Paralysis

I've talked about my experiences before with 'sleep paralysis'. But what I wasn't aware of was that sleep paralysis actually IS the medical term - it was just something that had come to my head as the best way I knew how to describe and put it in a nutshell. Someone I have met also experiences sleep paralysis and she sent me the link for a Guardian online article entitled The waking nightmare of sleep paralysis. Here is an extract from it in which a woman describes what happens to her. It is almost exactly the same as how I experience it:

"I try to scream (though I have great difficulty making any sound), attempt to flail around, anything, to get the attention of my husband. It is a feeling of panic, entrapment and desperation so horrifying that I have difficulty describing its magnitude.

"If my spouse notices my discomfort and responds, in my mind it's never soon enough. One cannot simply tell me to 'wake up' and tap me on the arm. Often I need to be shaken somewhat to be fully present. At that point I wouldn't care if he slapped me hard as the terror of being in that paralysed state, totally helpless, is overwhelming. Knowing that it will end eventually is of no comfort. Every second is hell."

According to the article, the majority of people experience this only once or twice in their lives. If I'm going through a particularly bad patch of sleeplessness, this is the time I'm most likely to experience sleep paralysis, sometimes several times in a night. It's very scary, but having read the article and seen all the following comments, it's good to know that a) I'm not a fruitcake and b) I'm not alone.