Dreaming/Awake at the Same Time

[unico_love]

Sometimes I have this weird sleep problem where I'm partly awake and partly asleep. I'm dreaming, but often I have my eyes open and can also see what's physically in front of me, and I can't move. It can be pretty scary, partly even just because the dreams I have are usually in some way disturbing. I had this problem again the other day and it really scared me. I think it happened because I really wanted to wake up and was struggling to be awake and get up, but just couldn't, and I ended up being trapped in a dream again. I saw the sunlight and everything in my room, then I had a hallucination my mother came in the room. My thoughts expanded and I pictured the rest of my house and all sorts of other (nonexistent) rooms of dark wood and crimson paint popped up, and I saw my brother talking to a lawyer about changing his name. These scenes peeled back like old paint, revealing again my sunlit bedroom, though I still couldn't move. I hate when I feel confused like that, and especially when I can't move. Sleep paralysis, maybe? I have all kinds of sleep problems...

Comments

[civetmoon.livejournal.com]

That's a Night Terror, accompanied by sleep paralysis. I get them occasionally myself. They're really scary : /.

I've noticed that they're more frequent when I'm stressed or overworked/exhausted.

[unico-love.livejournal.com]

For whatever reason I thought night terrors couldn't be remembered, so that didn't cross my mind...

[concrete-stare.livejournal.com]

That is definitely sleep paralysis. I've had it for years. It sucks. It gets worse if you are on any meds that are sedating. I haven't found any cure for it other than having someone wake me up (as opposed to using an alarm clock or waking naturally). That only works sometimes, though.

My understanding of a night terror is that you wake up screaming/in a cold sweat, but don't have any memory at all of the dream you were having. Some sleep experts say that night terrors happen during non-REM sleep, so you aren't actually dreaming at all.

[unico-love.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought about night terrors, just based on someone I talked to once who had them as a child.

[alliterati.livejournal.com]

I occasionally get sleep paralysis but it doesn't occur with night terrors. I just 'wake up' and can't move.

[pianodwarf.livejournal.com]

I've also heard of this phenomenon and experienced it once or twice. It's definitely frightening, all right.

[ranka.livejournal.com]

I get that sleep paralysis thing sometimes, but I don't find it frightening or anything. In fact, I find it strangely soothing.

[spacecoyotevega.livejournal.com]

I used to get sleep paralysis like that all the time. Apparently even when I was a baby- I'd get night terrors and couldn't stop screaming, so my parents would carry me outside, turn me upside down, and then turn me up again. They called it "resetting the baby." Only thing they could do to get me to stop.

I haven't had much sleep paralysis in the classic sense since I started lucid dreaming. What happens now is that I get determined to do something (in my dream) and try, then realize I can't move and I'm in my pyjamas. Often I even see my room, and then realize I'm dreaming for definate (sometimes I can have trouble telling) and it's frustrating, because I was trying to do something, so I force myself back to dreaming. A lot of the time whatever I was trying to do has disappeared. Or I just find out things I'm trying to hold on to or carry aren't there, because I can't actually feel whatever it is. That gets very frustrating, and it's now one of the things that can cause me to move into sleep-paralysis state.

Nothing like they used to be. There used to be horrible monsters all through. I would try to get up, and often actually succeed, but then find myself back in bed again, still surrounded by monsters. That went away when I stopped believing in monsters- or rather, I stopped believing that monsters were monsterous. That also came with lucid dreaming- I found if I actually turn around and attack them, and am determined enough, I usually win pretty easily. And then they're helpless, and I can't hurt something that's helpless. And they become not-monsters.

Now, whenever there's anything in a dream that's sentient and solid that I'm afraid of, I throw myself at it head on. I get mad, because it's not fair, you making me scared and I don't even know what you are. You should at least tell me why you're mad at me. And if they just want to eat me or something, well, that's nothing personal and I can deal with that, you know? And if it's something else, I can maybe help change it. And a lot of times then they become friends.

[azalynn.livejournal.com]

I've had sleep paralysis a few times, and I actually find it to be rather interesting. Once I read about sleep paralysis and knew what it was, I was able to identify it when it was happening and just tell myself "this is just sleep paralysis, it will pass". I guess it might be more difficult to do that if you are confused, though. It probably depends on how much of your "waking" consciousness you have available to you during the sleep paralysis, and how much control you tend to have in your dreams in general (though I realize that can vary as well).

I know a girl who gets "waking dreams" similar to those experienced during sleep paralysis, but in her case she isn't paralyzed. She wanders around the house and thinks she can see ghosts in the kitchen, etc. She also once crawled across her bedroom to the door because she thought there was a network of wires stretched across the room.

[unico-love.livejournal.com]

I've had variations of that too (moving around while asleep). Sometimes I see completely different things that are really there superimposed on the room. I started shrieking once because I thought I saw someone (who was in the room) moving dead bodies.