This will be a bit of a long post, but bear with me… you may have experienced this too! 🙂
…it started when I was 15.
It was late in the night, about 4 or 5am. I found myself lying in my bed on the flat of my back. The room was dark but crepuscular light seeped in through the unlined curtains. The light of the hall outside leaking in under the door… Semi asleep, semi awake… a pressure on my chest, a looming, shapeless, black, figure crawling up my body.
I could feel its pressure on my body, I tried to move and I couldn’t. Emotionally heightened terror filled my solar plexus. My mind was racing, I was completely paralyzed by fear. My eyes were open, I felt wide awake, I had full control of my thoughts. I could see around my room, but somehow… I was still in my dream. The dream was being acted out in my room, shadowy dark figures were floating and moving eerily around my room. my sister snored gently in her bed, while I tried desperately inside myself to scream and call anyone for help…
A strange sound began to fill my ears… Behind low whispering voices, children laughing and strange music I had never heard before.
The looming, heavy dark figure was now up on my chest… I could feel its ghostly hands tighten around my neck. It didn’t make a sound. Breathing became a struggle as I could feel this creatures weight lying on top of me, fear choked me, I tried so hard to scream…
what was that sound??
Like a moan, it was high pitched, it varied in frequency and sounded for all the world how you would imagine a banshee would cry out and whail!!
I soon realized this sound was coming from me… I was trying to scream in my paralyzed state and it emitted from my throat a weak, eerie sound that sounded nothing like a scream, but in my dream I was screaming as forcefully as I could.
It’s hands closed over my mouth, it’s face right in front of mine, but it didn’t have a face… it was just a dark, heavy shadow with holes for eyes… it opened its hollow mouth and engulfed my face… My heart was pounding, I was sweating, I couldn’t breath, the distorted world around me was fading and just as I felt life was leaving me…
“LETTE!”
“LETTE!! Wake up your FREAKING ME THE HELL OUT!”
My eyes snapped open, and I was now properly awake, in my bed, my sister sitting up looking petrified at me with her knees up tight and her quilt pulled up to her chin!.
My weak, strange moan that was a scream in my dream had woken her… I scared the crap out of her and I was terrified beyond belief!
I decided I needed to know what this experience was, I am rational and I do not believe in the supernatural – only as an interest, I am fascinated by it, but thankfully I found a rational explanation.
I had just experienced Sleep paralysis.
Sleep paralysis is a phenomenon in which people, either when falling asleep or wakening, temporarily experience an inability to move. More formally, it is a transition state between wakefulness and rest characterized by complete muscle atonia (muscle weakness). It can occur at sleep onset or upon awakening, and it is often associated with terrifying visions (e.g. an intruder in the room), to which one is unable to react due to paralysis. It is believed a result of disrupted REM sleep, which is normally characterized by complete muscle atonia that prevents individuals from acting out their dreams. Sleep paralysis has been linked to disorders such as narcolepsy, migraines, anxiety disorders, andobstructive sleep apnea; however, it can also occur in isolation.[1][2] When linked to another disorder, sleep paralysis commonly occurs in association with the neurological sleep disorder narcolepsy.[2] – Wikipedia
I now get this 3 to 4 times a month. Sometimes I wake up with the strange moaning thing, which has frightened my husband so many times! Sometimes I just feel something touching me and the feeling of fear just makes me jump awake and there is nobody there. Sometimes I hear voices or music or strange sounds, its freaky!
There is nothing unexplainable or supernatural about this experience, it is quite literally your brain working overtime, and you happened to wake at the wrong time!
Here is a very basic understanding of how it works from my own experiences and perspective;
When you sleep, your brain releases some chemicals and hormones to literally paralyse your body so that you dont get up and act out your dreams (incase you decide to throw yourself out a window or harm someone while you are dreaming) This is a natural proces to help you recover and repair your brain and body from the day before, by keeping you still and sedated.
If you happen to wake during this process, you experience a transient state where you have muscle atonia (weakness) or paralysis, you cant move, you can open your eyes but the chemicals in your brain are still active… so you can see or hear or even feel your dreams around you in very lucid detail while your eyes are open and you cant move. A feeling of fear is associated with this and a looming shadowy figure is sometimes experienced… this thing is called; ‘The Hag’ appropriately named because of the fear and the pressure on your chest when you see it!
This is a very basic run-through of how this experience feels, Please read in detail HERE how it happens, it really is fascinating and I would love to hear your feedback on your own experiences.
Recently though, I have been experiencing something different… and very frightening from a health and medical point of view. I havent yet spoken to my specialist about this but I feel I may need to going forward.
I think I am fainting in my sleep!
WHAT? but you are already unconscious! how can you fall unconscious when you already are!?
I know, right? but please let me explain! It doesn’t work like the Inception thing! :p I dont fall deeper into my dreams…
I have Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome because of my EDS, so I faint on a regular basis while awake. I have become acutely aware of the symptoms and feelings inside me when this happens and just before I faint. I have to be, so that I can try and control it as I sometimes stop breathing when I faint and this is not good for the ould head and brain and has caused nerve damage previously from the lack of oxygen! I have gotten better at noticing a faint coming on but sometimes I have no control and just hit the floor (insert ‘Let The Bodies Hit The Floor’ meme here!)
When I sleep, I dream very lucidly. In full colour and sometimes I can control how the dream plays out, not every time but nearly always in my dreams I chose flying as my method of getting around! (dont laugh, I really do and it feels exhilarating!) I have proper and extreme intense emotional feelings, I can touch and physically feel things, tastes, smells, pain, pleasure and extreme tiredness when I have overworked myself in my dreams!
Isn’t that crazy? If I play or do too much in my dreams, I can physically get wrecked tired and feel how it affects my body exactly like when I am awake, even though I am asleep and lying still. It is almost like in my dreams I have slipped into another me in the dream world!
Further to this, in my dreams I have started to experience fainting, just like I do when I am awake and active!
I feel the pressure in my head build, my temples and behind my eyes start to throb, stars spinning around my head, a dark tunnel seeps in from my peripheral vision making everything slowly go dark. My muscles feel heavy, I feel disgusting hot rising nausea crawl up from the depths of my gut and up into my throat, I begin to sweat but always feel cold, feel like I am going to vomit… A loud wooshing noise grows intensely loud in my ears, like I am falling through air.
While I am dreaming this, sometimes, I experience myoclonic jerking, my husband notices this. and I also can bite my tongue and the inside of my mouth to the point where I wake up with my mouth filled with blood.
The darkness closes in, deeper, deeper, I feel myself fall under into a faint, it literally feels like someone is just turning your ‘lights’ off and you have no control over it, then there is just darkness for a split second and I snap open my eyes and feel utterly dreadful!
When I wake I feel just like I feel after I faint in my waking state. I had been sweating, I am viciously nauseous, my body aches, I am physically weak and feel sore, tired, and confused… I have an urgency to both vomit and pee… I will get up, go to the bathroom, then hit the floor flat with a hard thump.
I have experienced this many times and wondered if I am in fact fainting in my sleep, or at least experiencing the precursor to a faint, then in my weakened state when I get up, I faint properly… it is all very odd but I did do a bit of research and found I am not alone, at all! Thankfully… I was beginning to worry about my own sanity! :p
This is called nocturnal syncope and I found a medical journal explaining a trial for testing this condition. It is an amazing read, HERE!
PATIENT HISTORIES
Patient 1 had her first nocturnal syncopal episode at the age of 40 years. After sleeping for some hours, she awoke and felt nauseous with abdominal discomfort and the urge to defecate. She lost consciousness while lying supine. She sweated profusely but did not bite her tongue. Her husband observed transient myoclonic jerking. After this, similar episodes occurred regularly (at least one a month) and only at night. The syncopal episodes never exceeded one minute and were atraumatic. She was incontinent of urine and faeces once. A tilt test provoked a vasovagal reaction followed by seven seconds of asystole and reproduced her nocturnal symptoms. Because of ongoing symptoms she underwent neurological investigations and a typical nocturnal episode was recorded during continuous electroencephalographic (EEG) and cardiographic monitoring (fig 11).). The EEG was judged normal by two independent neurologists. The ECG, however, showed a pronounced bradycardia (36 beats/min) during the episode, with an atrioventricular node escape rhythm. – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1768202/
So this one particular lady experienced a lot of the same things as I did during these episodes. I also found other examples HERE and HERE!
A 2004 research publication suggests patients may awaken from sleep with symptoms of forthcoming neurocardiogenic syncope (Krediet, Jardine, Cortelli, Visman & Wieling, 2004). This suggestion may seem to contradict current teachings on this disorder. However, research shows that transient autonomic mechanisms that predispose to vasovagal syncope may occur during sleep (Shneerson, 2000, p. 1-15). – http://www.dinet.org/NCS/ncs.htm
So it’s nice to know im not going nuts, but these are crazy experiences which make some people think it may be a supernatural occurrence when it is not. Your brain is just messing with you!
The sleep fainting is new though, and though I have found some medical papers on it, it doesnt seem to be extensively written about, so I would love to hear your experiences of Sleep fainting or Sleep paralysis. Please contribute and thank you for reading 🙂
– Lette
Irish Dysautonomia Awareness 
i read all information about paralysis in dream … it happen with me too ..but there is different thing happing with me… when i sleep… during sleep i faint and then i feel some one els closer with me i want to do something for me but my body does not work that time, dark shadow seems like that evil or ghost ..but when i wake up
there is no one in my room .. …whatever thing have been happing with me i have knew it ..duration of incident happen till morning..
Hi Diya, thank you for commenting 🙂 I think what you are describing may very well be Sleep Paralysis. Everyone may experience it slightly differently. Though you say the experience lasts till morning, do you mean while you sleep or while you are awake? because dreams and all experiences in your sleep happen over seconds/minutes and no more, very fleeting but we feel like it went on a lot longer than it really did!! … I hope that made sense!! 🙂
Sorry if this is really jumbled, I have insomnia and I haven’t slept for about 36 hours. My sleeping habits, like yours, seem to contradict a lot of the studies I learnt about in high school psych or from word of mouth. I haven’t done too much research or really addressed it with my doctor, because I have hypothyroidism and just always associated it as one of the many symptoms. I absolutely have sleep paralysis. I also have very vivid dreams, most often nightmares, that I can’t usually control, but I do experience sensations, such as taste, pain, pleasure and smell. Right off the bat I want to say its nice to read this. Most people don’t really believe that any of the things I complain about could really be happening, since theyve never experienced it themselves or heard of it before.
I die in my dreams. A lot. I fall from impossibly high places and hit the ground. I get shot and stabbed and my teeth fall out. I meet a lot of monsters. -How on earth did you learn to control yourself in your dreams? I can fall into REM almost as quickly as I come out of it. Some nights I will wake up from one nightmare for a moment only to fall into another one immediately, and then again and again and again. And I can remember them all. But then there’s those random nights, where I’m nightmaring away like usual, and I feel as though I’ve woken up, with some creepy demonic figure crawling up my body and laying on my chest.
