Just noting that I didn't watch any scary movies or read anything disturbing before experiencing this. Had a dream that an old friend of mine was chasing me around, and I hit him over the head with a fire extinguisher. He fell to the floor, and in the dream I felt remorse. Suddenly the dream changed, and I was lying in my bedroom, but it looked a lot different. My wallpaper was rusted and peeling, and the ceiling was crawling with bugs. There was a banging noise coming from the wardrobe in front of my bed, and I could hear screaming from outside my window.

Whenever I have really bad nightmares like this one, I always wake up paralyzed. It's like where I partially open my eyes, but still can't move my body for at least 10 seconds, is this normal? The only thing I was thinking of before I went to sleep that night was my therapist telling me to remember more of my dreams. I told her about this one, and she said sometimes it's a normal thing in therapy where the client has crazy dreams like this. Why is this?