First of I experience this myself. It is the most frighting thing I know, but it is in no way dangerous, you are perfectly fine. I will write you some info that you may find useful and more so, comforting.
The phenomena you experience is called a Sleep Paralyzis (SP). I don't know how much you already know about this, so I write everything I know.
An SP may occur while falling asleep, while waking up, and sometimes, though rarely, during acctuall sleep. I personally get them while waking up. See, when your brain is dreaming, i.e. goes into the sleepstate called REM, your body is completely paralized in order to prevent you from acting out your dream in bed, kicking around and screaming etc. What happens to you while having an SP is that your brain becomes awake but you body is still paralized. This is all perfectly normal, and has happened to 80% of every living person ones or more during their lifetime. And a few of does experience it every night and some, like myself, experience them a couple of nights per month.
When experiencing SP most people will only feel an incapability to move, yet some, like you and me, experience trouble breathing. You are however acctually breathing, but you just can't feel it. To go deeper into this: your diafragma works like it always does, but some of the smaller muscle groups controlling your breath are paralyzed. That's why you feel like your not breathing, but you are
Just for curiosa, there are also does experiencing that they are not alone in the room. They feel another person is there. In Folk Myth SP is an angel standing on you making it impossible for you to move.
about getting out of this:
I don't know what's de facto on this, this is just out of my own experiences. The first thing I do while experiencing an SP is to remind myself that I'm lying in bed, and despite what I might be experiencing I am perfectly safe. Then I start to understand I can't move, it chocks me everytime. And then I become aware of my breathing, or lack there-of, and this is paniking yes. Alot of people get Sleep-phobias because of SP experiences. I try stop myself from panicing all to much and then start to concentrate on some small body part, for example a finger, and I try to jerk it a little bit. I don't know if you acctually need to try to move to wake up, I've heard it generally lasts for half a minute or so anyways. But you may try this.
I don't want you to be afraid of your SP's. Always remember you are perfectly safe at all times during you SP. You are getting the air-supply you need. The most important is that you don't become scared of this, as it may ruin your sleep totally.
I wish you the best of success in turning this monster into a pet. Hope my words help.
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