"Internal Twitching"

I have found over the past year that while I'm in a state of light sleep, I will slowly wake up and find that my body is subtly twitching. It's almost hard to notice. It's one of those things that I could easily miss, if it weren't for the fact that I sometimes lay there for a few seconds before I physically get up. I'm almost sure that if you stood there and watched me sleep, you wouldn't even notice that i'm twitching. I don't think I have ever encountered this twitching when I have awakened from a deep slumber. It only seems to happen to me when i'm napping and vividly dreaming. It feels very bizarre. An "internal twitch" would be a good way to describe it. I'm rather curious, does anyone else have these?

 

yes but mine arent so subtle

 

I've had something different, but equally mysterious.

Have you ever been so tired that you didn't want to fall asleep, but you're laying there, dozing? Sometimes, when I am lying down (and may even be trying to go to sleep), I'll feel myself drifing off into dream-time, and I can slowly feel myself losing consciousness, and with it, the ability to move my body. Then, for some unknown reason, I'll feel the urgent need to wake up, and I'll try to move a part of my body, and it won't move. So I'll try again, and still nothing. Then, I'll try as hard as I can, and try to move every muscle in my body, and I won't so much as twitch. But if I keep trying, in this agonizing state of half-consciousness half-dismay, I'll eventually be able to curl a finger or two, and then my hand, arm, and I'll manage to get up and roll over to get more comfortable or something. And at this point, I won't want to wake up anymore, I'll just want to sleep, but the closer I get to dozing off, the more I'll want to keep awake. This process in me has been known to repeat itself every 30 seconds for up to 20 minutes at a time, over and over, until I finally realize that I have to give it up and let myself fall asleep, or until some external stimuli makes me stay awake. Anyone else have this happen to them, or know what causes it?

 

Small spasms often occur to me when l'm over tired...

 

Now that you mention it, I've had one or two, but always in one of my knees, when I was overly tired and falling asleep. It would spasm and throb for a good hour or so. =\

 

I don't really know what causes that.
I jerk awake sometimes because just as I start to drift off, I feel like I'm falling.

my man twitches a lot in his sleep. It's annoying

 

my dog twitches like mad when hes asleep

maybe your a dog?

 

THC is a good anti convulsant..

 

Hikaru, what you are experiencing is Sleep Paralysis, for some reason your mind stays awake, when it should be asleep. When you are going into REM sleep, your body sends out a drug which parlyzes you, so you don't act out your dreams. In some people, they maintain some awarness, and this can be VERY scary, especially if you start dreaming. This is also known as The Incubus or Succubus Phenomeon. You feel a presence come into the room, and maybe even start to sit ON you, you may feel sexually aroused, and hear lots of hissing and clicking. Some people will hear their name being called, or feel threatened and VERY afraid. It is just your mind working two ways at once, one half awake and the other half asleep. This used to happen to me all the time. It is actually a form of sleep disorder if it interupts sleep enough. Most people only have it happen when they are sleep deprived or really stressed.

There are medications which are helpful for it (I found a VERY small dose of Klonipin to stop it completetly) but if it only happens occasionally, it isn't a big deal and does not need to be treated.

 

that has happened to me plently of times. it's a really weird feeling to me... almost like you're really dead or dying or paralyzed or something.
it usually happens to me though in the morning right after i had a really strange dream.

 

Yes, I forgot what these are called, but it's where you are walking along in your dream, and you slip and fall on something or off something, your body then reacts in real life. But there is also a scientific explanation for this, other than you reacting to your dream, i'll look into it later because I completely forgot what it was and that bothers me.

 

I found this VERY interesting..I have a question though. You said that your body sends out a drug that paralyzes your body so that it won't react to your dreams. Why then, do people sleep walk, cry out, jerk, slip, etc in their dreams. Isn't this a way of reacting to their dreams? Or does this only happen when they are out of the REM state, but still in a state of slumber that won't awaken them while they sleep walk and such?

Moving on to my next point, I do believe I have encountered this before.
When I was a wee child, as bizarre as this sounds, I didn't know how to sleep. I didnt know that you had to shut your eyes, or if i did, it did nothing for me. So, instead, I just lay there all night until finally my body just gave out and fell asleep. I would never remember closing my eyes or anything. This caused me to fall asleep with my eyes open >I don't do it anymore, I just remember that my dad would tell me about it because he thought it was creepy< I don't think they were wide open. I think they were just rolled into the back of my head with my eyelids open.

When I was little, I was very much an introvert >you wouldn't believe it now< I believe that this was because I didnt get much sleep, so therefore, I was groggy and spaced out the whole day, causing me to be quiet and unexpressive.

But nehoo, relating this childhood story to the quote, I would feel a presence of three beings in the room. >I barely remember them now< I don't remember my body being heavy, but I would hear voices in my head and such, calling out my name. I don't remember if I was scared, or curious. Perhaps both.

Secondly, I have encountered not being able to move my body. It was usually after I had woken up, but I'm pretty sure it was because I would fall asleep on my arm cutting off the blood circulation. I wouldn't be able to move it, or feel it for that matter. I would then pick it up with my other arm, and it wiggled around like rubber. I tried EXTREMELY hard to make it move, but it just didnt work. Eventually, feeling would return to it. The same would happen to my legs.

But, excluding the cutting off of blood circulation, I'm almost certain I have had sleep paralysis at least twice >where I couldn't move my body< It wasn't quite as bad as Hikaru's and not as long either, but long enough to make you wonder what the deal was.

 

Sleepwalking occurs in NREM sleep, not REM, so the body isn't paralyzed then. The problem being, in NREM sleep, dreams only occur very infrequently, and usually when they do, they're called "Incubus attacks," (perhaps that's a parellel with what Maggie Sugar was saying?), and they're often very scary. Sleepwalking itself is caused as a reaction to these NREM dreams.

And about the blood circulation thing ... I think it was probably just the fact that blood was cut off to it. That's happened to me a few times, but each time, it was because I was sleeping on my arm or something.

As for the sleep paralysis, I haven't ever actually been dreaming. Most of my friends can tell you, I usually don't dream, and when I do, it's never good. Whenever I went through one of those sleep paralysis fits, I'd be laying there, thinking about something, and then suddenly, the realization that my body is asleep and my mind isn't would kind of ... hit me, and I'd try to wake up. I never felt any additional presences, or heard names, or anything of the sort; I never actually started dreaming, per se.

Also, I'm not sure that it's a drug that's released ... I remember learning in psychology that it was actually your brain just preparing for REM sleep, and when it fired off the chemicals in your brain to restock them for the upcoming day, it would simply ignore impulses sent to the rest of your body, and the only impulses that were let through were the ones for the eyes (since chemicals in the eyes are also restocked during REM sleep). But, I could be wrong; my psychology teacher wasn't all that great. =P

Either way, it doesn't happen to me much anymore, but it used to happen to me a LOT as a kid. Usually it would happen several nights in a row, and then stop for a few months, and then kick in again. It was pretty weird. I think it may just have been because I was a little kid, as dumb things like that are common in children.

 

OMG I HATE THAT! i do that in class all the time and everyone looks at me like "WTF DUDE?" and i feel like an idiot!
who else does that in school? hahahaha

 

lol, i don't do it in school. I do it at home when i'm on my couch, hehe ;þ