Alergy, Sleep Paralysis, or ???

So this has not occurred to me very recently, but occasionally I will get a very scary episode of having trouble breathing while in bed. I panic, but then it ultimately all works out. I used to think that maybe it is due to allergies to something in my bedroom, and the only reason why I had not gone to a doctor about it was because I was busy and I used to have Alergy shots but they were too time consuming.

So when I came to DV, and started reading about sleep paralysis / dream atonia, it occurred to me that maybe that's what those incidents were? I don't remember feeling paralyses though - I just remember having trouble breathing. I don't remember exactly, but I think it would go away with movement, so I think I could move, and actually would sit up in order to be able to breathe again. It was very scary, but nothing actually happened.

I have not had one of those episodes recently, and unfortunately do not remember the details. Plus I remember being too panicked to really focus on details, and this would generally happen while I was too groggy/sleepy to carefully analyze it anyway.

Could these scary episodes have actually been fairly harmless sleep atonia? Is my original thory of alergy attacks reasonable? I am beginning to doubt it because it is not like anything changed in my dream environment, and yet I would occasionally get these episodes, but most often would not. is it unusual for sleep atonia to be predominantly trouble breathing and not paralysis?

What do you think?

Without the paralysis, it doesn't really sound like SP or REM atonia. It is a possibility, but if you were able to move in order to breathe again then the description doesn't seem to fit. You may want to get a doctor to test you for sleep apnea, which could be a serious health concern.

It could be a lot of things, if you take any kind of supplements, medicines, or energy drinks it could likely also be attributed to those as well. I agree that, with sleep apnea being a possibility you should probably get it checked out, but just know that when I get Sleep Paralysis I am never actually "paralyzed" in the sense that if I want to, I can always move. Yet, I know for a fact I am in sleep paralysis. The same could be for you. When I am in sleep paralysis it makes me feel as though I am very heavy and that moving my body wouldn't work if i tried and that I am almost disconnected from my body... but if I DO try then I CAN actually move. It's a bit difficult to explain, but that's the best I can really do.

You're just lying there without much to focus on, so it's possible that you're fixating on your breathing more than you normally would, realize it's a little shallow (which is normal while falling asleep), and build it up in your mind until you convince yourself it's a big problem and there must be something wrong.

Something similar happened to me last night, which is what motivated me to reply. My head hurt a little in a strange way while falling asleep, and for some reason I thought I might be having a stroke. I panicked, started testing different parts of my brain to make sure they all worked, and eventually sat up and realized nothing was wrong and felt fine. I had been under a lot of stress the previous day and have been in general lately. Perhaps that kind of thing happens with stress. Maybe your mind has been focusing on stressful situations so much during the day that, at night, once you've decided to stop focusing on those things, your mind has been so used to stress that it invents its own problems to stress about. All of this is complete speculation.

I've had similar experiences to what you both describe Joanna and Dianeva, and I believe in my case they were caused by nothing more than bad positioning. Sometimes especially if I'm laying on my side and especially if I have a too-thin pillow (which I had for a long time) I will suddenly start awake when I'm just falling asleep with either difficulty breathing or a feeling of cut-off bloodflow to my head (or both). It turned out what was happening was my head was slwoly sinking as I relaxed more fully and my neck was getting bent at a really bad angle that would at times cut off bloodflow or create a kind of fold inside my throat that cut off breathing. Actually with the bloodflow one it might have been more like a pinched nerve or something, not sure. It was very different from the cutoff breathing but was related to the bizarre kinked position of my neck.

Quote:

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started testing different parts of my brain to make sure they all worked

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Lol I had an image of you opening the top of your head and using some kind of testing device on various parts of your brain.. :eek:

I realized I've also experienced another type of breathing failure when falling asleep a couple of times, that I'd describe as simply forgetting to breathe when you fall asleep. This has happened to me a couple of times, and I want to say it's mostly when I'm stressed out pretty bad but Im not sure about that. It's like somehow your diaphragm just stops moving for a moment, or maybe your throat muscles close down briefly or something - so you just simply stop breathing for a second.

I suspect that's related to anxiety dreams and the like, not sure though. But don't worry - something like this can't do any real damage, and certainly can't kill you. It'll always wake you up instantly and you'll start breathing again. At worst all it can do is make you lose some sleep.

Joanna, from a few things you've posted lately I'd say you need to do 2 things in particular -

1) realize that if you lose your job it's not the end of the world

2) call your dad

Stop buying into the false dichotomy of liberal/conservative - neither side is completely right or wrong and most people while they do choose one or the other actually have a range of beliefs that span across both. Don't reduce yourself to a set of instilled beliefs and automatically start arguing for those beliefs against someone who similarly allows himself to be reduced to a set of instilled beliefs. If he tries to drag you into a political argument just smile and say "I don't care to argue about that". It's when people allow themselves to buy into these false black-and-white beliefs that they get dragged into fights they shouldn't get involved in. Black and white belief systems distort reality and ignore subtleties. I used to think of myself as very liberal and get caught up in these stupid arguments, but the more I learned about the two platform system and also about embracing totality I came to realize that my beliefs really aren't that simple and I came to resent being used by a political party as one of their robots to fight their fights for them when my own beliefs don't really line up that simply. It's like with religious beliefs, and I know you don't buy into any particular religious belief system and let yourself be bullied into hating all other religions and all non-religious people the way your religion wants you to.

Darkmatters, I don't know if you realize that this is a relatively old thread, and even at that time it was not something that had just happened to me but rather something that happened three times a while ago - it was memorable but has not reoccurred. I am not really worried about loosing my job: I am searching as a precaution but I know I have a job until end of April at least, and if the contract is extended which is still quite likely, I have been told that I would be the last to be let go, which I believe. The trouble is not fear of loosing job, but rather the stressful situation at work, causing me to question whether I would want to stay with this job even if I can. However, given the level of interest from recruiters, I am confident that I will find a new job before end of April, so that's not a problem. My dad and I have not talked about politics and differences between conservative and liberal in ages: we both know better already. The trouble is more that my dad knows how to push my buttons, how to make me feel very small and vulnerable, and every call to him is a risk for me whether I will come out of it feeling ok or like shit, and that's why at times of high stress, I tend to not call him. But yes, I do need to call him. Job and my dad though are not all my stress points by a long shot: I stopped calling my dad long before the situation at work deteriorated. I think part of the issue was being a caffeine addict and totally out of shape, both of which I have started to address. And another issue was mental stress and age collaborating in causing scary memory issues, again something I have started to address. And let's not forget the fact that before coming to dreamviews I was a member of an online forum which was run by Puritan Communists and it took me a while to figure out how much damage that did to my psyche. Again something I have addressed by coming here. A lot of my stress is now caused by the vicious cycle of stress breeds more stress.
Thanks for your concern, Joanna

Ah sorry - man, I really tried to oversimplify your situation and give you a one-size-fits-all solution, didn't I? :doh: