It comes in a big spectrum. Some minor experience is not uncommon, and nothing to worry about. Severe, repetitious experience can be of more concern.
I once asked my doctor how often is was normal for a person to vomit. She said “NEVER! It is never normal to vomit.” I re-phrased: on average, how often does a typical, ordinary, healthy person vomit? Now she understood, and said, “About once a year.”
I think sleep paralysis, hypnopompic/hypnagogic nightmares, multiple awakenings, and the like are all commonplace, although never “normal.” It just happens.
Like hiccups. It isn’t really a “disorder” until it becomes severe, long-lasting, unstoppable, and happens on more than one occasion. Everybody gets hiccups now and then…but some people really do have severe hiccup disorder.
“The longest recorded episode of these chronic hiccups lasted 60 years.” :eek:
(Just this morning, I dreamed I was being attacked, and kicked out, violently, while still wholly asleep, throwing the bedsheets all off. This happens to me about once every two or three months. I once knocked over a bookshelf that way. Probably best I sleep alone.)
Since this appears to have veered into a discussion of weird sleep things, I’ll throw in something that happens to me every few months - I’ll wake up on my feet, gasping mightily, completely unable to breathe. And spend the next half-hour coughing and wheezing.
Not actually a sleep disorder, though - it’s a lovely byproduct of my gastroesophageal reflux disease; I’m aspirating stomach acid.
When you fall asleep, a switch in your brain disconnects your higher brain from the motor control centers, so you don’t hurt yourself while asleep. This mechanism isn’t perfect, thus things like talking in sleep or muscles twitching, sleepwalking, or as my mother reported of my father (who loves spy novels and movies) punching the bed beside him (she got a separate bed!) Likewise, it can fail the other way, not reconnecting everything once you’re waking up.
Night terrors are an odd case since the person is definitely dreaming, and yet is aware of the surroundings. I’ll never forget my son’s night terrors, around age 10.
I’ve dreamed that I was awake but was not; that would have felt a lot like sleep paralysis, except that on waking, various details were different (as widely different as being in a completely different location, or rather oddly, being in the same location – home – but everything was mirror-reversed, or something.)
I’ve also dreamed that I was asleep but couldn’t wake up. Which was absolutely true, so was it really a dream? It’s no fun at all, and tended to happen when I’d been sleeping way too much and being depressed.
I’ve also had lucid dreams, where I feel I have full control of my faculties, am aware that I’m dreaming, am aware that I couldn’t possibly be where I see myself to be, etc. One time I figured, heck, if I’m dreaming I should be able to fly! Sadly, I couldn’t. Perhaps if I’d simply thrown myself at the ground and missed …
I’ve also awaken, alone, except someone else’s hand is on my face!
As it turns out, it’s my hand, but my arm is asleep. It’s a way to wake up quickly, though.
And then there was the time I woke up to the phone ringing and for some reason felt it was crucial to answer it, only both my legs were asleep. I managed to crawl/drag myself into the living room where the phone was, to answer the sales solicitation.
I have had that problem from time to time as well. Used to be scary, now I just keep trying to breathe and within about 30 seconds it clears. Making my diet better helped a lot.
I can get up, but I can’t stay up long before coming back down. Thankfully not too hard. Dream ground is soft.
I get a lot of lucid dreaming and I’ve found that in order for stuff that violates physics to work, I have to feel it being plausible. I use the word “feel” rather than “believe”, for a reason. I don’t know the sensation of flying so my brain just can’t process it.
Another problem, related to the original subject, is that since lucid dreaming often happens when one is going right back to sleep after getting sufficient rest, my real life sleep paralysis is also in the dream. It usually takes about 10 seconds within the dream before I can move around normally. I also tend to still feel things that are going on in the real world. So I might be able to get out of bed in the dream, but while I’m walking I still feel wrapped in my blanket which makes it awkward. I keep on trying to remove it, but it feels like it just keeps rewrapping around me, because of course the problem isn’t in the dream. You can’t remove real blankets with dream hands. So after about 10 seconds I’m good to go. But then I only have about another 30 seconds because when you’re conscious brain is active it’s hard to stay asleep. 90% of the time I can’t even get out my front door without waking up.
One of my high school English teachers had a phrase–“a ten-cent word”–meaning a word one would drop in the middle of a sentence that normally a 10th grader wouldn’t know/use, but was just right (and presumably made you sound like Stephen King for one nano-second.). Figuring for inflation, adaher, that’s a $5 phrase, at least, and I plan to steal it at my first opportunity. :smack:
