For years I've had the same element that keeps reoccurring in my dreams. I am in between a sleep and dream state. I can see the room I am sleeping in. I am conscious, but I can't move at all. The more I try to move the more frantic I get.

In the latest reincarnation of this dream I kept "waking up" and going back to sleep. Although, I wasn't really fully awake. I would end one dream and then go the the "half-awake" state and then start another dream.

So, I am having this series of dreams where I seemingly wake up and fall back asleep. I can't remember the dreams but they are troubling and very active. In the final dream I slide into the state where I am conscious but paralyzed and I try to fight it. I start fighting with some invisible force. "You can't hold me down. You're not going to hold me back..." and I'm cursing at this force holding me down. "Let me go, let me go!"

And all at once I'm really awake. Out of breath and tired.

Help.

It sounds like there is something in your life that you are really struggling against - but are unwilling to admit what it is. Your dream state is willing to fight against it, but your subconcious is still afraid to let you fully face it; which is why you keep hovering in this twilight area where you are fightin something that you just can't quite make out.

This is an area that you are going to need to explore and face head on. If it is a trauma from your past, you may need counseling to help you deal with it. If it is something in your present that you are afraid to deal with - then you can try journaling or writing it out on paper to get your "demons" out of your head and onto something more concrete where you can face them logically instead of in your nightmare world. (It could be something as easy as fighting against a boss who seemes to keep you from getting a job promotion to something as complicated as a mother who is constatntly putting you down for deeds you do.)

Only you can determine *exactly* what this unseen foe is, however.

Thank you for responding. I appreciate your insight. I figured it was something like that but for the life of me cannot pinpoint what is troubling me because I am naturally a nervous person and I am ALWAYS worrying about something.

Journaling might be a great outlet for you then. It would be a way for you to "collect" your worries in one place and see them in a tangible light.

Sometimes worries tend to grow in our minds to catastrophic proportions because we let them fester like an infected wound. We take the road of "ignore them and they'll go away", when actually it works the other way around. An unfaced worry tends to grow in our mind until it becomes a fear or even a phobia. Yours are trying to break out through your dreams.

By writing out your worries you can look at them and see that they are manageable - or at least some of them are.

I wrote an article on fear that I think might be of some help, (If Aisling doesn't mind me putting a Spirituality link in here)

Fear: the Basic Evil

It has an exercise down at the bottom that talks abot how to write out decisions you have been making based on fear (or worry in your case). I think you might benefit from it. I hope you do at least.