Question: I’m a 22 y/o from Australia, I only recently started having these episodes about 6 months ago and they freak me out!!! I suffered with an eating disorder and extreme depression caused by isolating myself at school when I watched my uncle die of cancer. For the past 4 years I have been medicated on sleeping tablets as I literally won’t sleep for days and when I do I’m lucky for at least 1 hr!
I started to get back on track with my life and discovered my career and the sweetest guy found me who was willing to help 🙂 and then I started having my freak attacks. I’m able to go to sleep like normal with my sleepers, then I find myself sweating and then I wake up can’t move period I start to freak out and I think someone is behind me I struggle to even cry!!It lasts for ages and then when I relax and breathe slowly I move one body part at a time and refuse to go to sleep again. I really thought it’s weird as I’m on sleeping tablets and I thought that was meant to prevent everything and give u proper sleep? Weird thing is 3 times I have hallucinated and that scares me cause I don’t want to go crazy…. I already feel weird about the sleeping !!! Hope that anybody can understand?

Answer: Hey Jess, thanks for sharing your story. I’m sure some people on this site will be able to relate to it quite well. I couldn’t tell from your description if you knew what you were describing about being unable to move in bed was sleep paralysis. In any case, you can learn more about it here, as well as read hundreds of visitor-submitted stories about it here.

Thanks for your question and good luck,
Kevin