, snakes, animals or people in the room, are unable to fully awake, difficult to comfort, with no memory of the event on awakening the next day.

From this list of night terror symptoms I can see a lot of similarities between what I describe and what people experience who have night terrors. Except I have memories and can recall what happened, I actually can remember quite vividly what was going on. I do wake up fully a few secs later, I don’t believe I have nightmares before it, and I’ve never screamed. So what does this mean? I can’t say. Lets look at sleep paralysis

Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain awakes from a REM state, but the body paralysis persists. This leaves the person fully conscious but unable to move. The paralysis can last from several seconds to several minutes “by which the individual may experience panic symptoms and the realization that the distorted perceptions were false”.

In addition, the paralysis may be accompanied by terrifying hallucinations (hypnopompic or hypnagogic) and an acute sense of danger. Sleep paralysis is particularly frightening to the individual because of the vividness of such hallucinations. The hallucinatory element to sleep paralysis makes it even more likely that someone will interpret the experience as a dream, since completely fanciful or dream-like objects may appear in the room alongside one’s normal vision. Some scientists have proposed this condition as an explanation for alien abductions and ghostly encounters.

Ok so wtf. Sleep paralysis sounds a lot like what I am having too. When I awake to see these “spiders” or “people” in my room I have this period of being unable to move for a few secs in which I start to panic. Then a few seconds later I snap out of it and that is when I would jump up and turn on the lights before. Was I abducted by aliens or is there a ghost in my house? We were told a few years back that someone who used to live in our house, a young girl, killed herself in the room I sleep in. Maybe she still around and causing this? We have had lots of mysterious stuff happen, but I guess that is for another post another day.

So after reading through symptoms of both night terrors and sleep paralysis I feel I am no closer to knowing what is going on with me. I don’t feel it is anything that needs urgent attention as other than a feeling of panic and freaking the hell out for a few mins a few nights a week, I am in no danger to myself nor anyone else. Maybe one day I will eventually go to a sleep clinic and they can help me diagnose what is happening. I do know when I was young I was told I don’t enter the REM stage of sleep as I am always on the verge of being awake. I don’t remember how they diagnosed this as I don’t remember doing any sleep test or anything, but maybe this is part of the cause too.

For more information on these check out:
Sleep paralysis on Wikipedia
Night Terrors Resource Center