Panic Attacks

[Nell-Li]

Does anyone know if having a panic attack is possible during sleep? I had some sort of panic attack of some sort while I was sleeping last night and it scared the jeezebuzz out of me. Surely it had the usual symptoms of a panic attack, but it felt sooo horribly wrong. Anyone with info or comments or similar situation, please shed some light on this.

 

[the rabbit]

Hi Nell-Li
Can you describe what happened,im afraid there is not enough information.

 

[the_hammer]

It is possible to have panic attacks while sleeping, but often it is due to sleep apnea, because you can't breethe and your body panics.

 

[Ruth]

Panic attacks during sleep are usually called nighmares, aren't they? In the past, I've come face-to-face with some pretty shocking 'entities' whilst sleeping and usually woken up - especially if I'm being pursued... The scariest ones have been animals, but some have been humans.

Some of them look like rats, snakes, spiders or even flying crocodiles. They can be human or sort of semi-human (gnome like creatures). There tends to be a sense of 'evil' about them and they 'feel' like real predators. Also, I've found that there are certain foods which can precipitate dreams like this, rich foods for example cheese can often do it.

Sometimes the results of this can be funny (although at the time, it wasn't). I once had to explain to a boyfriend (who was working nighshift at the time) how I'd managed to pull the blinds off the window and why they were lying in a heap on the floor. I told him I was trying to escape out the window after 'waking up' and coming face to face with a rat! I woke up properly after not being able to climb out the window and after having the blinds hit me on the head. Felt pretty silly for a while. Never did find any physical rat around either.

 

[eagles fly free]

Dear friend,

I would agree with all the people that replied, most probably a nightmare is the cause of the 'panic' attacks and usually when we wake up even if we remember the actual dream by the morning when we wake up the memory is long gone and just remember that we have woken up for whatever reason.

As long as i can remember when i woke up and could remember the reason i just forced myself to write down what i remembered from the nightmare so that in the morning i could see it more rationaly and try and explain it. For me at least it worked, well at least when i let the 'nightmare dream' complete itself otherwise it comes back, usually the next day (never the same night) untill it reaches the end.

Best regards
Andreas

 

[Lisa Guliani]

They call them night terrors when you get them during sleep.
I get them and have had them for years.
Not every night, but many times over the years.
They make me bolt up into a sitting position from (what I think) is a dead sleep, freaking out.
Like I'm having a nightmare I didn't realize I was having until it blasts me off the pillow.
A lot of the time that I do sleep, I don't feel like I'm sleeping. I can still hear noises and anything that's going on around me, and my brain doesn't want to shut off. And I'm supposedly sleeping!
It seems like when the night terror thing happens, I am dreaming about fire, and from what I recall, this is what the dream is about. Most times, but not all the time.
What I notice too that is very creepy, is that I can smell something burning while I'm sleeping, which seems to trigger me to wake up. Like something is burnt. But NOTHING is burning in the house.
Think of the smell of burnt toast or smoldering wood.
Acrid like that.
The burning smell is so real, I jump up in the middle of the night from sleep, very anxious and terrified because of "whatever I smell burning", and try to find the fire so I can put it out, or escape it. Which means that there are times I am frantically trying to find where the fire is, down the hall, in other parts of the house, etc.
But there is never any fire, thank God.
Is that not bizarre?
The smell is the thing I remember more than the actual details of the dreams themselves.
But the sudden fright gets my heart racing and my breathing gets all out of whack when it happens.

This burnt odor is very distinct, really unpleasant.
And that's the detail I remember clearly long afterward.
Night terrors leave me feeling shaken in the morning and very tired.
It's like my body fights relaxation, fights sleep, even when I do manage to drift off.
My brain always wants to be on guard, always watching, always alert, whether I want it to or not.
Even if I don't feel alert and I'm wiped out.
I don't understand it or why it happens on some nights and not on other nights.
Which is one reason I tend to stay up late.
Sometimes this stops for a while, maybe a couple of months, but then out of the blue, it will happen again.
It's a very strange thing. I wish it would stop.

