Oh heck, this is really good. I used to suffer from periodic sleep paralysis, so I can absolutely relate to this.

I get this too sometimes

I've been there, friend.
Now, I'm more likely to jerk awake while violently throwing a haymaker at something in my dreams than wake up locked in place and unable to move, but I'm trying to see that as a form of progress.
Those who have never experienced cannot truly understand how much it can affect a person.

Welcome to the Wonderful World of PTSD.

No, I'm not going to pretend that my jolting awake to zombies, sharks, or murderous clowns attempting to kill me or steal my wallet as I sleep are even remotely comparable to PTSD.

My brain just says "tonight, you're kickboxing with Pennywise and your wife is going to go sleep on the couch. Enjoy the adrenaline dump over nothing and have fun trying to get back to sleep."

I have friends who have served in combat, work as police officers, and who have been brutally attacked while out on a date. These things leave mental and emotional scars, trauma that is slow to heal and festers beneath the surface in the wake of a horrific experience.

PTSD and a badly-wired sleep center of the brain aren't so vastly different that you're comparing a paper airplane to an F-22.

If you think someone calling you names in grade school is a traumatic affair, try losing a limb to an IED or being the first on the scene to a hit-and-run that has turned a child's body into hamburger. THAT is trauma, and THOSE nightmares don't end when one opens their eyes. Sleep paralysis is scary. Waking in a panic to your mind superimposing fiction upon reality is scary. Being unable to function as a normal person due to past experiences so devastating that remote similarities set off the "fight or flight" instinct is as close to a living hell as I can imagine. I know people. I've lost people.

Do not trivialize a condition and memories that people are willing to end their own lives to escape.

I've lived with PTSD for almost forty years, ever since a nuclear reactor vent blew off over my head when I worked security at the power station. The vent didn't release any contamination (the guys with the yellow bunny suits were all over it wit counters within minutes), but it's the loudest think I've ever experienced. Comparable to an explosion -- essentially it was a steam-powered detonation. Add to that, the constant tormenting by a demented supervisor (everyone on the shift experienced that, we were all glad when a fall in the bathtub took him out) but it added to other stress that still keeps me awake and short-triggered. A few weeks ago, some idiot fired machine guns over my head at a military vehicle show. I'm still flinching.

Whenever I say I have PTSD, someone will demand to know what branch of the service I was in. They tell me if I didn't serve I don't have it. The examples you gave are excellent. My Dad had it; he saw combat in Europe at the end of the Battle of the Bulge. As he got older, he was comfortable about talking about less and less of his service.

My girlfriend is studying about sleep paralysis lately (along with all the other junk she keeps up with for work). It's not one of the things I have dealt with personally, but a couple of her patients are experiencing it, and she doesn't think the literature covers it correctly.

It is a very personal experience for lack of a better word, it hits everyone a little differently as your brain spirals trying to figure out a solution for a problem it doesn't understand. Some people just get a severe adrenaline rush and helplessness, some like me have a singular recurring hallucination that adjusts to each attack but makes itself so real and -felt-, others have much worse extremes of the sensations. The brain is weird like that for sure. The best advice I can give her is it tends to group into sub categories, and from those you can help people easier when you see how theirs is affecting them.

Thanks -- I'll pass this on to her. I don't know if any of her patients have codified it so clearly, but I think I understand it a little better, now. I've experienced the brain spiraling thing personally, many times. It sometimes keeps me awake nights, but I don't have the paralysis issue. Problems at work or in my personal life would spin for hours on end, the alarm going off before my eyes would close. Since I... 'retired', I get it less often. I've seldom had hallucinations with it, but sometimes there's this uncharacteristic paranoia. The feelings of helplessness and dread I can certainly share, though.

She's been a psychotherapist for about three years now. The hospital she works for is pushing her to get her PhD, to the point they're willing to pay for most of it. She hasn't said that she's going to do it -- at 36, she thinks it's a little late in the game. That said, this is a woman with a perfect memory. Every book she's ever read, every patient interview is stuck in her head forever.

*hugs*

There's another version of this painting. In it, a familiar and gentle paw reaches from off the side of the canvas, resting on your shoulder. A voice says, "It's okay, I'm here." A sudden brilliant light like a hundred suns, radiates from the paw. The light fills the room with a whitish golden warmth. Unable to hide, the dark hallucination dissolves and vanishes, leaving you comforted and at peace.

Sorry! I don't mean to make 'light' of your struggles :D. I had this happen to me once before... and it was terrifying! Blarg! But.. Just know there is light, hope and you are loved! Thank you for sharing! <3

Eeeek I had a episode of sleep paralysis once was not fun I'm sorry you go through that

14 years in the sleep paralysis gang. Also fairly frequently.
Every technique I invent or read about to get out of it, my paralysis seems to learn and adapt to it, so it doesn't work anymore.

The only thing that truly ever worked was to NOT sleep on my back.
Which isn't really the easiest task, considering I suffer from sciatica.

But yeah, I can really relate to that "Nights suck" statement. It genuinely made me not want to go to sleep anymore. It has mentally pushed me over things, especially when I was still new to it.
Sleep isn't a comforting experience for me. It's always a terror of thinking about if or if not it will happen again.

“Hey. Are you asleep?”

When I was a little kid I used to experience this. I had a couple of recurring dreams, and another that happened once or twice. They all occurred over a period of a year or so, maybe when I was about eight years old. and I can't say I'd correlate them to anything else happening in my life, like any kind of external stress or anything. Perhaps something hormonal? They were terrifying and fascinating, all the more so because I had no idea what they were at the time, being just a kid.

They were incredibly vivid, and might as well have been real. The subject matter of the dreams was also particularly odd and fascinating, and after all these years is still burned into my brain. I can recall them as if it were yesterday. I was finally able to shake them by teaching myself to realize within the dream that I was dreaming and telling myself "Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" Strangely enough, after going through a phase of these I haven't had them since.

Low oxygen while sleeping. Used to suffer the shadow men myself. Tried a CPAP?

Scary thing.. I get it during more stressful times.
I've got a habit making sport out of living off my motorcycle for days or weeks, and often find myself having these episodes when I'm in a hammock trying to sleep alone in a strange campsite. I'm lucky that more often than not, I pick up on the fact of what's happening, but it's a wild thing to experience in a setting where you already feel vulnerable.

You illustrated the feeling brilliantly.. >w<

I feel for you... but this is beautiful...

V.