Anxiety attacks or what??

Post Reply New Topic

This has been happening to me since I was about 17. I will try to describe it, but it isn't easy to put into words.

It only starts when I'm asleep. If I wake up, it continues althoguh I'm awake so I know it's not a bad dream. It only happens at night, never during the day, and I'm not afraid of the dark. If I sleep during the day, it doesn't happen then.

The occurence is erratic and unpredictable. At times this will happen to me as often as 3-4 times in a night, and I might have it happen every night for weeks. Or I might go for a year or more without it happening at all. The timing doesn't seem to be stress related.

What it feels like: I'll be sleeping, and then if there's a dream, the dream goes haywire and strange. There isn't always a dream. I feel an increasing sense of impending doom, like something absolutely horrible is going to happen, like I'm definitely going to die, right now. My heart pounds faster and faster and my chest hurts. I feel like I can't breathe, and I can't speak, (usually by this time I'm awake) or move. If I try to scream, it takes all my effort just to make the faintest whisper. The sensation peaks and when it does, there is often this sound in my ears like a moth fluttering its wings against my eardrum. This is when the sense of dying is most acute. Then all the sounds go away, I can breathe again, and I slowly regain my ability to speak and to move.

Willpower does nothing against this. I can direct most of my dreams, but not this. I have anxiety attacks at times during the day sometimes, but this is worse. I h ave tried using relaxtion techniques when it happens, and it doesn't help.

For a while I thought it was my heart, because I've had some cardiac symptoms, but the cardiologist seems to think I'm just a hypochondriac looking for attention and making things up. The EKG's have been more or less normal, the heart moniter was normal except for PAC's, and the echocardiogram showed only a slight enlargement of the left ventricle (I think that's what she said).

My stepdad used to sneer that it was a "swoon" or a sort of wet dream, but this is not an erotic event. There is nothing fun or sexy about it.

Has anyone else ever had this happen? Any ideas on what it might be? [/i]

I've had them from time to time, not so much any more. I now call them "content-free panic attacks." They ARE physical, but maybe you'd better research them on the internet if your quacks are so lacking in understanding.

I have had exactly what you are describing mostly when I was a kid. Including the fluttering sound in my ears and not being able to talk. To me it felt like some sort of dissociative problem like derealization. It has only happened maybe 5 times in the last 20 years though.

In the last couple years I started getting regular anxiety and panic attacks. These sometimes happen at night but they don't feel like a dissociative event.

I have similar experiencs from time to time, where I wake up sort of already in a panic attack (heart racing and I feel SURE something is terribly, terribly wrong) but I don't really remember what I was dreaming about at the time. Some of the other things you describe do happen to me in dreams fairly regularly though, especially not being able to breathe and only being able to whisper no matter how loud I yell. Usually in the latter case I'm trying to call for help and can't. I think I've had the fluttering thing then now and then too though I don't remember any specific occurances off hand....I wonder if perhaps it's a combination of elevated heart rate and hypersensitivity to sound causing you to hear your own blood pumping?

Waking up and not being able to move is not all that uncommon. When you're sleeping your brain puts up some blocks that keep your body from actually physically acting out what you're doing in your dreams. Sometimes you'll wake up before these blocks have completely shut down, so you end up awake but paralyzed for a few seconds. Being awoken suddenly (ie, by a panic attack) could very well cause this to happen more often.

This happens to me occasionally. Usually when in a dream i think "What if this turns into a nightmare?" and then it is to late. When i was a kid, up until i was 12 years old i had nightmares EXACTLY like that, in episodic, recurring form. I believe a lot of inspiration came from the sci fi channel, all dogs go to heaven, and little nemo. My nightmares have that kind of art styling.

Some people get sleep paralysis (waking up paralysed like Funaho described) on a regular basis, accompanied by terrifying visions of being smothered/strangled by a shadowy figure - this takes the image of either a large man or an old hag.

What makes it all the more horrific is that the experience and subsequent trauma is similar to as if it actually happenned - although everyone the sufferer tells (including health profesionals) will dimiss it as 'just a bad dream'

Yes it is like all that, except that there usually isn't a dream or any visuals, although I dream a lot otherwise. bUt if they is a dream, it just goes crazy and haywire, faster and louder and more overwhelming. There aren't any scary figures. for example, if I was having a dream about a merry go round, the music will get louder, faster, crazier, the thing will turn faster, the ground will spin, the colors will smear, things make less sense, and it goes faster and faster...and I wake up and the thing continues.

95% of the time, though, it's just regular dreamless sleep and there are no visuals except for black/grayness. It feels like you're in a tunnel and a train is going to run you over.

I usto get that when I was younger my parents always told me it was night terrors and that it was perfectly normal to get