And no, I don't suffer from sleep apnea.

 

[Mike]

I had a panic attack/dream/waking-up once, the memory of which has stuck with me. In the dream I was at a computer and printed out a drug that I took and then my heart started raising which felt like it was hammering away at a dangerous level and woke me up. I woke up with my heart pounding and my mind raising. Took awhile to calm down. I've had many nightmares, but this one wasn't scary it just set my body off on its own for some reason.

If you have ever had a panic attack while awake and the sense of loss of total control of the body and mind as I did once (racing mind, total unease, heat flashes and irritated skin), then this is what I felt at the time.
This one scare me pretty bad.

 

[Nienna]

It's like my body fights relaxation, fights sleep, even when I do manage to drift off.
My brain always wants to be on guard, always watching, always alert, whether I want it to or not.
Even if I don't feel alert and I'm wiped out.

Well gee Lisa, I cannot imagine why your mind might feel like it needs to stay alert and on guard. Maybe the fact that you are
always being attacked has something to do with it.

I don't understand it or why it happens on some nights and not on other nights.

Could it be that at times you feel under more attack than others?

And the burnt smell? I have no clue.

I could be way off base here. But reading all of the attacks you have, and are, under just seems kind of related to your mind not wanting to let go of the guard stance. At least this is how it seems to me.

Take care, Lisa.

 

[Pierre]

First of all I'm really not a sleep problem specialist, however I hope some of the following can help.

The burning smell is so real, I jump up in the middle of the night from sleep, very anxious and terrified because of "whatever I smell burning", ...

It reminds me of a reincarnation case Laura mentioned. In a previous life, J died in a burning plane and in current life he suffered from asthma. Could there be a similar link ?

It's like my body fights relaxation, fights sleep, even when I do manage to drift off.
My brain always wants to be on guard, always watching, always alert, whether I want it to or not.
Even if I don't feel alert and I'm wiped out.

Maybe the body fighting the sleep means that no all the components of the individual (physical and emotional and intellectual) are tired. Would physical exercice help ?

I guess you already know about Melatonine. If not there's an interesting thread dealing with this human natural hormona here : http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=314

I hope soon you'll have beautiful nights.

 

[Lisa Guliani]

Well, I'm thinking the attacks against me are contributing to the phenomenon (pretty obviously), but they began before I ever moved to Pennsylvania. They started many years ago.
Most of the time the dream involves fire and the acrid burnt smell.
I was also describing recently to Laura another weird thing that has been going on for awhile.
This has happened to me more and more lately over the last couple of years.
I look at the clock and I see the same time: 9:11.
I can't explain that either.
I'll look up in the morning and voila, the clock says 9:11.
I will be at my computer and I look at the time and voila, it's 9-11.
I'll check the clock when I'm in the bedroom and voila, 9:11.
What the heck are the odds that any person only checks the clock at the exact same time, day and night, as this? How come when I bother to check the time, it's always 9:11?
I think that's VERY weird.
I walk most days between 4 and 6 miles with my dog, up and down hills.
I think I get enough exercise. I get tired physically.
It's the brain that won't shut down.
It just will not shut down.
I dunno, maybe this will be a blessing in disguise.

Lisa

 

[Rich]

Lisa, i have had a similar hang up with the time 4:44 but now recognise it as harmless coincidence.
16 years ago a small group of friends of mine had a night where 4:44 am took on great significance. I joke not - we ran out of beer and found the last can at that time which had a shop code of 4 44. Our intense discussion of the significance and conincidence took on a heightened significance and became a self fulfilling reminder of this arbitrary time. for weeks, months and years later when we looked the clock afterwards it would be 4.44 and we would continue to enforce this by joking with each other and reminding each other. To this day if i wake in the early hours and look at the clock it might be 4:44 but only because i remember these occasions more intensely.

I think we each have an internal body clock that if you are tuned into you will experience and fulfill a certain time that you are obsessed with. I think it is not significant and causing you unneccesary worry. It is a little like the toast always falling buttered side down - you only remember the times it does that and forget the many times it lands the other way.

