Today/during attempted sleep period, I had two episodes of paranoia thinking I had people breaking into my flat. Both times I was laying on my bed.
The first episode, I could feel my body going into panic mode. I could hear people at the door and windows, trying to find a way in. There were several of them. I could hear them trying the different windows, and rattling the door. But I managed to overcome it, and convince myself it was just paranoia after a fair while, and eventually managed to shake it off, calm down, and decided to stay in bed.
The second time, about an hour later, was a lot worse. It ended up like sleep paralysis physically (which I have had for decades), but the whole episode is completely different mentally. Like, with sleep paralysis I can feel a presence and see a shadowy figure in the room, whereas this (which has happened at other times) the paralysis takes hold after I start getting the auditory hallucinations, and I am just frozen in fear, and getting more scared as I can hear the people getting into my home. They were tapping on the windows, and I kept thinking they were tapping to try to break them quietly to get in.
Although I have had sleep paralysis for decades, along with the shadowy figure, the home invasion stuff only started around 2020 following an actual attempt to break into my home by a drunk person with a weapon, whilst I was on a video call to a now-former friend. I do not know who it was, he was arrested, but the police never told me if anything was ever done about it, nor offer me any sort of support knowing my mental health situation and seeing the state I was in. But it is not the first time they have done nothing about an incident, seems like too much paperwork. It was a severely traumatic event at the time, and given I already suffer with CPTSD, just another thing I am trying to deal with. But I get these episodes generally 2-3 times a month, and it is absolutely terrifying each time.
After the paralysis wears off, I get out of bed, check the door and windows, and now I cannot go back to bed, so I am back to working on the computer and trying to keep myself distracted, but at the same time I am wanting to try and keep some sort of log of these incidents, etc.
It is just one of several things that I struggle with paranoia wise, I can’t leave my home alone except very rare occasions up to 15 times a year I will leave the house for the walks with the autism group, but I can’t when schools are off, and I no longer can even go to my local shop or pharmacy, and even putting the recycling/bins out I have to do at first light, because last month when I did at lunchtime, I saw some youths up the street (it was a school day, but there are kids about all the time now), and panicked and ran indoors as quickly as I could, and made sure the security door was locked.
As soon as I see youths or even 20-30 somethings in small groups, I just am filled with fear, thinking of all the things that have happened to me over the years since I was a kid and ever since, and no amount of trying to force myself to face my fears is any good, because I have done exactly that in the past, and ended up hurt or abused again. So how do I get past that, when I know in my heart that there are a lot of dangerous people in the world, and a lot of dangerous people that live in my town?
A Voice in the Void 