Dear Dream Doctor,

I am a 47-year-old female. Over the past 5 years or so I have had many dreams where I feel like someone is in the room with me. One dream it was like a ghost standing by the bed. On several occasions it feels like someone is on my bed. It is this overwhelming feeling that someone is there and I am unable to move. I always wake trying to scream for help.

Most of the dreams occur when my husband is away and I’m alone in the house. They are very vivid and I can remember each one to this day. I think this is beginning to affect my health. I wake with a racing heart and palpitations and never get a complete night’s rest during the time my husband is away traveling with his job. At night I fall asleep within 10 minutes of going to bed but I’m awake within 3-4 hours and have a very hard time returning to sleep. When I do finally fall asleep this is when the dreams seem to occur.

—Twanna, Age 47, Married, Colorado Springs, CO, USA

Hi Twanna—

Boy do I have good news for you! Your recurring dream of an intruder is not precognitive (you are not going to be attacked when your husband is away on business). Instead, your dream is easily explained by physical events that occur in the body during dreaming sleep.

The clinical name for your experience is “REM Paralysis.” Scientists have demonstrated that the brain sends commands for movement to our bodies when we dream—to move in accordance with our perceived needs in the dreamscape. The reason we don’t move around in our beds, however, is because these commands for movement are intercepted at the top of the spinal cord in the brain stem, and are not passed on to the motor nerves. During REM our bodies effectively become paralyzed, to protect our physical safety, and to preserve the continuity of sleep.

The lighter sleep that you experience when your husband is away (you do not sleep as deep, and sleep with “one ear open”), is causing you to occasionally feel this paralysis of your body during REM. Other common sensations during REM paralysis are pressure in the chest area, feelings that you are being held down or pushed into the bed, difficulty breathing or calling for help, and also feelings that you are elevating or levitating off the bed.

As you know from your experience, however, there never really is an intruder. Instead, feelings of restricted movement during sleep cause feelings of vulnerability, which are then translated into fears of attack. Because you are dreaming, these fears become represented as an intruder in the room or house, who is about to attack, while you remain paralyzed, unable to defend yourself—or to call for help.

The cure for “REM Paralysis” dreams is knowledge. The next time this dream happens, you want to remember that you are dreaming, and that there really is no intruder. To awaken yourself immediately from this dream, try wiggling a toe or finger—some small movement that will break the “spell” of paralysis. Or, as you grow more comfortable with the dreams, simply try to relax and roll over for more sleep. Sleep paralysis is annoying, but one cure for it is to get a plenty of REM sleep, so that the body does not keep you trapped in REM—when the rest of your mind wants to awaken!