I’m a logical person. I can’t disprove anything supernatural, but I always put science first. (Again this was really comforting to read.) But I’ve also woken up with bruises in the shape of fingerprints on my upper thighs and on my arms, in an inverted way as if someone else put them there, while I was in bed alone, while having creepy rape dreams/paralysis.Hard to believe I know. While it would have been awkward positioning for me to have left those bruises myself, it seems like the only logical explanation. Could I be acting out my nightmares as the villain during paralysis?
Is that some weird form of sleep walking?
Have you ever experienced anything like that? Have you ever acted anything out while under the impression that you were awake but were actually sleeping?
I’ve also had a weird inception thing. Nightmares where I wake up in my room, something happens out of the ordinary, I die, I wake up again in my room, something happens, I die, and so on and so forth. For what feels like hours. When I finally wake up I shoot out of bed gasping for air. I often end up tip toeing around my home waiting to die for the first 10 minutes or so. When I come out of a regular nightmare cycle Im usually just more exhausted then when before I went to sleep.
If you have any advice or knowledge on whats been going on, any imput at all really, I’d love to hear it. Most people are so dead set in their ways when it comes to what is and what isn’t possible when you’re sleeping. In my point of view, if the average person has 1500 dreams a year, and there are seven billion people in the world now, and goodness knows how many since the beginning of time, I feel like nothing can be certain.
That would be like trying to draw conclusions about all the water on earth from a single raindrop.
“That would be like trying to draw conclusions about all the water on earth from a single raindrop.” – what like Homeopathy? (hehehe!!) :p :p 😉
Thank you so much for taking the time to comment, I love your descriptions, though I don’t like and I fully understand how scared they can make you!!
As for the bruising and strange experiences… YES!! I actually do understand and I have them too 🙂 Many a time I have woken up with scrapes, bruises and I haven’t a clue where they came from other than from myself while I am asleep trying to battle the demon in my sleep! 😀 seriously though, the hormone released while you dream is to prevent you getting up and throwing yourself from the top of a building or to stop you hurting others or even yourself but from what I can tell (from experience only and from some vague experiences I have read of others) this doesn’t always work religiously to keep you still. People sleepwalk with their eyes open, make themselves sandwiches, watch tv and have conversations with loved ones without remembering any of it because they did it while they slept! I personally know people who have done this, it is also widely documented if you give it a quick google.
When I was a kid if I slept in the living room while watching tv, my mom would come over to wake me to go to bed, I would ‘wake’, as in open my eyes and sit up and acknowledge her and the fact that I needed to pee and then I went to try and crawl into the TV display case to use the loo!! I don’t remember any of that and apparently it happened a lot!!
I honestly believe those bruises came from you, unless you had a friend stay over that night who had violent fantasies while you slept
🙂 How else could you explain it?
“Nightmares where I wake up in my room, something happens out of the ordinary, I die, I wake up again in my room, something happens, I die, and so on and so forth. For what feels like hours. When I finally wake up I shoot out of bed gasping for air.” – dude you are caught in some sort of time loop, Dr. Who is F*ckin with ya! I am messing, this ‘false awakening’ is common. the time difference between dreams and real life is vastly different, though. What felt like a really long dream or experience to you may have only taken seconds in the brain or in ‘real life’! So what you thought was happening for hours may have only happened within a few moments while you slept.
I am no expert, these are only pieces of advice from the experiences and the things that I have read and had so I would always encourage people to do their own research, be cautious of ‘woo woo’ explanations when there is a perfectly logical explanation, but whatever you do, go research and make up your OWN mind 🙂 🙂
Our brain is a wonderful organ, capable of inflicting both excitement and terror and sometimes I think, just of it’s own accord, it just likes to f*ck with ya! :p
How about the possibility that some people can access to lower and higher frequencies, where they can interact with other kind entites?
Nice concept, I even think a lot of movies, games and novels etc. have played on this idea, but I am afraid it is pure science fiction 🙂
I think I get where you’re coming from, but Frequency doesn’t make sense here.
A frequency is a property of oscillations; It’s the number of repetitions of an event over a given time.
Frequencies in themselves carry no information other than the wavelength and the amplitude of oscillation.
Signals carry information, not frequencies.
We have a number of senses that allow us to interpret signals: eyesight, touch, sound, smell, hearing.
I’m assuming you’re wondering if we can access a wireless communication system by some method through our minds while sleeping.
In order to do so we would need to have a mechanism for accessing these signals.
Firstly considering we’re asleep, we can’t depend on our senses that we would use while conscious.
The transmission would have to be wireless, and other than some exotic quantum effects, that would be Radio (RF) based.
In order to access a signal from the RF spectrum, it must be tuned, filtered, discriminated or mixed and then amplified.
There’s no evidence to suggest we have a biological sense that allows us to access wireless communications.
On the other hand, there’s an abundance of evidence which describes the states of awareness we experience during sleep, and couple that with the fact that our mind can easily cause us to hallucinate, it seems considerably more likely that the cause of the issue is an uncommon state between wakefulness and sleep.
Yep, happened twice to me, once a year ago, once a few days ago. Woke up with the urge to empty my bowels, had intense pain in that area. Sat on the toilet for a minute with pain increasing, was thinking the pain couldn’t get any worse. Then I crashed out, wife heard and found me fitting on the bathroom floor. Ambos came, heart rate was high 20s. Took me into emergency…
Second time was similar, knew what was coming so could prepare a bit. Wandered into hallway after sitting on loo for a few moments and lowered myself on to floor before crashing there. After coming to was sweating profusely and felt like crap.
Last time I had bad dreams before waking. Can’t remember specifics but just had a bad feeling about them.
Not sure about first time.
I have also had two other occasions in between where I have caught it early I think and elevated my heart rate and avoided the feint.
Hi Stewart, Thanks so much for calling by and commenting 🙂 That sounds intense, but I think I know how you feel. I hope things are ok for you now, they can be very frightening experiences.
I’ve just woken up wondering if I fainted in my sleep and as soon as I could I came online to find an answer.
I’ve fainted multiple times before but not on a regular basis and not very often; but enough to notice the feelings before I do faint, and for me, it’s always been around blood.
I woke up today after a pretty decent sleep, felt fine and ready to take on the day, after having lunch and relaxing a bit I began to feel tired so I nipped up to bed to lie down. The next thing I knew I was at my desk at work playing with staples, suddenly one catches my skin and I cut my finger and blood instantly oozes out. Straight away I start to feel nauseous and dizzy, then the sweating starts and my whole body just goes weak, my eyes get heavy and I lose control. Suddenly I’m waking up in my bed with the exact same feelings I get after I faint. Without the strength to move I lay still on my bed, confused and wondering what’s just happened. As soon as my mind collects itself I get up, wash my face, have something to get my energy back up and get straight online. I’m so glad I found this, I was a little worried and kept thinking it couldn’t be possible to faint when I’m already unconscious, but at least I’m not the only one it’s happened to! I hope it was just the once though.
I know this is almost a year after your post, but have you learned anything else about this phenomenon? I have fainted a few times in my life at the sight of blood either when it was drawn for tests or when I have cut myself and thus recognized the feeling when I dreamed of giving blood at a Wallgreens and passed out in my dream after I saw some in a refrigerator .
It was kind of alarming. I have fallen or died in my dreams/nightmares many times before, but this is the first time it ever felt real when I woke up. My vision sort of faded in to existance exactly like I do after I faint. When groggilly waking up or jerking up from a nightmare or fear that I am late my vision is always wholly there unless I close my eyes or have goo in them. Anyways I am just trying to figure out if I literally fainted or just dreamed it.
Hi Kade 🙂 Welcome to the blog and I am sorry you have experienced this, it can be very scary! I haven’t really learnt much more other than sleep paralysis can give all these feelings, it doesn’t mean we have actually fainted in our sleep, however, I am still looking for answers and will update as soon as I find anything new 🙂
Hi,
It happened to me again last week. I woke up at 2am feeling this tingly sensation in my whole body, feeling like I needed to vomit and could just feel my blood pressure drop. I knew that I was going to faint again so I put my legs up and hoped it would sort it out, but I guess it was too late, I was gone but only for a few seconds. I must say, when I was in puberty, I fainted so much that my Dr. gave me blood pressure drops that I had to take for a year or so. Now I’m 34, I started fainting while sleeping for the the last 7 yrs now. Not regular but often enough, and only at night.
I’m stoked to have found this article coz I wasn’t aware of it being possible to faint while sleeping and I thought I was going loopy.
Thanks for writing about this.😊
B.
Well, I’m not 100% sure I am fainting in my sleep either, it is just what it feels like, I hope I can learn more on this mad feeling! thank you for checking out the blog 🙂
Wow it’s not just me then, the sleep fainting happens to me quite regularly now, although it has only just started happening in the last year or so. The funny thing is I have been suffering with sleep paralysis since I was around fifteen years old, I am now 31, the only way I can describe the fainting is that it’s a similar feeling as to being on a waltzer on the fairground, like the gravitational force you feel pinning you to the seat, it’s very similar to this to me except I am lying in my bed obviously. I also get a feeling of nausea and feel a little sweaty. I don’t just faint one time though it happens numerous times in one dream, it is driving me crazy, I seem to go through fazes of this and then the sleep paralysis, that is some scary stuff. It feels very real and I am always in a scary scenario I have heard the radio on and can hear the blood pumping through my body so fast and my heartbeat turns rapid and my breathing goes really weird. I feel as if I am going to die in my sleep. I try to shout and pinch my partner to wake him up so he can help me, I feel as though I am but really I’m not (so frustrating). I no sooner wake from an episode of this then fall straight back into another one, not good when your on your own and your asleep it’s extra scary, as some of you will already know. Although it’s scary I sometimes try and do it if my partners next to me because in a very strange sense I sometimes enjoy it, I would be interested to know if anyone else sort of enjoys it, I find it amazing more than enjoyable I suppose and as for the fainting I would love to know what causes this to happen so if anyone knows please post on here.
Hi Lette,
I find your post bitter and sweet – bitter because this is exactly what I experience often and sweet in a way because you gave me answers.
It also started when I was around 14 years old, the scream of these weird people turned into the highest pitch of a cat being tortured and then into a ghostly unbearable sound. My eyes are wide open in my dream, i can see my room exactly the way it is except a bit distorted into a gloomy grayish way. I cannot move and my breathing slows down, I realize right then that its only a dream.
I find myself having these episodes more in the afternoons when I take naps (which I do once in a while) however; for the past couple of nights I have experienced fainting episodes in my dreams as soon as I fall into a deep sleep. I can feel how my blood pressure lowers, a ring in my ears and my body is gone as if my soul detaches as I fall. I cannot wake up until I talk to myself for a long time ordering me to wake up. Since I can remember my dreams have always been incredibly vivid, I often travel in my dreams to my old town where I meet with my old friends and I can literally feel their hugs and taste the food (it is super weird).
