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Frantic Dream Where I Can't Wake Up...

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Blitzkrieg

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Joined: 22 Mar 2007
Posts: 1
Location: California
Frantic Dream Where I Can't Wake Up...
Posted: 03-22-07 03:48am

I have been having this recurring dream now over the past few months. I don't think it's a nightmare but my heart is usually excited and I feel stressed whenever I finally get myself to awaken. The dream has almost always taken place with me in my bed waking up but I am still in the dream. Everything feels so real. Usually I will notice that everything in the room is normal and I act normal at first. It's the strangest feeling but I try to get up normally and I just won't move. I begin to panic because I cannot get myself up. I frantically try to get up over and over to wake up and it just won't happen. Around this time I will actually become aware that I am dreaming and this causes me to try even harder to awaken. What's even more odd is that I am not completely paralyzed in this dream. At times I will actually feel like I get up to a point (because I am trying so hard to wake up) where I am sitting up on the bed but I will immediately snap back to the position of me back asleep in that dreaded position. There have been a few times where I actually try so hard to get up that I finally get my upper body to sit up and I keep going and fall forward only to immediately end up back on my bed to try again. When I do eventually wake up, my neck hurts because it is my head that I try so hard to lift when this all takes place. I seem to have a mixture of sleep paralysis in my dream while knowing that I am dreaming. So it is also like a Lucid dream. I've looked around and I haven't read anything that is quite the same as my experience so hopefully someone can shed some light here.
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ash_essex_86

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Joined: 26 Sep 2007
Posts: 31

Posted: 09-26-07 15:20pm

Sleep paralysis and Lucid dreaming usually happens together it seems. Sounds like thats what you have. I suffer from the same
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ashleyaguirre

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Joined: 07 May 2008
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Posted: 05-07-08 10:56am

I have had almost the EXACT same experience so many times, i can´t even count any more.
I am always sleeping, i KNOW i am sleeping, and i wake up in my dream. Everything in the room is exactly the same, but I am sure i am still in my dream. Always the same thing happens, I can´t move at all and the fact that i am completely paralyzed in my dream, scares me into frantically trying to wake myself up...it´s scary and annoying at the same time. When i finally do wake up, the same thing happens to me, I just fall back asleep...so it has got to the point where i literally have to force myself to wake up no matter how tired I am, and find something else to occupy my mind for a while. Sometimes this will happen to me several times until i finally have the energy to basically pick myself up out of bed so that it stops happening. It happens the second I fall asleep...almost always. One time, I saw my boyfriend...exactly as he was before leaving that morning. He was right there beside me but he wasnt doing anything, and than he left.
Since this happens to me so frequently, I have come to notice certain patterns...maybe it will help you ?

I have noticed that first off...this almost always happens when I am sleeping in the house completely alone. In fact I can´t remember it happening in a situation where there has been anyone else in the house but me.
Also, it happens a lot if there has been some sort of negativity in my life.
But the biggest thing i have noticed is that it always happens after i wake up for a while and try to fall back asleep. It almost seems as if I am tired but my body is telling me to wake up, which makes sense because it has happened a lot when I over sleep, and than try to go back to sleep again. But I finally force myself to sleep and this happens. I have read a couple articles and one said this can possibly happen to people that take naps, or try to fall asleep sitting down. One article said that your body is trying to create an alarm clock and that is it´s way of waking you...by waking you in your dream?

Anyway, I also read something that said it helps to blink, and occasionally when you do, and open your eyes again you may be completely awake...and it has worked for me almost all the time..it just takes a couple tries to get myself awake.
I hope that helps you a bit because I know it´s really disturbing and incredibly annoying. Good luck with that !
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cokercokercoker

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Joined: 16 May 2008
Posts: 1
me too
Posted: 05-16-08 16:55pm

Im really glad i found this post - it has happened to me a lot lately. I know I'm dreaming but everything is so real - only sometimes in the dream I make myself look at my clock and it always tells the wrong time, so I know I'm still in the dream. I force myself awake and then I think I'm awake but I'm not - I'm still in the dream. And then sometimes I wake up but only for a second- then I'm back in the dream. Over and over again. It is very frustrating and scary as I feel trapped.

I don't know why it happens but I'm glad to find someone else that it happens to.
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2ccherone

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Joined: 18 May 2008
Posts: 1

Posted: 05-18-08 08:56am

This happens to me at least once a week, and it gets worse and worse each time it happens... This morning it happened actually and it lasted forever. I always thought it was sleep paralysis but it's different because it's all just a dream actually, maybe it's another form of sleep paralysis though.

Anywho, I have the same thing. I wake up and look around with my eyes, everything looks like my room and everything feels so real. When I go to get up I feel as if I'm getting up but in all actuallity I am making no progress and quickly get thrown back into my bed. This morning though, mine was slightly different, I actually gained control. I could hear my parents talking in the other room and I started screaming, I could hear myself scream, I screamed and screamed and screamed, I even screamed so much that in the dream I actually vomitted. But no one heard me, it was hopeless. I also gained enough to control to get up and go knock on the wall of my room in hopes that someone would hear me, but yet I couldn't see anything except the ceiling of my room, but it felt as if I was up knocking on the wall.

I have this so often and it's so frightening. I want to find a way to put an end to it cause EVERY time I have it it gets more worse and more intense, to the point that when I wake up I almost never want to fall asleep ever again. =[

If anyone knows if this is a form of sleep paralysis that'd be great to know, cause that's what I refer to it as.
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bigdurr3

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Joined: 07 Jun 2008
Posts: 1

Posted: 06-07-08 22:59pm

I am so happy i found this. I have had the same thing happening to me since about freshman year in highschool. I am now 21. It still happens every once in a while. I awake in my dream and everything feels and looks so real. Only i can only move my eyes, the rest of my body is paralyzed. I sit there struggling to wake up because my mind tells me i have to wake up because im scared if i just lay there and dont try to force my body to wake up. When i finally do wake up im sweaty and if feels like i just burst out of being held down by something. Ive explained it to family members but nobody "gets it". I didnt know what was wrong and it terrifies me. Sometimes if i go right back to bed it was happen again so i have to do something like walk around before going back to bed. Does anybody know what this is, or what causes it?
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lotte206

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Joined: 10 Jun 2008
Posts: 1

Posted: 06-10-08 22:19pm

I don't feel so crazy now knowing that there are other people out there that have also had this horrible experience. I also suffer from this every morning and is has gotten to the point where I don't want to go to sleep because i know it will happen. I find it also happens when I am alone, i try to sit up and open my eyes only to find myself fall back into some sort of paralyzed state where i know im dreaming and its extremely hard to try to wake up, this is when i start to panic and my breathing becomes very heavy I try to talk or moan in hope someone will wake me up. I do think it happens if you are getting to much sleep or if you wake up early and try to go back to sleep, sleeping tablets make it much worse. It is very frustrating when you tell other people about this only to get weird looks because they haven't experienced this.
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dnoble

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Joined: 12 Jun 2008
Posts: 1
almost what happens to me
Posted: 06-13-08 00:08am

Ok, At first i was calling it a dream , but its technically not dreaming if i am aware of everything, and its really happening. I will go to sleep, and sometimes if i am extremely tired and fall asleep too fast, i will have this instance occur. I will have this feeling come over me that will wake me in my sleep, only i cant open my eyes or move. The only thing i can do is breath. I can hear everything and everybody around me when i am in this state. It feels like it hurts when i try to move, and i use all the energy i have to try to wake up. Sometimes i have to take a break. I WILL NOT try to fall asleep because i am afraid that i might die in my sleep. I feel like if i give up, it gets darker like i am going down a black hole. I breath as hard as i can to wake myself up that way. Most of my family and friends know whats going on, so if they hear or see me breathing extra hard, they will grab me and start shaking to wake me up. As soon as i hear them talking about it, i breath harder and harder to confirm to wake me up. When i do finally wake up, im so tired and want to fall back to sleep, but if i do immediately, I will just fall back into that same state again. I have to turn on lights, drink water, walk around something to completely wake myself up or it will happen again. Once i completely wake up, i feel like i am in the first stage of trying to go to sleep, and it is not as easy to go back. Im ok with that.
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devaslim

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Joined: 17 Jun 2008
Posts: 1
i needed this site!!
Posted: 06-17-08 07:40am

I have been having these types of dreams since elementary school and ive always been scared as hell of them. most of the time when mine occur they are accompanied by some form of ghost like presence. in my "dream" they can talk to me and i can respond. they never touch me but i can never wake up. my body is held and i pray and pray until i am released. this morning something new happened i heard a loud noise and my face felt like it was distorting. obviously i was dreaming this but i am so creeped out...not to mention exhausted.
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forumnut

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Joined: 20 Jul 2007
Posts: 9

Posted: 06-17-08 13:23pm

OMG I feel bad for you people. We call this "the hag" and i've only had it during times of high fever during bouts of strep throat.


I just couldn't imagine going through that on an ongoing basis Sad
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