Question: I’m a 32 year old female. In the last year, I’ve experienced 3 episodes of sleep terrors. I had one last night that was particularly confusing and frightening for me and my partner.
What typically occurs, from my point of view, is that I’ll awaken to him trying to calm me and a vague idea/memory that I was just screaming. From his point of view, I will start screaming in my sleep and it takes several attempts to wake me up. Once I’m awake I usually calm down within a few seconds, realizing that whatever occurred was part of sleep or a dream or something.What happened last night, from my point of view, is that I looked up and saw my boyfriend with his arms outstretched toward me, the feeling of being strangled (***please note that he was not actually strangling me***), and again hearing myself screaming but almost as if from a distance. This experience TERRIFIED me. I fully awoke a second or two after this experience and realized that again I had another sleep terror.From my boyfriend’s viewpoint, I again woke up screaming – but this time it was louder and more intense. Both my boyfriend and I were completely rattled and could not fall back to sleep for hours. I was also shaking from fright for about 10 minutes and my throat was really coarse (apparently from screaming so much). I am so embarrassed by these episodes because I’m afraid of what my neighbors might think (we live in a complex) and I’m also afraid that my boyfriend’s children will hear me and be frightened.