 

[Lisa Guliani]

Possible. Except I'm not really worried about the time thing. It just strikes me as odd.
Especially since I don't look at the clock very often. I don't even wear a watch and haven't for a long time, since my last one broke sometime last winter and I never bothered to get a new one.

I'm more uhh, concerned right now about some of this other stuff that is going on, if you catch my drift.
Very "unpleasant" external stuff.
But the panic attack subject is something that interests me, since I know what they feel like.
I'm sorry that other people have to know what they feel like.
Panic attacks are awful.

Added later: Thorn is way more concerned with and cognizant of, keeping track of time than I am. He lives his life according to the clock, down to the MINUTE. I am extremely frustrating to him in that regard, because I don't live that way...LOL. I don't obsess over time the way he does. He would agree with me there.

 

[Craig]

I think we each have an internal body clock that if you are tuned into you will experience and fulfill a certain time that you are obsessed with. I think it is not significant and causing you unneccesary worry. It is a little like the toast always falling buttered side down - you only remember the times it does that and forget the many times it lands the other way.

My sightings began with looking at the clock at certain times continuously, but then it got to a level which I just cannot explain.

I've noticed that when I begin to see the number 111, an emotional event tends to happen a few days later that usually changes my awareness in quite a deep way. As I said, it started with seeing it on clocks, but then stepped up a gear to the seemingly impossible: getting calls from people on the answering machine at that time; seeing it on milk carton use-by-dates; receipts; opening a book on page 111; stopping music at one minute eleven seconds; seeing it in forum post information (views, times); and a few other general sightings that cannot be explained by an "internal body clock".

All of these could happen in the space of a week and it's always before some sort of eye opening occurrence. As soon as that has happened, the numbers stop abruptly and it could be anywhere between a week or a few months and they'll start again, always with the same result.

Certainly, it came as no surprise to read Boris Mouravieff talk about the Absolute III:

The Gnostics, who also may have figured among Mouravieff's influences, maintained that the Earth and material creation in general were the product of an evil demiurge, chief of the "archons of darkness" or "princes of the air." Mouravieff calls this being or principle Absolute III and also indirectly identifies it as the Yahweh of the Old Testament, just as the Gnostics did. This Absolute III through various spirits plays humanity against itself as in a game of chess, with the effect of generating vibrations for "feeding the moon."

All of these negative emotional events were between my sister and I - usually over the mistreatment of her daughter - and wanna know how it pretty much all came to a crescendo? She tried to physical attack me, and ended up sinking her nails into my wrist causing three bloody scratches: III. But I've wrote about all of this elsewhere on the site... it certainly was a very unusual period of my life. You could say it was initiatic, because of the lessons we both learned from it. Thankfully, we've resolved our differences, and the numbers have pretty much ceased altogether.

 

[Rich]

I've been chewing on this hence the delay. I don't dismiss there is significance in seeing certain signs. I just don't think it is mentally healthy to read too much significance into numbers you see around you, unless you know there is significance ,know its meaning and that it can help you. Otherwise there is the danger that you may be excacerbating an already stressful situation by being anxious about an unknown coincidence. Wishful thinking? - maybe. For you Craig you could recognise that an emotional event would follow and potentially this could prepare you in some way for what was a very truamatic period? For Lisa however it could be a warning sign for you to rest, take care (- as Lynne said) and protect your mind. You do create your own universe and the mind is both powerful and fragile.

 

[moonwalker]

Lisa: I think smells in dreams are quite unusual and I know that when your olfactory receptors are stimulated, they transmit impulses to your brain. This pathway is directly connected to your limbic system, the part of your brain that deals with emotions. That's why your reactions to smell are rarely neutral - you usually either like or dislike a smell. Smells also leave long-lasting impressions and are strongly linked to your memories could even be past life memories.

Perhaps in your case, fire is representative of your emotions which are overwhelming at times. Sometimes dreams are literal metaphors. Your dream could be be translated as feeling emotionally paralyzed. You are too busy tending to others that you do not have a chance to acknowledge your own feelings.