Mind awake, body asleep?

[malliemut]

For the past few months, since Nov, I've been having this problem with waking up. It just started suddenly and happens a few night a moths, once to three times in the same night.
Usually its morning, after a full nights sleep, when it happens. My mind will wake up. I'll be compleatly conciouse. I can think, remember, everything as when I'm fully awake, but my body stays asleep. I feel literaly paralyzed, in a coma. Everything is dark. It's just like I'm laying there with my eyes closed but I can't move or screem now matter how hard I try. Usually I freak out and lay there for a while trying to wake my body up somehow till my husband hears me wimpering, cause I'm trying to screem for him, and he wakes me up. I know it's not just a bad dream and I'm scared my body might never wake up one day. Can anyone help on what this is or advice or something?

[Audreck]

I also have this disorder, and it is quite scarry. I am at work right now and my body is exausted from lack of sleep. I went to try and shut my eyes for a few minutes durring my lunch break and what do you know? I got sucked right into one of those things. I tried to wake but was only able to open my eyes for a few seconds. I seem to have a seizure when tring to get my body up where my head trembles back and forth. I am able to make sounds for someone to help me wake but it is difficult for others to distinguish you dreaming or calling for help. My son thought that I was trembling because I was cold, my brother thought I was just making noises and was actually awake, my x-wife realized I was having an episode and woke me instead of slapping me after I squeezed her abdomin really hard in a cry for help. I always end up with a headache which I have at the moment since this has just happened. I just want you all to know you are not alone.

[strac101]

I can't express how happy I am to have found this web site. I had one of these experiences a half hour ago. It was not my first time going through this. This has happened to me throughout my lifetime. I could find myself in this state sitting beside my wife on the couch watching t.v. In that state I would be calling out to my wife, wake me up Babs. and I would be shaking my head back and forth trying to wake myself up. After, when I truly was awake, I would ask her, why didn't you wake me when I was calling out to you, and shaking my head. she told me I was making some low moaning sounds, and twitching a bit and she thought I was just having a dream. Needless to say I asked her to, in the future, shake me hard until I was fully awake. People who have never had this experience, look at you a little funny when you try to explain it to them. Oh well, I feel a little better knowing it's not an unheard of condition.

[Erodox]

I'm 53 and I've think I started having these episodes about 15 years ago.   They vary.   At times I become semi-conscious.   I know that I'm asleep, but I'm foggy on the basic details of my life.  I can loose over 30 years; thinking I'm asleep in my bed in the house I grew up in.   But over the years it has happened so much that now when I have one of these episodes I spend more effort re-membering where and when I really am that I don't have time to panic over the fact that I'm conscious but cannot awake or move.   As I mentally retrace where and when I am I usually fully wake.   But these are the milder episodes.   The worst ones are when I'm more conscious and know pretty much exactly when and where I am.   I can only describe it as a hell-state!   I'm conscious enough to know that I've completely vulnerable.  At times I can slightly open my eyes and I can hear sounds.   I try to remain calm but in this state time is exaggerated.   It feels almost as terrifying as being buried alive might feel.   For years I tried the calm approach but that made the passage of time more exaggerated.    For me the quickest was of escape is to give in to the panic and rage.   I curse blasphemously and rage against the very Universe for tormenting me so.   I think because I go so swiftly and violently to such a dark place I must get some kind of adrenaline boost that seems to cause me to pass-out except I'm passing in to being fully awake.

This is a terrible terrible thing to go through even occasionally.    All the 'so-called' heath care professionals that discount when a patient complains of these types of episodes should be ashamed!

[ethelmertz]

I just found this sight, and for a long time I thought I was the only one who experienced this.  It started when I was 15, a couple of weeks after me and my cousins played with a ouiga board.  I really thought demons were grabbing me and trying to pull me through my bed.  I even felt hands on me, which was probably part dreaming. I am 37 now and still have the experience every once in awhile, but I am a christian now and it doesn't seem to scare me as much.  I still don't like it, but when it happens I just let it run it's course and try not to get panicky.

[ricodatruth]

i had the same issue i used to be scared at first...but its like if you wait for like 15 seconds..try to open your eyes and you will be able to...and did you know you could move you fingers a little while your like that its really neat....nothing really serious..its like were sleep walkers or some lol....

[demarly07]

This ahs been happening to me since I was about 10. It has slowed down over the years but my mother always told me it was a demon trying to attack me. I pray when I am in this state of mind and its the only way I can get out of it. If I relax and try to lay there I feel really heavy and can't breathe. That is it the best way to explain it. I often see figures when I wake up out of it. The first time it happened I could hear everything that was going on around me. I have also felt like I was being rapped in this state of mind as well. It is sooo scary and I have just delt with it over the years. I find that sleeping with the tv or a small light on helps me from not going into this state. More so the tv with noise around me. Good luck everyone!! I feel your pain...