Waking with a Start and Catalepsy

StephenPBarrett

Just the other morning I was awoken by my dog barking very loudly right beside me at something he heard outside that had no immediate affect on us, as dogs are one to do. My dog is barely considered to be of a large build though and so his bark is deep and loud. It scares the neighbors. Anyway, I had only been asleep for about an hour after having not slept for two days and so this jolted me awake. I was trembling all over and not at all in my right mind for several minutes and ended up grabbing my knife and going to open the front door in my long-johns. I think that the ordeal of being woken so suddenly put my body into shock. I think that is what I was experiencing for that brief amount of time from waking till getting back to bed and finally calming down enough to go back to sleep. Thoughts?

Also, I've several times in my life experienced something I've discovered is known as "catalepsy" which is when you wake up but have no control over your body. You can't move anything at all. You can't open your eyes or your mouth or use your vocal chords or anything. All you can do is think, even breathing is impossible though I think if you don't focus on it that will just happen anyway. When this has happened to me I was only able to break out of it by spending several painstaking minutes trying with all my mental facilities to will my arm to move which resulted finally in my arm launching away from me and the rest of my body following behind. I fell of the bed a couple of times doing this. It doesn't happen often and hasn't happened in several years but it was one of the scariest things I've experienced.

Darth Beaver

I have experience catalepsy but not in a very long time. With my PTSD my sleep is what I term vigilant. So when startled from a sleep I am prone to violence.

StephenPBarrett

My brother is prone to violence when startled from sleep. Mom would keep a long stick to poke him with to wake him up for school because he is a big fellow and would unwittingly punch the closest moving object when roused. Me, I just threw things at him but that usually meant I had to run away even after he came to his fully awakened senses.