Dream Interpretation – Can’t Move or Speak

Quick dude, GET UP!

Deep sleep is always a good thing  especially when you are tired.  You get into REM (rapid eye movement) and BAM, you are in a dream state.  But is there such a thing as being too deep into sleep?  If there is, I think that I had that recently (actually last night).   Maybe I have been reading into the movie Inception that I got into analyzing my own dreams.  I have watched my kid sleep and I have seen him move in his sleep.  It is pretty funny to see that someone so little can dream for so long.  My wife actually thinks it is quite cute to see him smile or jolt his body.  But if we could dig deeper into that little cranium of his, I wonder what he is dreaming about.  Dragons…boogie man….girls…..milk…..perhaps or he is just dreaming about what he had seen through the day.  If that was the case, he would be having re-runs of Yo Gabba Gabba and Dora the Explorer playing because that is all he watches throughout the day.  Maybe he is playing with the characters in his dream and that may explain why he twitches or moves his legs when he is sleeping.

That maybe okay for infants but what about grown adults.  I had a dream last night that kind of freaked me out.  I know many of you have had this dream before but mine was a little different.  When I explained it to my wife, she thought it was normal but when I told her the rest of the dream, she thought it was a little odd.  Then she proceeded to tell me to stop watching paranormal stuff.  Maybe she is right but what if she was not.  Either way, I did some research and I do not think the last part really added anything paranormal to my dream.  It was just odd.  My dream started off with my body lying on my side.  I think my wife was supposed to be spooning me but I doubt it because when I woke up, she was drapped all over the bed (pregnant women!).  She was sprouted all over the bed like she was making a snow angel in the sheets.  Because I did not have enough room, I curled up in the fetal position on my small side of the bed and I was facing my son’s room.  For some reason, I felt like I wanted to move or get up to do something.  So when I decided that I wanted to finally move my body, I was unable too.  What makes this unbelieveable is that my eyes were wide open and my mind was functioning.  My brain was sending signals to my muscles to move and try to get up but I felt like I was paralyzed.  It felt like I was dead but dreaming.  In all honesty, it really looked like a real-life Major Payne (Major Payne is a movie starring Damon Wayans, in which his character is so crazy that he sleeps with his eyes open).  When I tried to move my limbs and there were no reactions, I figured that I was in a dream.  I tried to get my wife to wake me up by trying to speak or make a sound, but nothing came out of my mouth.  I was in a mute state.  At first I was not scared of my current vegetable state but after that, I started to panic a little.  I tried everything I could to move or even make a sound.  After a few seconds (which felt like hours), I was unsuccessful in my attempts and nothing came out of that.  As I started to struggle more and more, a cold CHILL came over my back and radiated to the front of my body.  I felt like someone faced the fan on my back.  It sent chills up my spine for a couple of seconds, then I finally opened my eyes in reality.  It was weird to transition to go from a nocturnal dream state to cold reality in a split second.  I woke up and started to look around and thought to myself, was that a dream.  Believe me, if I had a totem at that moment (Inception reference if you have not seen the movie), I probably would have used it right then and there.  But my reality was me waking up to the sound of the alarm and my wife hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep, in which she took up all the room.

As I sat up and thought about what the dream meant to me, my initial thoughts were linking it to some sort of paranormal phenomena but I know better than that.  I was a little freaked out of the possibility but I do not think that would be case.  The CHILLS is what pretty much gave me that thought.  But in reality, I was pretty cold last night do to not having any covers.  Additionally, since it has been pretty warm at night (with the exception of last night), I did turn on the fans in my son’s room and the A/C was on, which gave me feeling of chills last night.  But because that dream was so disturbing to me, I decided to tell my wife and co-workers and found that they have had the same dream in the past.  After doing much research, I found that this type of dream pattern is a normal occurrance.  I dug deeper and found that people have had these types of dreams for centuries.  People all over the world have had these dreams on a normal basis.  Phew!  That crosses me off the Nightmare on Elm Street list.

This dream phenomena that we have is called sleep paralysis.  When you have sleep paralysis, people awake with their eyes open and you can’t move or speak (like in a nightmare); and this also includes visual hallucinations (not drugged induced), auditory, or in some cases, both.  But what causes this type of dream state?  This is usually due to something in your subconscious whether it is from a recent event or something hidden deep in your mind (So all you people with skeletons in the closet, you BETTER WATCH OUT!).  But the main contributor to this sleep uneasiness is STRESS.  Stress is the unhealthy life-killer that makes everyone twitch when you have to much of it.  In some severe cases, it causes emotional, physical, psychological, and health illnesses and/or damage.  Stress can drive people to go mad or commit unthinkable acts.  I am a firm believer that stress is a life killer and I try to stay away from it as much as possible.  Since that is not always achievable, I try to minimize my stress by doing anything that will make me happy.  After doing even more research, I have come to the conclusion that my sleep paralysis was stressed induced.  Yesterday kiddies, has got to be one of the hardest days of my life.  I had so many things go wrong and I thought the world was coming down on me that day.   It felt like one of the days were you literally want to run out onto incoming traffic on the freeway just so you would not have to think about the problem again.  But after much analysis, a good dinner, and an even better sleep (even with the sleep paralysis), my perspective has changed today and it has become a stress free day so far.  It’s funny “what a difference a day makes” (like the C&R jingle from the 80’s…..whatcha you know about that???)

Okay kiddies, sorry for the long blog but I started flowing and could not stop.  I hope you enjoyed another blog in the life of Erik.  Have a great weekend!

~ by area037 on August 6, 2010.