Thread: Weird nightmares... Help me, pros!

Hello!

I'm new to this forum, seeking a definition, some insight or perhaps some advice on my absurd dreams. I'll try to keep it short, and apologies for rudely popping in here without anything else to offer than a helpless mind!

Allright, heres a relatively short sum up of my dreams that started when I was 16½, I am now 19.

It started off with sleep paralysis that included visits from the shadow people, extreme intense fear, being conciouss enough to know who was nearby etc. Trying to scream so they could hear it and wake me up. This went on for about a year where it happened quite reguarly, including getting raped by one member of the shadow people. I started experiementing with my sleep, realized that if I focused on the upper left part of my brain while relaxing, I could force myself into this state and provoke the sleep paralysis. So even though the sleep paralysis and the shadow people were the most intense, extreme anxiety I had ever felt, I played around with it cause I looked at it as spiritual and wanted to know more.
Anyways, one night it happened and I decided to just take control and let them do whatever they wanted to me. I didn't give up, I took control. This took the shadowman by surprise, he fled and has not been back since then.

My nightmares developed into something more undefinable after that. I started to recognize, while sleeping, when I was about to be pulled into this state of anxiety. I had many episodes of slipping constantly in and out of it, only feeling sane for a few seconds while out, knowing that in a second I would be straight back into it. I would feel my head twist and twirl and couldn't do anything about it. There was no specific occurances or shadows or anything memorable, only the constant spinning in and out of the nightterror/mare/whatever.

About 6 months ago I moved into a new apartment, and the nightmares have become very extreme since then. In periods I get them every second night or so. They are much more intense now, as always they are characterized by that intensely extreme anxiety that people who have experienced nightterrors know what is. It's different from a normal nightmare, a normal nightmare will wake me up sweating, feeling uncomfortable, but with no noticable anxiety compared to the almost-physical-feeling anxiety that follows these specific nightmares that I am on about.

Whenever it happens now, I can still feel it while I'm sleeping. My body is sleeping, but my mind wakes up just enough to recognize that my soul is being pulled out of my body, and I'm fighting to keep it in, but it's an impossible fight for me because very few of my resources are actually awake. I no longer spin in and out of it, I go into it, and when I wake up I have learned by now that I must switch position and be fully awake before I go to sleep again. Now they rarely happen two times in a row.

But the intensity has increased. They often involve me not being able to move, being asleep, but being aware that someone is walking around in my apartment, which is small therefor they are very nearby, and I'm STRUGGLING to wake up so I can defend myself, and sometimes I manage to move my arm as I was moving it through a thick layer of mist that I can barely penetrate, in slowmotion. When I finally wake up, it seems that I havn't moved physically. I often shake very intensily, but only while in the actual state, not when I wake up. The dreams involves alot more than people walking around in my apartment and shadows standing threatening by my bed, but they are always characterized by me being unable to move, fighting a struggle to defend myself from the threat, and that intense anxiety that follows. It's probably still sleep paralysis, but with the amount of nightmares I have had, I seem to have gained more control and more coincioussness when it happens. Just the other day, I was in it, and I decided that I might as well attempt to astral project, since my soul was already being pulled around, so I kept repeating "I want to astral project" untill I realized that I was currently in a state where I probably didn't have enough control to keep anything from taking over my body if I actually did, so i pulled out of it.

They always happen between 10 minutes and 1 hour after I fall asleep.

On a last note, I have experimented with lucid dreaming and OBE's in the past, havn't succeeded on any of them though. I am currently in a state where, no matter how tempting it is, I must not experiment with it cause I might end up playing with the traits of my mental diagnosis, and end up plain psychotic lols. I truly feel like I am floating right on the edge between staying sane and going nuts when I am in that state of nightmares.

Anyone know what I'm talking about here? Thanks alot for reading through.

- Elise