I've recently started having incidents where I wake up in the early hours of the morning, usually between 2am and 6am, with what feels like panic attack symptoms. My heart rate drastically increases, I feel scared, my body temperature rises but I have chills, and I am awake yet having some sort of nightmare and unable to either properly wake up, or go back to sleep.

Trying to sleep makes it worse, and the only way I can go back to sleep is by turning on my bedroom lights, sitting up in bed and slowly forcing myself to relax, gradually lying down and then finally managing to sleep. Sometimes it can take hours to sleep, other times if I am very tired it is a bit easier.

When I was a child I had night terrors, which progressed into something similar to these disturbances, but they stopped when I was a teenager, and now these have suddenly developed in the last few months - progressing from once in a while, to a few times a week. Aside from the effects these are having on my sleep patterns, they really make me feel drained and uneasy and I'm not sure what I can do prevent them from happening!

I've heard that hypnotherapy is a solution, are there any other options, and are these sleep panic attacks or adult night terrors, or what? Nothing I've read seems to fit the description.

Any advice at all would be welcome!