Anyways, Thanks again for the post!
Natalie
and thank you for taking the time to comment 🙂 It is lovely to know we are not alone in our strange sleep
experiences!
Hi Lette thanks for sharing such great article, i found this while i was searching for sleep fainting its my first time i ever felt of it but glad to know am not alone .
Thank You
Abeer Saba
And thank you for popping by! 😀 hope to see you here again soon 🙂
I’ve experienced sleep paralysis so many times throughout my life.I too was so happy to find out there was a scientific reason for it and I wasnt going crazy. I am also a lucid dreamer and when I was younger ,more so then now, would sleep walk.Sleep paralysis can be so terrifying! I usually wont see things on my chest, instead they are coming at me from above or standing at my side. I’ve seen flames and heard them crackle, while screams of people in suffering came from all around me and a black hooded figure stood next to me. I felt like I was dying. Praying helped me to get out of the paralysis and if I slept on my side it happened less often. I recently have been having a weird phenomenon happen though,where I pretty much pass out when getting ready for bed and dont remember anything at all when I wake up.Its usually accompanied by a deep feeling of dread and hopelessness also. Normaly I always dream but on these certain occasions I only remember blackness.Also when I do wake up it will feel like i was asleep for hours but it had only been 20 min or less, I’m extremely dizzy and usually cant walk or function for a while either, feeling like I will black out again or fall.
Not sure if your still reading these but I just had a crazy experience and I thought I’d share and see if you have had anything similar. I have had sleep paralysis since I was pretty young. I believe it is tied to my narcolepsy which in my particular case was misdiagnosed as insomnia because my internal clock is so incredibly messed up after having slept through much of my high school years and early college years. Anyway this experience just now led me to your article. I have seen the shadow figures many times. I believed that it had to do with my brains confusion over my state of sleep but wakefulness. This time was very different. I fell asleep and was completely unaware that I had fallen asleep. In my dream I was at work (a recording studio). I walked into the control room to ask my friend/co worker if he needed anything for his upcoming session. He cheerful said no. Suddenly I stumbled (by the way the vividness of this dream is incredible. It’s almost like a memory to me now looking back) and I fainted in the dream. He caught me and believing I was too exhausted and my body was forcing me to sleep he laid me on the floor. I could hear his voice telling me to relax and sleep. Then he picked me up as though I were 20 pounds and carried me. I was aware of what was happening but I felt completely drained as if I were falling asleep and there was no way to stop it so I gave in. I felt more tired then I have ever been in real life that I gave in. Then I realized he had left me on my bed and left presumably back to the studio for his session. At this point I thought I was dreaming but then I felt different and realized that I was in sleep paralysis. As I said I am used to it by now. So I just remained calm and waited for my brain to sort things out. Suddenly in part of my bed a hole into absolute darkness opened up. Under my blanket things started to crawl and move. They had the movement patterns and size of dogs but when they got to me they had hands that grabbed my arm and my torso and tried to pull me into the pit they came from. The feelings were so vivid. I could swear the blankets were moving up and down violently I could feel the after touch of the hands when I woke up. When they grabbed me I realized this was something wrong. I struggled against it. I gathered my strength and pulled back hard and yelled “enough”. When I did this they got weaker. I knew that the words were just as powerful as the force I exerted so I tried it again. This time I broke free and that’s when I woke up. Everything was perfectly still the whole and the darkness were gone. I’ve had terrors before but nothing like this and nothing so vivid. It’s like it actually happened. Anyway. That’s my story. Sorry for the novel hahaha.
Sorry side note. After a sleep paralysis episode have you ever felt you body life pulse. It’s hard to explain it any other way. I think either you know what I mean or you don’t cause there is no other word for it. It happens a few times and then after a couple minutes it stops.
Thanks for the article btw!
Hi… I also experienced something like this twice some years ago… It was a combination of your experience and Lette’s. I couldnt move, saw a shadowy figure, i heard the horrible noices and the wispers, the grabbing…. all this while my eyes were fully open. While It happenned, even though i was terrified i was thinking to myself “this HAS to be a dream!” . Then, while in a state Of complete paralysis i began to be pushed to the brink of the bed: the feeling was strange because while terrifying i was also like “you got to be kidding me! This cant be”. The thing is that i didnt experienced a waking up. When i was about to fall from the bed i could finally move and the whispering and the shadow dissapered, but everything else stayed the same.
Maybe you wont believe It but around the same time i heard some people at school were experiencing lets say “abnormalities” in the house they rented. I heard somewhere that in order for this things to dissappear you actually have to dare them and even use a little bit Of profanity. So after the second time It happenned before i went to sleep i was like “come and get It you f*ckers”. Praying also helps. It never happenned again even though i still wake up in a catatonic state from time to time.
Its the first time i look up for this. For one im glad that im not alone because everyone i te about this thought i was completely insane or that i was joking. In the other hand its sad to know that other people also has had to cope with the almost unbearable terror all this brings. It amazes me that this experience actually has happenned in more or less the same way to different people. If It was all generated by the brain shouldnt everyone experience very different things? Or áre this shadows some kind Of terror archetype we all share? In any case, we all have to stand up against our own terrors and fight them. Good luck!
Ps: nowadays i have been experiencing a horrible feeling: just before falling asleep (generally while laying on my back), i feel like If i was fainting, and like if my soul is being sucked away. A feeling Of dying invades me and i come back to an alert state. It has gotten to the point where im not able to sleep in a supine position anymore. Lette, Is this similar to your experience? Any ideas?
Thanks
Hi Proje and Daniel 🙂
*Daniel, as for ‘life pulse’? I am not sure what you mean but I do feel an almost full body heart beat if that makes any sense… kinda like my heart is beating very strong it almost shakes my whole body, I usually get this after the event and I am just lying there trying to make sense of what happened, is that kinda like what you mean?
*Proje: “Or áre this shadows some kind Of terror archetype we all share?” – according to the Wiki page on sleep paralysis this is what is indicated, that everyone has the “Flight or Fight” response and the “fear” associated with Sleep paralisys is more or less as you describe it, we all have a pre-conceived notion that fear associates with ghosts, demons and dark woo woo!! :p I think really that is where it all comes from when our brains are toying with us at night!
As for lying on your back and getting the fainting feeling, yes I get this a lot, usually I get the fainty feeling on and off for a while as I am going into a sleep then I jump awake, if I stay on my back I will almost certainly fall into sleep paralysis and frighten the crap out of myself, so I avoid sleeping on my back now too! :p
It so is nice to know we are not alone in this, I thought I was going la la for a while! :p
Daniel, No worries for the novel, thank you for sharing your experience, as it says in the research I referenced above, Sleep Paralysis is typically linked to Narcolepsy so that would explain why you get it so strong, but everything you explain sounds like the things I have seen and experienced in my episodes too, its terrifying and very real feeling, the fainting is interesting though and I am still searching for if it actually happens in our sleep, very unusual! thank you again for sharing 🙂
I have eds also! And experience Vaso vagal syncope. I’m on midodrine for it. Im pretty sure I have POTS, but I haven’t been diagnosed with it. I found this website because I feel that I pass out while sleeping!!! It’s only happened a handful of times, but I definitely believe I pass out while sleeping.
Please attend g.p with symptoms, biting of tongue is typical of epilepsy. I suffer night time faints that wake me from sleep , its horrible. Ask for a holter, .ecg, tilt table test, oh and ct, if they’ll agree. Good luck!
Hi Lyssa 🙂 Thank you so much for the concern and suggestions, I have already had all these tests and also tests for Epilepsy, thankfully I dont have it, but the Tilt Table Test diagnosed Pots and I have had lots of CT’s and MRI’s for various things, thankfully, just Pots, EDS and Gastroparesis is what I have been diagnosed with 🙂
Thank you for posting this– my husband nearly had a heart attack last night when I woke flailing from a nightmare, only to go moments later into seized up muscles and wide eyed, spastic jerking. I woke from the faint in a cold sweat, only to fall almost immediately into another one. It took a good half hour of head between my knees before I was confident that it wouldn’t happen again, and I didn’t want to go back to sleep for fear of passing out again. Weirdest thing to experience loss of consciousness when you’re already semi-unconscious. I honestly thought I was going nuts, so I appreciate hearing that this has happened to other people. Is it possible that sitting bolt upright during a nightmare coupled with racing heart and what felt (physiologically) like an anxiety attack caused enough of a blood shortage to the brain? I experienced syncope often as a child and adolescent, but usually at the onset of sudden “nerve” pain, and usually while sick or from having low blood sugar.
That could very well be the case, most often that not with me it is because of low blood pressure, but it is still unusual to faint while already asleep or lying down, yet, just by looking at the comments here, it seems to be that it has happened many people! We are not crazy! 🙂 I hope your husband recovered! :p
Hey, just now I woke from what I think might be nocturnal syncope. I was having a scary dream, and although I can dream lucidly it was a bit of a murder mystery so I got quite involved. It got to the point in the dream when the murderer came up behind me, cold hands on my neck, when all of a sudden I felt this wooshing feeling in my mind. The only ways I could describe it is that my head became a washing machine and my mind was it’s contents. It seemed to increase in intensity until everything went blank- I completely lost consciousness until I had one single thought of ‘Hannah’, a friend who lives close by although I’m not sure why I would have thought of her. I then suddenly woke up, panting, heart-racing, and I think I probably shouted out at one point. I know this only durated the time that my room mate took to go to the toilet.
Extra-info: I’ve had sleep paralysis before so I know it wasn’t that, but it did feel like the whole thing happened at the will of something other… it almost felt as if my mind was being dragged by something.
Oh yeah, I ended up on this thread because the only thing I could compare it to is the feeling one gets before passing out- which I used to frequently until a year or two ago.
