Sleeping Panic

Twice now, I have had an odd experience while sleeping. Both times it has happened when I wake up and fall back asleep. Anyway, this is what happens-- I will be completely asleep but entirely awake. I usually panic because my entire body feels like it weighs too much for me to move. I'm paralyzed while I can see the entire room I'm in, all the details around me. My mind is usually screaming that I have to wake up or something is going to attack me. It usually lasts a couple of minutes, during which I try to move unsuccessfully while freaking out. Has this happened to anyone else?

this is nothing other than preliminary basic lift off to an out of body experience. Relax and go with it.

Houston prepare for launch

The part where you think something is going to attack you is your conscious mind wanting to pull you back into the physical body and return you to the part where it is in control and thus stop the external consciousness from taking over.  Get by that initial war and you have it made from there on.  There is that physical matter element and there is the other external consciousness where the thoughts and mind are located.  Your thoughts are not really located within your physical brain.  These are two separate things but are thinly connected.  Realize that fact and deal with them in rational balance.  Many people think there is a dark being standing there ready to attack them... That is not the case at all.  I believe it may have been you in a much earlier post where they were being chased by something on their back in dreams.....what that is and was is yourself.  It cannot hurt you at all....it just wants to continue to control you from the physical element.  Do not let that happen.

Thank you. I have suspected this was the case for a while... I've always wanted to do astral projection and have only recently begun to focus on it. Now that I know it's probably just me being afraid, I can approach this experience differently next time it happens. (Regardless of what other people say about me being crazy. lol)

Take it from one who knows... after you are declared crazy, then there is no other place they can put you into any category.  At that point you can do what ever is best for you in your mind and others will not care about spreading further rumors about you because that would be old news.  Turns out that can then turn into the best years of your life.

Rhea....the following sounds like you in preliminary vibrational state and your high anxiety state dealing with things around you.....

In Robert A. Monroe’s book Journeys Out of the Body, we find that his first description of the vibrational state sounds quite distinct from the one that I have just given. He relates how a beam of light appeared in the sky above him: “I thought it was sunlight at first, although this was impossible on the north side of the house. The effect when the beam struck my entire body was to cause it to shake violently or ‘vibrate.’ In his technique for leaving the body, he also describes the vibrational state as almost violent in nature. For me and many others, this is not the case, so while this sense of vibrating energy is common , the form it takes is different for different people. I have found that those who work with the emotional factors of their psyche before the vibrational state arises will more often than not experience a more peaceful form of this energy. It seems that those who are more materially focused in their lives, such as those with a high-powered job or those involved in the sciences, can experience a more intense form of energy. I must emphasize that this is not a negative thing; it is simply that this type of lifestyle may be more stressful and therefore requires more engagement with the process of relaxation. In the same sense, those with highly analytical mindsets may require a greater engagement with the subtleties of the vibrational state. Overall, lifestyle and emotional make-up impact many elements of the out-of-body state.

Nicholls, Graham (2012-04-01). Navigating the Out-of-Body Experience: Radical New Techniques (Kindle Locations 1689-1692). Llewellyn. Kindle Edition.

Thank you Maxx. As always I value your insight and the time you take into your responses.

I feel like this helps me understand what is going on a great deal.

I am having issues lately with things I don't understand though. Often I will have lucid dreams and a few times what I think are actual OBE's. They are odd... I will go back and forth between lucid dreaming and projection (or at least, this is the way it seems). Last night I had an experience (while sleeping) where a man walked up to me with a smirk and handed me a thick book. He told me it looked like I needed some help feeding, and that the book would help me. He told me to have at it... but my partner and other loved ones kept trying to take the book away. I never got to read the material in the dream, and woke up drained and upset. I don't know if it was just a bizarre dream or something more... but I'm starting to suspect that having my partner sleeping next to me affects my experiences in some way.

One suspected OBE was particularly unpleasant. The only way to describe it is that I was a cluster of energy caught in the gravitational field of a star, and kept bouncing off the surface. It felt like one of those amusement park rides where it keeps shooting you up and down--only at incomprehensible speeds. I woke up feeling sick, sweaty, and dizzy. There are times I'll dream of being on a different planet, gifted with amazing views of skies showing hundreds of moons and other planets close up... things that take my breath away, recurring themes of being very far away from Earth.

Anyway, I thought I'd discuss these interesting experiences here, mainly because thinking about them and talking about them helps to solidify it in my mind (I often have trouble remembering).

Mostly, though, my biggest problem is waking up every morning with a deep, hollow ache that can't be explained or rationalized. I don't want to outright claim that it IS the fact that I need to take in energy somehow, or if it's just more personal development that needs to be made.

That hollowness tells you that you have developed a spiritual drive towards seeking a proper understanding and a relationship with your inner self.  Continuous efforts of development towards finding a solid connection to that inner self will pay off for you.  Spend more time in proper meditation.  Those around you should not view that as too "off the wall".  In living in this dimension, we find ourselves having to cope with all sorts of unpleasant things to draw us away from our purpose.  To pursue, you will know that both the material world and the spiritual world are created for us to find our own personal evolution by using a certain pathway.  Along this pathway we will find all of the philosophical and psychological values that we alone call our values of life. These are not found outside of us as external values.  They exist in the fabrics of our spiritual body.  It becomes important to spend time or find time to connect to our inner source to find the answers that guide us and "pull us" to our goal.  

Your mate has no bearing on your personal dream ability.  Your spending time with inner self in meditation will equip you with the energy you need.