Sleep paralysis

I've had a rough week, coming back to an area where I feel in danger was never going to be easy.

Someday's it would take me till late afternoon to just leave my room, after having a sleep full of nightmares it was hard to grasp back what was reality.

To know that I was safe.

I suffer from sleep paralysis, a condition which is becoming quite common, it is where you are trapped in a nightmare and you can't move, you can't scream, you're paralysed.

It doesn't matter how much you try to wake yourself up it is no use.

It really is quite terrifying.

Everyone has their own deepest darkest fears, I've heard of people haunted by ghosts or zombies, murders in these nightmares.

It is obviously unique to each individual.

Mine as many of you know is being raped.

When the dream is so vivid that when you finally wake up from fear every time you try and fall back asleep you're back in that nightmare.

Can't escape it.

I remember once when experiencing one of these dreams I kept trying to scream but couldn't, I was trying to move, trying to wake myself up but all I could do was move my thumb slightly and that took so much energy.

I realise it probably seems quite pathetic for a grown woman to be this affected by nightmares.

The sub conscious mind is so much more powerful, whilst in reality if I were to feel anxious or have a flashback I could try reason with myself but in a dream, you can't do that.

You are trapped, you can't move, you can't scream whilst something that terrifies you more than anything in this world happens to you. Again.

I did the only thing I could do, I went to the doctors and have been referred for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

I'll take whatever help I can get.