It does sound like you may well have had a nocturnal syncope as you say, I and the rest of the commenters on here seem to think this is what we experience, but until I can talk with a sleep specialist, I dont even know if it happens for real, but there does seem to be some medical articles written on it, so it seems to be legit! 🙂
I faint alot while awake as it is I start to blackout then I feel extremely weak I’ve been fainting sinse age 12 I’m 23 now so in quit familiar with the symptoms usually when I start to blackout I feel ny way to the nearest wall to lean up against so I don’t Fall on the floor sometimes I snap right out of it but others I go into an almost seizure my head will start shaking uncontrollably I’m used to that. However today I experienced something completely new I was sleeping for about a half hour I was dreaming I was with my mother abd in my dream my fainting symptoms came on strong as if I was awake so in my dream I did what I usually do I leaned up against a wall to stop from falling but this time I couldn’t breath I was gasping for air and I felt helpless it felt like the life just left my body my head rolled to the side nd I felt like I really just fainted. I woke up from dreaming nd I couldn’t breath or move I couldn’t see straight either I tried to focus on one thing but I couldn’t it looked and felt as if the room was spinning I felt sick to my stomach and I was extremely cold my whole body was shaking! It was a very scarey feeling. I went to the bathroom because I really felt like I was going to vomit before I realized that I may have fainted in my sleep. I suffer from extreme anxiety nd non-stop migrains I’m goin on a month straight with the migraines from the time I wake to the time I go to sleep at night please if anyone knows how to help let me know I am afraid for my safety fainting awake I’m used to but fainting in my sleep is brand new abd very terrifying
Thank you so much for sharing your experience, that does sound very frightening, was ther anyone with you while you slept, as in did anyone see you? you may have had a nocturnal faint but if you feel there may be fainting or seizure activity you really should go to a doctor to be absolutely sure there isnt anything more going on! Please let me know if you can how you are doing now 🙂
What you wrote happens to me. My friend said it only happens when you sleep on your back… Is that true?
it has happened to me mostly while lying on my back, nearly always, but there has been once or twice where I have woken up on my side so I am unsure. Being on your back does seem to make it worse for whatever reason! 🙂
Hi,
I found out this article because I experienced this twice today. I was sleeping on a flight (with a reclined seat). I always have lucid dreams, so it was kind of confusing. I knew I was on a flight and sleeping but in my dream, I felt like I was fainting. The feelings were similar to what I get when I am about to faint while fully awake – this (fainting) usually happens when I am about to undergo a blood test ( I have trypanophobia) and in all such cases, i almost always tell the doctor that I feel like I am about to faint (following which I do). In this case, I was feeling something similar in my dream. Now, I knew there was a lady sitting next to me on the flight (lucid dreaming), and if I faint in sleep, no one would realize since they would assume that I am just sleeping (as I had been for sometime). So I tried to shout “Help” twice, as loudly as possible, but almost no noise came out. All this happened with my eyes closed. Then, after a few seconds, I somehow opened my eyes – I jerked my neck and got up ( i think I forced myself to get up). I felt somewhat (but not completely) similar to how I feel when I come to senses after I faint. Then I went to the restroom, relaxed a bit, washed my face and came back.
Sometime later, I again went to sleep and I went through this fainting-in-sleep experience again. I didn’t try to say anything this time, but I was able to pull myself out of this dream and get up. I didn’t sleep after this incident and just spent time watching TV on the flight.
A couple of hours later, I realized that I was having a little bit of pain around my heart – that might have been gas too..
This has been happening to me for about a year. I had no idea that this is what was happening. It is the waking up and being unable to move that really gets me freaked out. The accompanying chest pain is unbearable – sometimes I wake up my husband moaning in pain WHILE I AM STILL ASLEEP.
Nope – not gas.
That is great! I am so sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this but I will email you now, thank you so much for this I would be delighted to feature your article 🙂
Just yesterday this happen to me as well. I only now what fainting is like from some idiotic game me and my friends would do in Jr high….. Over 20 years ago…. You mentioned that after this episode your body ache… That is what sealed any unsure thoughts of fainting in my sleep. I got up to go to the bathroom right after words and. I felt like I had just come down with a with a flu blown case of the flu! . I mean I was nearly in tears from how horrible and weak my body felt. I don’t currently have health insurance so not too sure where to go from hear…. Thanks for your info…. It is great to know I’m not nuts! 😏
thank you for sharing with us, is there a local doctor or anywhere you can go to get medical advice off the insurance? It is great to know we are not alone, but if these are experiences anyone is worried about I would advise speaking with your doctor 🙂 Please let me know how you have gotten on since 🙂
My sleep experiences are very similar to yours…very vivid dreams, a lucid dream or two and recently experienced what I believe must have been fainting in my sleep (by far the most terrifying experience I have ever had), however, where you have sleep paralysis, I actually awaken and am capable of movement but I’m still seeing and experiencing bits of the dream. I awoke bolt upright in my bed one night from a dream where a spider had jumped on my bed. I looked down and saw the spider squirming in a crevice of the comforter. I would have normally freaked out, torn the cover off, then searched the room for the spider, but since I had become aware that I repeatedly experience this (and had injured myself a time or two), I told myself that I was just still experiencing part of my dream and kept watching the spider, expecting it to just disappear. It didn’t, it just kept squirming, like it was on “a loop,” repeating the same pattern. It weirded me out, but I finally just laid back down and went to sleep. I’m just wondering how common this is? I’ve only seen mention of sleep paralysis in the traditional sense.
That sounds scary as hell, but really cool too! that is by far the first I have heard about someone waking in sleep paralysis but can still move! Spiders though? That would destroy me! cant be dealing with all those legs! 😀 Hopefully we will hear more from other people on this, in the meantime I will research some more! Thank you for the comment and for checking out the post 🙂
Yes, there’s a good reason it’s spiders…just about the only thing I’m afraid of! It used to be the shadow of a spider, descending from the ceiling towards my face. Same exact thing happened so many times (I would roll out of my bed to get away from it and subsequently injure myself on various objects) that I finally made myself lay there and eventually my subconscious had to work harder to fool me.
Speaking of subconscious…when you first started lucid dreaming, did your subconscious work extra hard to keep you from doing what you wanted? I have been conscious that I’m dreaming and can make choices but I have not been able to control the landscape and my subconscious seems to want to stop me from achieving my goals in the dream. I had such trouble with that and actually staying asleep, that I quit trying for awhile.
I found all these stories very interesting. My daughter has been having strange sleep disturbances, insomnia and feeling like fainting while going to sleep. She has vasovagal as well.
I don’t have vasovagal, but I do have severe migraines a few times a month and I used to have frightening half awake / half asleep experiences when I was in my 20’s – 30’s. The dreams would start out very mundane — I was always in familiar place, usually my own home or a friend’s home with people I knew around me. The dream would be about normal events or talking with friends and then something odd would happen – like I’d notice all the furniture was different or I’d look out a window and see a completely different street than what should be there. That would trigger my brain to realize I was asleep. Then I’d decide to wake up and at that point it would get scary. I would “wake up” and know I was in my bed, I felt like I had my eyes open and was actually seeing my bedroom, but I don’t know if that was real or dreamed – but as I tried to get up I couldn’t move my arms and legs. I felt like I was being held down. I would struggle and struggle and try to call out to my husband for help, but I don’t think I actually made a sound. After what felt like several minutes of panic and struggling, I would finally be able to get out of bed. The relief was so wonderful! I’d be thinking, “whew! That was a bad dream.:” I’d get out of bed and go to another room in my house and be carrying on a normal activity like getting a drink or checking on the kids in the next bedroom. Then I’d see something weird again, like a person who I knew but who couldn’t possibly be in my house because they lived 4 states away or I’d see a whole new room that I knew wasn’t supposed to be in my house. Then, I’d realize it was dream again and try to wake up. And again, I’d think I woke up and could “see” my bedroom and I knew I was lying in bed, and struggled to get up but be paralyzed again. From that point the dream would cycle around and around, repeating what seemed like hours of similar scenarios, but with each one, the panic I felt at being unable to move or get up increased. When at last I truly did awake and get up, I was so freaked out and tired. I felt like I couldn’t trust myself to know if I was awake or not. Even waking up my husband for comfort and help didn’t work, because that was sometimes part of the dream and so I couldn’t use that as gauge to see if I was really awake or not. It got so bad, I feared going to bed at night. I thought that one of those nights I really wouldn’t be able to get out of the infinite loop of dreaming I was awake and then dreaming I was asleep and then awake and never know what was real and what was a dream.
I’m now in my 50’s, and I as think about it, I believe these waking dream episodes stopped during menopause. I wonder if they are in anyway hormone related? I am just thankful that I don’t have them anymore.
thank you..
i will apply ur solution…
my prblm was, as i going alseep around 2:00am everyday my body often get some heat. while alseep i feel like some 1 touch me..i got more sensivity, a tiny noise like pin drop silence i can hear..but i notice dat wen i scare aftrr dat i check my whole room wit my bro i found nothing and again going to asleep its start againsi cannot move my body but my brain is working and my eye are open but i cannot shout my voice dosn’t cme through..and i was ver scare very very scared….. its happen regular 4-5 time per weeks…
instead i dont hve any problm.my body is fit n fine..
and m so tired of dis things.. so i need some guidence..
thank you..
email: saandahal3@gmail.com
I seemed to have experienced this last night. It’s happened one other time where i thought I’d just dreamed about passing out, but this episode felt all to real. Since it’s the second time this has happened to me, i figured i should do some research to find out exactly what’s going on and to see if fainting in one’s sleep is even possible. I Should mention that I have POTS as well, so I’ve grown accustomed to fainting regularly. Reading through this I noticed that i did not feel dizzy upon waking from this dream; in fact, I believe I continued sleeping after i “fainted”. Nor did i pass out after I got up 34 minutes ago. During my dream I felt everything I usually feel when Im about to go down: whited out and blurred vision, slight nausea, and severe “myoclyonic jerking”. I, too, can lucid dream, so i noticed the dark unconsciousness When it draped over my mind. This alarmed be because for a short while I could not remember what was happening in my dream and did not feel that it was only dream deep, I could only half notice the movement of my body as it convulsed uncontrollably. I’m glad to discover other instances of this happening, so I could learn a little bit more about this phenomenon. It’s good to know what exactly is going on and relate to some with the same predicament.
I also have POTS and EDS. I faint in my sleep too. I usually wake up just before actually fainting.
Is the sleep fainting dangerous?
I used to have frequent sleep paralysis when I was 15-18 years old. After that, it happened only rarely. Initially, I was extremely terrified by that experience. But later when I learned that it’s nothing – it’s not real and it immediately goes away once you wake up – I stopped experiencing fear during those episodes, even though the feeling that would usually produce fear kept adding up and shadowy figures kept appearing… I just didn’t feel fear anymore. Only pain in the back of my head. My refusal to give in to the fear caused that the pain in the back of my head intensifying to the point, where it felt as if physical changes were happening inside. I could even wake up with the head still hurting.
However, this hasn’t occurred to me in a long time.
Now the second thing occurred to me. Fainting while sleeping. This feeling is way more unpleasant and I think it’s dangerous… I think it is killing me somehow. Like you, I happen to lose the ability to breathe for few seconds… My entire body gives up. And when I wake after this, I am shaking and I feel incredibly weak.
In my life, I never had problems with fainting while I was awake (except very few traumatic experiences)… but after this happened to me in my sleep, it now keeps happening during the day too. So far, I am able to prevent it by my will… But it’s really unpleasant, distracting… and when I am trying to prevent this feeling when trying to sleep, it basically causes that I don’t sleep the entire night. That only makes me tired and it makes the fainting occurring more often.
At first, I thought it was a stroke. I guess I wouldn’t suffer severe consequences if that was the case by now… But even so, it is terrible. Now I feel a dim pressure in my brain. Not at the back of my head like with the sleep paralysis. Now it’s bellow the left part of my forehead.
