I had a dream within a dream within a dream

[WeirdDreamerGuy]

Can someone help me with this? I don't have any knowledge about dreams. I had the weirdest dream I've ever had. It was a dream within a dream within a dream. It starts off with me running through classrooms full of students and I realize that I'm not a student anymore so I leave, walking into a grocery store. In the grocery store there are two very large chocolate bars (about 5 feet tall each). Two women quickly grab them, and I say I wanted one, but they have none left. Then I wake up from the dream (i'm still dreaming) and I wake up in my brother's room. His room is dark and the floor is all messed up (like a dirty floor you would find in a store room). I go over to his old stereo system (a stereo system I've never seen in my life) and I realize that he's left the bathroom light on, but he's not in the bathroom. Then I turn around and I see the ceiling is leaking water, and the water is dripping into a bucket. I realize in the dream that I'm dreaming and then I try to wake myself up. So now I wake up (still dreaming) in my bed, my eyes are open and I can see the wall right in front of me, but I CANNOT move my body at all. My limbs are frozen. My eyes won't move up or down, and I can't turn my head. Worse of all, I can't speak. I try to scream for my mother, but there is no voice. My lips don't move. then I have kind of an out of body experience and it feels like there is another presence in my bed, behind me, even though the presence is not visible. It feels like this presence is choking me. I'm not all that religious, but I start praying frantically, and while I'm praying my lips begin to move. Ten seconds later, I REALLY do wake up, heart racing, and my body feeling completely hot as if I had just had a fever. This was just a half hour or so nap I was taking in the evening. I've never had a dream like this before. What the hell is going on? I'm scared out of my mind.

[Zaephr]

Don't be scared, after all it was just a dream. The dream within a dream part at first was just an illusion, it's happened to me before; it's as if you are instantly teleported to another dream sequence, and it isn't possible to have dreams inside dreams as researchers and the like have investigated. The last part is where it gets interesting, and its what the dreaming community refers to as sleep paralysis, or REM atonia. You go through the process every night, it prevents us from sleep walking as one of its basic functions. You just happened to experience it as you were waking up. Nothing to be afraid of. The process of REM atonia is a signal of the onset of REM, the rapid eye movement stage of sleep where we experience the most vivid dreams. What you felt, the choking sensation, was just a hallucinatory feeling caused as a result of the process. There are many experts out here on the forums that can explain it much better than I can, and sometimes sleep paralysis is a touchy subject here on the forums but I'm just here to provide a quick and simple answer. TL;DR, dreams within a dream aren't possible, that sensation you felt was just a hallucination, and there's literally nothing to be afraid of.