From: david@edenroad.demon.co.uk   
      
   On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 03:32:55 +0000, somnio wrote:   
      
   > Anyway that's my latest story, but I also wanted to make a comment about   
   > stuff I see here sometimes that makes me boil.  Frequently there are   
   > comments by "rational ones" who can't have actually ever had this   
   > experience who pat our little hands and patiently explain that when   
   > dreaming, the body becomes paralyzed, it's perfectly natural, and when   
   > sometimes we wake up in that state we are very disturbed by our   
   > immobility so our mind creates this scary hallucination because of our   
   > vulnerable state.  There there... it's ok...  you just don't understand   
   > like I do.   
   >   
   > Well I hate to rain on your parade, Einstein, but I've been having these   
   > experiences since childhood, and so far I've never woken up and realized   
   > I couldn't move and then become scared.  I wake up because I hear a   
   > noise, or have about a million volts of electricity blasting through my   
   > head and spine, get scared, and *then* try to move.  It is NOT and never   
   > has been the other way 'round.   
      
   I think you're misrepresenting what we "rational ones" say.   
      
   There are various kinds of night terrors, and some, at least, are   
   associated with abnormal activity in the amygdala (the seat of emotion).   
      
   Those appear to be the kind you have.   
      
   Others, OTOH, don't feel the overriding fear that you do; and their   
   distress appears to be mainly the result of their paralysis.   
      
   For example:   
   "My body froze. I couldn't move a muscle. I was paralyzed. My mind still   
   functioned, but nothing else. I started to panic."   
      
   And this one:   
      
   "But my body was   
   : paralyzed, and the awareness of it was terrifying.  Not again, I was   
   : thinking, and I tried to move, desperately, because the noises were   
   : getting louder and I needed to get up so I could confront them, see where   
   : they were coming from.  As I tried harder and harder to shake my body   
   : awake, panic set in, and then a kind of motion sickness, like I was   
   : falling, falling, falling... and trying to hold on somehow.  I was aware   
   : of my body on the bed, trying desperately to fill it, to feel it, to make   
   : it move.  Eventually I did wake up, after what seemed like 30 minutes of   
   : pure terror, sweaty and with a headache. "   
      
   Which is a combination of both - noises woke the subject, and then   
   paralysis terrified him.   
      
   --   
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   = David    --- No, not that one.   
   = Mitchell ---   
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)