I pray that it is only caused by depression. Because I don’t really need to suffer yet another physical medical condition. I already got ankylosing spondylitis… I don’t need another illness to make my body even weaker. If I have this EDS you speak of too,… then I will have a real reason to have a depression.
Hi all
Thanks for sharing your experience about sleep paralysis/ sleep fainting. The similar thing happened with my husband thrice in last year in a gap of 3-4 months. Before that, it never happened to him.
He was not feeling sleepy till ~3 in the night and then he went to the washroom. I was in a deep sleep. Suddenly I heard some sound he was making. He was lying in the washroom. After 2-3 minutes, he felt normal. He didn’t remember anything what happened after he went to the washroom. We did all the medical test (MRI, ECG, EEG etc). Everything was normal. I am really worried. Is it really a very serious problem?
Hi Ruhi, I am so sorry for the delay in getting back to you, How are you both doing now? I would think if MRI, ECG, EEG, all came back clear, that usually rules out the worst case scenario, but I am no Doctor, However, he may need a Tilt Table Test to determine if he has Pots or a related condition, as they wont show up on other standard medical investigations. Has he had this test yet? If so and all has come back clear I am afraid I don’t know what to suggest unless you ask for a second opinion from another doctor, possibly? Has he been to a Neurologist?
Do you have to be a certain age to get these things becausr i was asleep i woke up and i felt like ivould not breathe i could see but i saw swirliness i had lack of sleep that day i remeber telling myself wake up wake up but all i could hear waa my heart punding it all happe ed so fast even after i woke uo comepletly i felt like i couldnt breathe alittle bit but i ended up doing just fine what is do you think this could be this doagonse?
Hi There ????, I am afraid I cant diagnose exactly what that was because I’m not a doctor but it does sound like you got a good blast of Sleep Paralysis as explained in the post, can happen usually at any age, can be called night terrors in children, but it is completely safe and nothing to worry about at all, its ‘just a bit freaky’!! 🙂 if you feel something more sinister is going on, please go and see your doctor 🙂
Joolym here. Had a sleep-fainting episode when I tried to reduce my intake of Tramadol painkillers a few years ago. The GP I saw then couldn’t tell me if it is possible to faint in your sleep but that the accompanying nightmares are a Tramadol withdrawal syndrome symptom and not to reduce the dose without medical supervision. Now I’m reducing Tramadol under medical supervision, basically 50% reduction as before, and have full-blown Tramadol withdrawal syndrome including nightmares and sleep-faints (which always wake me up). The supervising GP is unsympathetic to my plight and won’t alter the new prescribed dose.
It helps to know I’m not alone but hope to be free eventually.
At last I feel sane again…I have been suffering with this most of my life and been tested and poked and prodded and nearly drained of all my blood on occasions. But all tests come back clear how ever the drs (yes i had a team by this stage) finally decided to put me on Gabepentin 4years ago and it has minimised my thumps in the night dramatically until recently…I came back from holidays overseas woke up in pain and thats all i remember i ended up with a major concussion and injury to my eye socket and jaw. The drs said it was to do with the compression from the plane and my body settling (I have secondary lymphodema in lower limbs so i am constantly compressed by garments) so i let it slide and thought that must be it but now its happening again i dont always wake though a couple of times i have started vomiting in my sleep and luckily have been heard and roused by family. I have a drill now if i feel it coming i groan because i cant speak and they know to get me flat lift my feet and douse me in cold water roll me on my side and then i vomit. Its very scary not just to me but to those who witness it but now i know we are not alone so thankyou very much for your article i cant tell you how much better i feel even though i cant fix it.
I’m pretty sure you were lucid dreaming
Thanks Hanrahan, I explain that in the post so I take it you didn’t read down but not to worry 😊 it’s very different to lucid dreaming in that you have zero control over your body during these experiences. Lucid dreaming is exactly that, lucid! 😊
I have sleep paralysis and i have had it since i was thirteen it doesnt bother me anymore i mean the actual episode doesnt but the thing i dont understand is it feels like im having a siezure i cant see straight and my head starts to hurt and i feel like if i dont try to fight it i will die why does this happen
i have been experiencing fainting or trying to lose conscience when dozing off to sleep and trying to stop breathing. i have severe restless leg syndrome with whole body movements during night i take mirapex and ambien. i was diagnosed with chronic insomnia years ago and have been on the ambien for years and was just diagnosed with the restless leg syndrome a couple of years ago. here in the past few months i have been experiencing the losing consicenceness not breathing and overwhelming fear that i’m going to die. well this morning around 4 (that’s when i went to bed) i had the worst episode yet. i started dosing and all of a sudden to me i felt like i was dying, i felt like something was in the room and was going to hurt me the fear was so great that i froze and i was trying to scream but couldn’t. this was the worst one yet and all the rest of the early hours i felt one right after another it seemed like but i kept shaking it off then i was awake and alert around . when i was in my early 20’s i had an evening of fainting spells one right after another and i hadn’t realized it was happening till my friend told me as he was picking me up off the ground after 2 or 3. i was able to control them as best as i could cause i had to drive home. when i felt i was going to pass out i shook it off and made it home and i have not had another episode since then till these started. i am a 61 year old woman i have had no heart issues that require medications nor high blood pressure. however i do have mytro valve prolapse which is a very small leak in a valve that allows a smaller than a pin drop to leak out but it does cause heart palpitations and can be extreme at times but even those have been few and far between. i also have low thyroid and take levothyroxine but that is the extent of my health issues. so now i ask you what do u think? is this what experience
It sounds to my like all these experiences may be the same as or some part of sleep paralysis but nothing is confirmed, this is all just from personal experience and feedback in the comments!! I hope they are not too severe for you but if you have any concerns I would speak with your Dr. 😊
Hi, thank you so much for sharing. When I read what happened to you, I thought you were writing about me, except that I live alone. I too have had sleep paralysis but it’s been a long long time since that happened.
Just this week though I started this fainting during sleep. What you wrote was exactly what happened to me and I too am an extremely lucid dreamer.
I’ve suffered anxiety and depression all my life. I also faint so very easily (sigh). Most medications for the anxiety and depression sedate me too much so I can’t work so no going there. Recently I started learning to let go (of anxiety, stress, depression and fear) using the Sedona method I’m not suggesting that in particular but I do think really learning to let go will help, it already has helped a bit last night when the fainting came back. At least partially letting go of the fear helped stop the nausea (boy I vomited all over the floor on Sunday night).
Also knowing I’m not alone will help a lot. Thank you again!
I apologize if this is posted twice, I got the “confirm” email for the “following” but the post never showed.
Hi, thank you so much for sharing. When I read what happened to you, I thought you were writing about me, except that I live alone. I too have had sleep paralysis but it’s been a long long time since that happened.
Just this week though I started this fainting during sleep. What you wrote was exactly what happened to me and I too am an extremely lucid dreamer.
I’ve suffered anxiety and depression all my life. I also faint so very easily (sigh). Most medications for the anxiety and depression sedate me too much so I can’t work so no going there. Recently I started learning to let go (of anxiety, stress, depression and fear) using the Sedona method I’m not suggesting that in particular but I do think really learning to let go will help, it already has helped a bit last night when the fainting came back. At least partially letting go of the fear helped stop the nausea (boy I vomited all over the floor on Sunday night).
Also knowing I’m not alone will help a lot. Thank you again!
Hi Mary, thank you so very much for stopping by and having a read, I’m delighted it struck a cord, it does seem, according to the comments here that we are certainly not alone! Not sure what this sleep fainting experience is, but it’s so cool to see everyone here agree on it! 😊 delight it’s working for you at the minute, long may it last 😊
I will let all know here if the letting go actually fixes this. Since I’m still new at it, it may take a while but as frightening as this occurrence is, I hate to think others suffer with it.
I’ve experienced sleep paralysis on and off for years and then some odd stuff following that. Last night I’m pretty sure I was faintish on my sleep. I was sleep paralyzed in my dream (happened before) and my boyfriend woke me up in real life. This time in real life I was WOOZY as hell. I sat up and my head was spinning and I’m not a faintish person so that was new.
I don’t have sleep paralysis but I have been experiencing the fainting whilst dreaming, like you I do faint in real life but just due to low blood pressure and I must say it is a really bizarre feeling when it happens in my dreams. I get the exact same sensations and can happen several times in a dream and I later wake up feeling VERY drowsy.
Some things I have noticed is it tends to happen when I’ve overslept. Now having low blood pressure while awake and then the added lowering that happens during sleep is I think a big contributer but I think the cherry on top for me is the fact that I have over slept which means I haven’t eaten….leading to low blood sugars, so that wombo combo is the problem for me I think.
Would love to know if anyone else gets it similar to me and wherethere this is right? This is just based on observing how my body reacts and I have found that missing dinner, over sleeping and stress causes the worst cases of it where I wake up and seconds later fall back asleep this continues to happen till between 10am – 1pm which can be very much a nuisance. Between each time I wake up I feel extremely drowsy my thought process is very cloudy and sometimes feel sick due to dehydration why leads to me falling back to sleep which can go from feeling like a deep sleep to semi awake rather fast but the elephant in the room is the fainting, the dreams are very clear and usually use the fainting as part of it (a resent dream used it as a method of see things a bit like the three eyed raven in gOt) it can happen once or however many times possible before I wake up, which when I finally do its very hard to get out of bed as I am disoriented, foggy and very sleepy.
Now sort of know what the causes are and how to prevent them, but just incase if you read and go oh this is a classic symptom for ….. please let me know so I can bring it up to my doctor, because as of right now I dont think it’s that much of a problem.
I have low blood sugar too and was thinking about this after the last time it happened so yeah you maybe right on that. I do know that for me after the first time it happened, stress and fear made it come back.
However as I mentioned earlier, working on letting go (of fear and stress) and also listening to videos for meditation as I go to sleep has helped me tremendously. The problem hasn’t reappeared
Hello,
I’ve been coping with syncope off and on for the past 3 years. I am 67 and my first episode happened 3 years ago at around 4:30 a.m. after I had been on. BP drug for 3 weeks.
I had a panic attack in the dr. office and even though I am allergic to many things it was prescribed. I went off the med a instantly but was put on another which burst the capillaries in my lower legs. I have “white coat syndrome ” and refused to take bp meds. My bp is now normal.
In regard to the first episode I was unaware but apparently I exhibited jerking in my sleep and my husband was unable to wake me. I ended up in the hospital and had every test for both heart and brain with negative results.
I went to a neurological clinic where tests were still negative.
I have had 8 episodes in 3 years. I am usually starting to wake up. I’m usually “out ” for seconds but then a bit confused for a few minutes after waking.
My doctor believes that my episodes are caused by dehydration so I drink water and other liquids all day.
I have an issue recently that has only affected me twice. I would faint in a dream in similar fashion to the way described, I can feel the pressure build in what feels like the base of my skull and it would worsen and I’d be on the ground in the dream. That’s what happened the first time, and in the dream I remember being told that I had a seizure by my school nurse. The second time it happened when I was in this half awake, half dreaming state. I had suddenly become aware of my dream and started to try and control it, I took a deep breath and held it, and as my dream began to stop I could see faintly the area next to my bed. Suddenly I must have been falling back to sleep because I felt my head sink into the pillow and a frizzy feeling came over part of my body. This is when I scared myself awake and calmed myself down. If anyone could explain what happened the second time, please do. It’d really help my anxiety.
One day I was watching a scooby doo and I fell asleep. In my dream I was in a garage filled with food and junk. Everything was colorfull. I had a spider in my arm and I pushed it across as it crawled to the back of my arm. It was black and when I pushed it I got very very dizzy and my eye sight went to salt and pepper. Then I blacked out and I was saying wake the fuck up Aidan!!!!! WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!!!! Then I woke up and I felt dizzy and nauseous.
I’ve always had pretty vivid dreams, but I’ve done this recently and I hate it, but only one of them was me feeling pressure, being paralyzed, and fainting because of fear, the rest I’d be doing normal things in the dream. Idk if I’m awake when I “wake up” from the nightmares or not, Bc I’ll jerk up as soon as I can move. But I can’t move scream, or speak. I can barely breath, and will like hyperventilate, and shake. I’m trying to figure it out, considering going to a doc Bc I feel like Ill die in my sleep
Well, I’m glad I found this article, for I’ve been experiencing something which could just be as freaky as what I had just read!
So ever since I could remember, I have always fought off near-fainting by fighting to remain conscious, partly because I have a fear of fainting, not having fainted before. For example, I was donating blood, and during the process I began to feel everything tilt and say, and then a warm feeling crawled up out of nowhere, and I had trouble moving my limbs. I knew I was about to experience fainting, so I alerted the nearest person and they reclined my bed.
Moving forward, I experienced something similar when I was in a hot breakfast room at a hotel. One minute I was sitting there and eating my breakfast, the next minute I felt the same tilt and the same warmth spread over me.
I remember having an experience where I fell asleep after taking melatonin. At least, I thought I had fallen asleep, when in truth I was trying to, for I kept tossing and turning, trying to find a comfortable spot. Finally, I felt like I was half awake, and I began to feel a pressure build-up all over my body. The intensity grew until my whole body tingled. I couldn’t move in this state, but then I realised that everything felt lighter, like I was freely floating. I grabbed my phone and told Siri to call Emergency services, but I kept failing to make myself audible to my phone.
I have had some of these things go on within the last few weeks or so.
I recently had one this morning where I was with my mother in our van. I was in the back, behind the driver’s seat, and I was drinking some water out of a bottle. As I kneeled down to toss it, I began to feel the sensation once more. It began the same way it had always been, and I began to feel a sense of weightlessness, followed by a sensation that I was not on the floor, I floated to where my mother was, and despite my hands feeling tingly, I was able to squeeze my mother’s hand to get her attention and call EMS. Then I remember doing this over and over until everything faded. Then I found myself at a hospital, about to have my first CAT or MRI scan. Since, in reality I have never had a tes, my brain invented what the bed and tube would look like.
Anyhow, these are the things I’ve been experiencing. One last thing I forgot to mention: When I took that Melatonin pill, and when I experienced the tingling sensation that had caused me to think I was about to faint, I woke up feeling alert and well-ressted, for just a few hours before I had been trying to get some sleep, so I had awoke feeling tired.
I wonder if this nocturnal syncope would fall under the category of astral projection? I heard that hearing and other senses become heightened, and if you have tinnitus, that sound would be increased.
Pingback: Sleep Paralysis, Sleep Fainting and How Your Brain Can Frighten You! – Sensation Experience
I didn’t experience any dark figure but while I was dreaming I felt awake because I didn’t know I fell asleep. Sounds crazy but my dream seemed just like reality. My roommate/sister was drunk and she was lying in bed with our other sister. I was falling asleep in my dream just like I was in reality. She got up and said she has to throw up so in my dream I was trying to get up but I couldn’t move. I heard Our other sister say we got to go check on her. Still I couldn’t move or open my eyes but I finally jumped up and flew out of the room to find bobkdy in the rest room when I came back to the room they were both lying in bed. I was confused because I thought for sure that it all actually happened. When I ran out of the room I didn’t remember seeing my sisters in the bed. I looked up what happens immediatly and came across hyponopomic hallucinations sleep paralysis.
Lette – first of all, thank you for this. It’s nice to know I’m not alone. I haven’t had t at night yet; but during the day it happens and I’ve not been able to figure out why. I’m also Irish, but American. I have EDS, POTS, MCAS… all that jazz, too! I’m glad to have found your blog. Hang in there and nice to meet you, kinda. 😊
Lovely to virtually meet you too! thank you for dropping by, welcome! 🙂
Hi This is kinshuk, Its happens with my elder sister one or twice in a year.She got frightened as someone entered in the room like ghost or likeways and then fainted for 2 or 3 secs,and she could not able to talk properly as well.But after 3 mins she becomes normal.I am very much concerned about her health during this.I do not have any idea about this,how much serious is this?Please help me on this.Should I take her to any doctor?neurologist?
Hi there Kinshuk, thank you so much for checking out my blog, welcome! please know that if it is only sleep paralysis that your sister is showing then there is nothing to worry about, it is not a medical condition or worry but more of a natural phenomenon of how your brain uses hormones while you sleep. If you think there is something more sinister or scary going on, please get the advice of your local doctor just to be safe and happy 🙂 Thank you again for commenting 🙂
Last night I was in a deep sleep and I suddenly awoke feeling so nauseous and dizzy, even though I was lying down. I could feel that familiar feeling of the blood rushing away from my head, I started to sweat profusely but felt shivery and cold. I felt the urge to pee so I got up to go to the bathroom, but as soon as I went into the bathroom my legs started to give way and I could feel the floor coming to meet me! So that is why today I have been googling ‘can you faint in your sleep’ and I came across your blog! It was a horrible experience, luckily I was able to lie on the floor with my legs in the air before I actually hit the ground with full force but it was not pleasant. I’m not sure what I was dreaming about, if anything, but I found it bizarre to be awoken just to feel faint. Thanks for your post! It is comforting to know others have experienced it too, even though I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone!
My experience seems to be slightly different to yours as I was awake I woke up 5 minutes earlier for no reason then I felt myself go faint and when I tried to move or call out I couldn’t I diddnt feel like anyone was in the room but my heart rate which I measured soon after was around 140 Bpm then after about a minuite I checked again and it was slower than it ever has been
Your description is spot on for what I experience: “The darkness closes in, deeper, deeper, I feel myself fall under into a faint, it literally feels like someone is just turning your ‘lights’ off and you have no control over it, then there is just darkness for a split second and I snap open my eyes and feel utterly dreadful!”
Maybe a few times a month it happens but it’s terrifying. I have never fainted while awake and never experience fainting or anything close while awake.I found your blog by Googling “Fainting In Your Sleep.” Thank you!
and thank you too for checking out the blog, I really appreciate new visitors, welcome! 🙂
March 15 -2017
Time 2:30pm I fall asleep while studying but before I fall asleep I kept my book aside.
5:10 pm I woke kept my both hands together behind my neck.I am sure I was awake suddenly both hands and entire body was not able to move .The sight from my eye got black background a middle path there where the image was how my ceiling and fan look like.
My eyes trying to close themselves and like audio pitch up and down the above ceiling moving I tried to shout but I felt a presence of some one holding my head and hands. My face from both of the sides. I did my best to speak God’s name but only a squeak that’s even not audible .Suddenly I felt people were singing God’s hymns .I made an idea that it is evening .Suddenly pressure tighten and 4time I took the name it was suddenly all right for some time I was able to listen hymns but after 3 minutes it’s all over. I moved towards a mirror to look but only at hands their is mark like some body hold it no other mark. But pain in eyes as entire imagery going like wavelength for 3 minutes and pain in neck inside and backside of neck.
Last night I passed out several times in my dream. At first my dream experience was very similar to sleep paralysis. I felt as if I awoke and was paralyzed. I could see everything around me with everything still dark besides the light I left on in the hallway. I was laying there and at first I couldn’t move. Then I tried so hard to get up it actually put a painful strain on my body. I had success. I slowly, shakily, and woozily got up out of my bed. I made it barely around the corner then felt my body give up. I felt my eyes roll back and everything go black as I dropped to the ground powerless. I’ve never fainted or blacked out in my real life so I don’t have any previous related symptoms for a flashback explanation. I felt as if I awoke again and I was laying exactly where I fell. I struggled with all my strength to get up. Vigorously shaking and weak like before, and once again successful. I made it to my bathroom before I blacked out again. At this point I was so sure I was doing some extreme sleep walking. Sleep walking is also something I’ve never done before. I woke up again in my bathroom, same spot I fell, and with a struggle I got back up once more. To convince myself it wasn’t a dream I began reaching out to feel everything since I normally don’t have the sense of touch in my sleep. Everything felt real down to the detail. Then without blacking out and falling I was just gone. Since I didn’t hit the ground that time I was worried about how weird it was going to be to actually wake up for real and see where I landed. I woke up for real. The pain & shaking had ended. I was in my bed under the covers. As relieved as I was to find I wasn’t sleep walking…I wasn’t reassured about not knowing how/why I experienced something so realistic to the senses all to be evidently unreal. I’ll always wonder. It was interesting and puzzling, but also by far an experience I do not exactly wish to ever encounter again.
Hey, such a good piece of writing and information. I often get sleep paralysis. And very recently I went for my eye check up because I was having disturbing days. I could feel pressure in my eyes, neck and I felt my head heavy sometimes spinning. If i stood or walked in heat then I felt more like throwing up but I didnt and my head woulf throb n I felt very uncomfortable. I went for my eye check up. There is no issue with the power and the doctor told it is migraine. So now after that amd much more than that I get dreams and I faint inside my dream and when I wake up i feel i feel suffocated like there is no air to breathe. Also when .
Hey, such a good piece of writing and information. I often get sleep paralysis. And very recently I went for my eye check up because I was having disturbing days. I could feel pressure in my eyes, neck and I felt my head heavy sometimes spinning. If i stood or walked in heat then I felt more like throwing up but I didnt and my head woulf throb n I felt very uncomfortable. I went for my eye check up. There is no issue with the power and the doctor told it is migraine. So now after that amd much more than that I get dreams and I faint inside my dream and when I wake up i feel i feel suffocated like there is no air to breathe.
I’ve been trying very hard to explain this to my husband, son and doctor and they just blow it off and tell me Not to watch the news or disturbing things before I sleep. That’s a no brainier for me.
They don’t understand that what they understand is a nightmare, which they’ve been through for years with me. I’m screaming in my dream but it’s not real words coming out. It WAS terrifying everyone in the house and I have always waken up very anxious and scared of nothing to the point that I would do anything Not to get out of bed. I swing and hit my husband for years and have a couple times walked out of my apartment, at the time, 3 floors up, across the parking lot, to my car and got a Christmas gift that was too heavy for me to carry, so I left it in the car, but somehow carried it back up 3 flights of stairs and put it down and went back to sleep, BECAUSE I dreamt that my husband said there were going to be little yellow worms inside, if I didn’t get it.
That was years ago. It’s actually Worse now. My dreams have become so Terrifying and bone chillingly horrifying that I physically feel pain, like I just got punched in the arm and woke up in a terrifying dream that has a Full story of me walking around in different places and facing things that aren’t PTSD problems anymore. Like, I’ve lost my son and running through the woods screaming for him and I can feel the branches hitting me and smell and feel the pain when I fall down, and next thing I know, is in real life, my son wakes me up and I’m screaming Real Words now and not mumble and crying as hard as I was in the dream. So my dreams are manifesting into my awake state.
The dream I had this morning that nobody seems to Alert to, was, I was sleeping on my Right shoulder but I felt this horrible pressure and pain that felt like my Left shoulder was being pulled back and being crushed like it was being ripped off my body. It hurt so bad and the electricity went out and cell phone wouldn’t work, so I ran to my bathroom to hide from this disfigured woman that was coming to kill me in a torture type of way. Millions of crystals were hanging from the roof, so if I tried to escape, that The Something that was waiting for me, would hear me move.
The pain of the arm being crushed was real, after the pain and I wasn’t laying on it, to make it go numb. My alarm went off and shocked me awake and terrified, I hit the snooze button and fell back asleep, into the same dream, the 2nd alarm goes off and I’m so anxious and scared, I feel like my hearts going to explode and I can’t breathe, so physically getting out of bed is a nightmare in itself.
I did sleep study but it doesn’t happen every single night, so it showed nothing.
Can you help me? It sounds like you would be the only one to understand some of this
I am a Christian and I have experienced this a few times in the past. Once I laid in my bed and in my sleep saw my mother leave her bed and enter the other room then a dark entity entered my room and paralyzed half my body as I tried to fight it off with the other half. I remember knowing that I needed to cry out to Jesus for help and as I did it left me alone and I slept in peace. You know what Jesus would say ‘peace be still’ that is what I felt. I believe the Lord had explained that this was the ‘second heaven realm’. God lives in the First heaven and humans in the Third. Fear seems to open this realm to me at times. I asked Jesus to remove the fear and the attack stops. I also experienced dreaming and seeing a dark entity in my room it tried to choke me as it stated it was going to get my mother and I. I know this too came from fear because of someone’s statement towards me a few weeks earlier. But God has not given us a spirit of fear.
I have a hood friend he is 69 years old and he suffers from this sleep thing he goes to sleep then wakes up sweaty badly feeling sick with an urge to go empty is bowels an bladder but when he stands up yo go he passes out then when his wife is trying to wake him he says its like somebody shouting down a dark pipe you any ideas what this could be could he pass out whill driving
Sorry for the delay in getting back, this could be anything from a low blood pressure drop to a simple feint, the best advice I could give is for him to go to his doctor! That would be the safest thing for him to do.
I dreamed that I fainted at work last night and felt like I fainted in real life. I wasn’t even sure this was possible. I googled it and this article popped up. Thank you for sharing. The dream happened approximately 3-4 hours ago and I still feel awful. Nauseous. Dizzy. My ears are ringing. My head hurts. And oddly enough (as if this entire thing isn’t odd enough) my sinuses are clogged. I was diagnosed with SVT years ago and had a cardiac ablation. Wonder if it’s related?! My head is spinning….
Hi there Jessica and welcome to the discussion! I am sorry to hear you had this experience, it sounds like it could be related to your SVT, I would reccommend running it by your doctor just to be sure 🙂 thank you again for popping in 🙂 Lette
Ahh sleep paralysis 😦 it is very interesting…. I have always had very vivid dreams (my mum and brother do as well… they have seen dr’s for nightmares) I am often lucid, always in colour, have felt physical sensation after waking not just while asleep, sometimes I can control the dream but often not and it is like I am in a whole new reality. I have woken up a number of times and taken minutes to work out who I am again because they are so long and realistic. I dream most nights, multiple dreams. I can fall into a dream and feel like I have slept for hours after only 10 minutes or so and then sleep all night but have nightmares and wake exhausted. I also get sleep paralysis but after I worked out what it was I can usually calm myself down which seems to help it pass… use logic and tell yourself not to try and scream and that you are just having sleep paralysis if you can and you snap out easier. The worst is when you are trying to scream and there is something coming towards you – hallucination or just feeling a presence but the sound doesn’t come out and then you wake up gasping for air and in a panic state. I have worked it out to an art now – sleep that is- If I sleep with a foot out I will not be able to fall asleep as I get a falling sensation, sensation of something grabbing my leg or floating sensation that snaps me away… its almost painful because its a real shock… If I sleep on my bag 9x out of 10 I will experience sleep paralysis. If I’m hot – expecially in the summer I have crazy, exhaustive dreams that last what seems like lifetimes… good dreams at first but then they turn into really terrifying dreams and I wake up in a sweat super terrified and disorientated. I sometimes hallucinate for a few minutes after waking from those type of dreams even if no sleep paralysis. I have literally woken up turned on the light and still seen aa purple flying cartoon cow in the corner of the room; I woke my ex up to ask if he could see it as it lasted that long. I had sleep paralysis for the first time in a few months yesterday night as I had been out with girl friends on a girls weekend away and fallen asleep super comfy (and warm) on my back. The interesting thing was that this time I wasn’t sure if it was paralysis as I woke up to hallucination of a dark shadow lady at the end of the bed. Usually this type of thing comes along with sleep paralysis but I was to scared to try and move. It moved towards me and I started screaming a really weird yappy scream. What differentiates this experience to me is that I actually made noise. I would have assumed I was dreaming the scream but I actually woke (and petrified) my friends up with the scream and they all thought someone must have been in the house or something….I also have had issues with fatigue in the past which I put down to multiple food allergies that went undiagnosed for a while. Before food allergy diagnosis I went to a ton of drs and missed a year of school from “chronic fatigue syndrome” at about 13. Once I fixed my diet it greatly improved but I was never really the same and still struggle with fatigue. I find it hard to keep my head up and eyes open at different points during the day but had always just put that down to diet issues. I have also experience “pre-syncope” or “vasovagal syncope” on and off for years. Been to the er more times than can count and multiple tests for thyroid conditions, heart conditions, epilepsy… all negative… I have been told by a few drs now they think it is a silent migraine but have an appointment with a neurologist coming up and plan to ask about narcolepsy as reading about hallucinations/sleep paralysis bought me to read the symptoms and I really think the “dizzy spell” is more like cataplexy as I am always conscious just can’t move or see and sounds like I’m under water. I would have never thought to mention my sleep paralysis and crazy lady dreams but now I’m wondering if all this time that was the missing puzzle piece. It is nice to read other stories and know I’m not the only one with these full on dream experiences… its makes me feel a little more normal.
Hi, I am dhaya and I experience faintness for the last two days while in bed and getting from bed only. I feel completely loosing the control and to overcome I try to turn on left side of the bed and the effect reduces in an minute. I don’t experience any sweating, but i have trouble in breathe during night time for few days. So is it due to nose block (Obstructive sleep apnea) and which result in less oxygen supply to brain. During day time I had not experienced any faint till now. Any breathing excises will be helpful? Your suggestion please
Hi Dhaya, I don’t have the nose block but have fainted during sleep. I’ve also experienced it because of stress too. The way I have moved away from it includes breathing exercise but helps in may ways too. Meditation. I use Insight timer for guided medication and yes they have guided meditation that helps letting go and very very much, breathing. Their site is here (and it’s free) https://insighttimer.com/.
Also there are hypnosis recordings that can help. Micheal Sealey does both meditation and hypnosis and helps with letting go https://www.youtube.com/user/MichaelSealey
Good luck and I hope it gets better!
Thanks mary 🙂
I don’t want to sound like a know it all but I had my 1st sleep paralysis about a month ago and my son has Always had them so I asked him what happened. I was on my side and my chest felt heavy and I got real scared and panicked but I couldn’t roll over. Finally it stopped after a minute or 2 but when I got up, I felt disconnected from my surroundings and felt light headed and just out of sorts, I felt this buzzing sound and felt like I was going to fall so I sat back down and waited. I told my son about it and he is so used to having it that it comes naturally now, but he said that it was exactly what it feels like. It’s like your body wakes up faster than your brain and it seems like it’s happening forever but it’s just seconds. So my advice is Don’t get up, sit up until you’re fully awake
Betty, December 6, 2017
At last I’ve found others who have experienced fainting during sleep !
This started with me 4 years ago. I was rushed to the hospital and given every test imaginable with all negative results. My doctor claimed that my problems were due to dehydration. I have noticed that if I do not stay hydrated I experience nocturnal syncope.
I’m also susceptible when I’m stressed.
I too have vivid dreams that can be interrupted by waking and continued when I go back to sleep.
Like others who have replied I’ve convulsed and bitten my tongue and the inside of my cheeks during an episode.
Hoping to find out how to control these episodes.
Hi! I have also experienced sleep paralysis from the age of 14 . My dad, brother and sister experience it too. I am now experiencing an intense black out feeling in my dreams and found your post whilst googling the symptoms. I wondered whether I was experiencing sleep apnea and the dizzy spells where when I stopped breathing.
I know this is a “few” years after original post, but I read this and started to cry, in a good way, kinda. I have been having nightmares since roughly age 12. “Something” is always tying to kill me. For many years I would have a strong sense of fear in my dreams whenever I walked past a bare room in my house, white room with a half door standing on the furthest wall. The fear was so intense in my dreams sometimes I would RUN past the room. That dream stuck with me so long that as an adult when my fiance and I went house hunting and Inwalked into a white room with an attic half door in it, I got cold, afraid and told the Realitor we were all set with the home viewing, (for the record, we did NOT buy that one.) Anyways, for myself I have never seen the figure, but have the scream, the larigitest type scream, where you know if only you can you would wake up. I am usually aware in my dream that I am dreaming I am awake trying to wake myself up, also thought I was crazy explaining that to others. In the dream I would try to throw something to make a noise to wake up my fiance so he would wake me up!? Also I have had dreams so real I wake up angry, I mean pissed at whoever upset me in the dream, the feeling is so real, it hurts as if it really happened. My fiance has been called a a-hole so many times fresh out of sleep because of it. He’s a saint! I also had a dream one night, this has been my worse one. I fell asleep on the couch, “hubby” was on the other one, last I knew. Woke up (in a dream) looked over at the other couch, he was gone, couldn’t move my body started to panic. I grabbed (could feel them in my hands) a stack of dvd’s from the shelf and threw them across the room to “wake” myself, saw them, heard them, finally woke up expecting to have to pick them up from the floor. Nothing. Got up walked through my kitchen to go upstairs and saw a man standing in my window. Screamed so loud my neighbor woke up, and woke up sitting on my stairs crying, cold and shaking! I know I woke the second time, the “man” was the “hubby’s” uniform hanging on the curtain rod. But the scream was real, and sitting on the stairs is when I think I fully woke up. Now though I can NOT walk through my kitchen with the lights off. At my age to be afraid of the dark. I do suffer from insomnia now too. I use to be so afraid to go to sleep I would force myself to stay awake as long as possible. Tonight however, which is how I found this, is my first “dream fainting” when I woke up I told my “hubby” that I didn’t feel right. I was cold to the bone and shaking!! It’s a relief to see I am not “alone” in this.
Sorry for clerical errors, typing on a phone at 12:58am lol.
Hi
I know you wrote this years ago but I know what you’re going though. I’m 35 now and a critical care nurse. At least I was until something just broke inside in March. I was diagnosed with Dysautonomia, then it was differentiated into PAF (pure autonomic failure). One of the primary dysautonomias.. I was born with this. Finally after a lifetime of pushing, something just broke and I couldn’t finish a shift, they took me to the ER downstairs and finally my symptoms were bad enough to get the physicians’ attention. I’ve always had sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming, many times together. At 17 I had my first seizure in my sleep. My symptoms are very extensive, so I’ll spare you, lol. After receiving my diagnosis, I began monitoring my BP extensively at home and when I sleep, it drops to horrifying levels (ex.71/42) so now I can see the nocturnal seizures I was having were most likely due to cerebral hypoxia. Have you monitored your immediate waking pressures? I found your blog post after waking from another horrifying episode of lucid/paralysis: lately they’ve taken on the form of me being in bed at the current moment and experiencing waking up (in the dream) several times. Every time,I believe that I’m awake then I realize I’m not and it feels like I cannot move or talk (of course) and I get auditory hallucinations…I can hear my daughter crying for help or her dog barking like there’s an intruder in her room…I wake over and over again in the dream experiencing ‘I’m still asleep, wake up’ panic over and over again. The panic builds, I can’t breathe, I must wake up. I rip off my sleep mask over and over again… crawl on the floor to the door, realize I’m dreaming and do it all again until I actually wake in utter panic. In tonight’s episode, in the dream, i desperately bit my husband’s arm hoping I’d wake him so he’d wake me up, all the while I can hear his steady real-life sleep breathing. I woke for real and saw him rubbing the same arm I bit in the dream. No marks. I checked on my daughter and her dog… sleeping peacefully…I was left standing in the hallway trying not to pass out, wishing I wasn’t so alone. I grabbed a banana and an oreo for the shaking and found your blog. They say PAF can turn into MSA and one of the first symptoms is REM sleep disorder… acting out or dreams while we sleep. That’s not happening to us (thank God) but clearly there is another link. Plus mine are getting worse. I sure as heck don’t want to bite my hubby’s arm for real. Are you still blogging? I must find a community, even if online, to feel less alone.
Hi there Amber, I am so sorry you have and are going through all this, thank you for taking the time to search and find my blog, yup I still blog and if its a community you are looking for we run a private facebook page that you are more than welcome to join! 🙂 find it here we would love to see you over there 😀 https://www.facebook.com/groups/1483944311836609/
I am now 58 and have been experiencing these episodes for some 20 to 30 years. I fall asleep and then the fireworks start. Sometime I see the synapses in my brain short circuiting: a little like the sparkles that kids play with on new year. Other times my head spins out of control and I can feel that I am going to faint. I fight this and like many of the bloggers wake, sleep wake, sleep or at least it feels like it. I try to say help me to my hubby over and over and sometimes he will try and wake me. He is a heavy sleeper. All I know is that if I don’t wake up and regain myself I will never wake up again. It comes and goes and sometimes I do not experience it for years. Then it comes back with a vengeance and I am too scared to fall asleep. It has always happened in the supine position but last night I could feel it coming on and turned on my side. It still happened. But your original article has given me some insights. I will in future check my blood pressure. However I also want to look into serotonin toxicity.
Never stop blogging. You are a light at the end of this dark tunnel.
im not sure if i experienced the same as you, but this morning i was dreaming that i was walking up some stairs in school and there were two people in front of me and i started to faint in my dream and i couldn’t even call out for help in my dream, i just started fainting and i noticed i woke up and i couldn’t feel my body, and my heart was racing and i could barely breathe at all, it almost felt as if my soul were leaving my body, is this the same? i’ve experienced a lot, but not so harsh like this
Sounds similar for sure but all these experiences could just be dreaming and no more, if you actually suffer from fainting in your waking life and feel the effects of that after a dream of fainting I would go see your doctor just to rule out that you might actually be fainting, you need to find out for sure if that is actually happening! I hope it doesnt come back again and that you dont have to suffer it again 🙂
Hi,
It is probably the third or fourth time it happened. I woke up maybe 30 minutes to 1 hour after dreaming of fainting. It never happened to me before. I have cases that my siblings saw me sleep walking before and usually my dream is about falling debris or things from the sky which I am trying to catch coming from an airplane or something that crash . This time it is different. I feel that it means something since it happen more than once. I actually just woke up from this dream feeling happy because I woke up and feel alive but also scared that something is going on that is why I googled it. The first time it is just a pure fainting, today I faint but an old lady help me and brought me to their home. By the time I woke up from fainting not in my dream I also loose my eyesight. I dont know what to do.
I sleep in the afternoon cause I am in a graveyard shift. I am from the Philippines.
Hi Mand, if this has never happened you before you need to go see a doctor right away, most fainting episodes can easily be explained but some other have more serious consequences to it. like Pots and Dysautonomia and other medical conditions. I would urge you to go see your local doctor just to rule out anything serious 🙂
Hello,
I am Kalimunda Yugalila,28 yrs of age.I have been experiencing this condition for quite sometimes,once or twice a year.It is really a frightening and horryfying condition. I once came across an article that It is caused by the shortage of Oxgen in the brain whereby the brain detects it as a sign of death,the brain nerves try to awake the body to find more oxygen.However I am glad that your article has shown the name of the condition and how it happens.
I seriously become frightened by this condition and I fear that I may die while sleeping. When it occurs,my mind is sober bt my body cant move even a finger. Please let us keep on discussing in detail whether it is a condition which needs immidiate medical attention.
Your sincerely,
Kalimunda
This is 3:05 am here in India while I am writing this. So 30 minutes ago I kept my phone aside and closed my eyes. Very soon before I could realize (not that I ever can) I am already dreaming. From what I remember me and a friend was arguing about splitting a bill and bam! It’s a blackout. I’ve never ever blacked out apart from one instance after smoking a bit of weed ( Also I don’t smoke anymore), and it almost felt like that and I immediately woke up scared as shit, heart thumping and my body was in a state of shakes( probably due to the suddenness) . I couldn’t help by Google and here I am.
Uggh just hope there’s nothing wrong with my health.
Idream i pass out and cant stay awake. I can be with people or by myself in the dream never anything scary besides the actual passing out in the dream. Ive dreamt im passing out while driving, fighting, partying, and or working. I try hard to keep myself from passing out and try to wake myself up until i realize im in the dream then i can usually get out of it by tellin myself its just a dream wake it takes a little but eventually i snap out of it.
As far as sleep fainting is concerned…
So I came across this because I’ve had the worst night, I can totally relate and have sleep paralysis every few weeks/months but nothing like tonight where I fainted in my dream! And ugly cried at my fiance. I was literally stuck in my nightmare that wouldnt end going from one nightmare to another. I couldnt escape, yet I knew it wasnt real in a sense but wasnt quite sure. Everything was surreal. At the end of the nightmare I was stood with my mum and dad in the kitchen (I’m 26 and havent seen my father since I was 16) I’m telling them I’m not mentally well, the past few weeks (my dream weeks) I havent been making sense, I cant escape I’m blabbering and getting very het up! Then the room starts spinning, I’m sweating, I’m asking my mum if the room is spinning and shes like no I’m like everything is going dark from the corners of my eyes (I’ve never fainted before) everything just kept going black until I collapsed and then bam the second I open my eyes in the real world like a flash of lightening then there is this giant monster stood next to my bed facing away from me with a giant pumpkin type mask on that was black with giant gaping holes for eyes just stood there, arms hanging not moving. Then poof it’s gone and in that same second it feels like my heart chilled like it felt like inside my chest froze I cant explain it. Then a second after that I spent the next 5 minutes feeling extremely dizzy. But again I didnt know if I was in proper reality because I looked at my dog and she had a mutated upside down bunny head instead of her actual head and my poor firance is like what’s going on?! Bless him. I then spend 15 bloody minutes trying to convince myself I’m in reality because all my body including my face feels numb and I feel so out of it and not in touch with reality. I go to go downstairs to make a cup of tea. And I literally stood infront of the door and had a panic attack then I’m bawling and I mean bawling my eyes out. Then i have another panic attack then I’m shivering. My fiance was so shocked and confused. I’ve never and I mean never had anything this bad. I’ve never seen hallucinations so vividly. Usually when I have sleep paralysis I’m usually in my dream where I feel like im in reality and stuck and it feels real. Where this time I was genuinely awake and then I got up out of bed and my dog had a bunny head. I now am sat in the bathroom on the bath edge writing this as I feel sick and dizzy. I have to say I take codrydamol which always knock me out to sleep straight away (for pain relief) + I’ve also started on CBD this past 2-3 weeks but I had noticed my dreams where different they where extremely vivid and bizarre I was telling .y fiance this yesterday since I started on it. And well now I’m not so sure I will continue if things like this are going to happen
I’ve experienced sleep paralysis so many times throughout my life.I too was so happy to find out there was a scientific reason for it and I wasnt going crazy. I am also a lucid dreamer and when I was younger ,more so then now, would sleep walk.Sleep paralysis can be so terrifying! I usually wont see things on my chest, instead they are coming at me from above or standing at my side. I’ve seen flames and heard them crackle, while screams of people in suffering came from all around me and a black hooded figure stood next to me. I felt like I was dying. Praying helped me to get out of the paralysis and if I slept on my side it happened less often. I recently have been having a weird phenomenon happen though,where I pretty much pass out when getting ready for bed and dont remember anything at all when I wake up.Its usually accompanied by a deep feeling of dread and hopelessness also. Normaly I always dream but on these certain occasions I only remember blackness.Also when I do wake up it will feel like i was asleep for hours but it had only been 20 min or less, I’m extremely dizzy and usually cant walk or function for a while either, feeling like I will black out again or fall.