A few months ago I was under a large amount of stress and started having nightmares a lot, however one day before I went to sleep I felt such a negative air around me like I could've cut through it. Sometimes when I laid down as a kid I could shut my thoughts off and relax then I'd hear whole conversations as if it was within a few feet of me before I would fall asleep. Well this time was a lot worse, before I went to sleep I had a gnawing gut feeling and sometimes I would feel like that before something really bad would happen, well it was concerning my gf at the time so I went to her work and walked her home. But the air around me seemed to get thicker and darker throughout the night and I felt like I was going to die but had no idea why. I then went to sleep but then felt like I was dying in my dream, I woke up with my mouth agape completely out of breath and it felt like something was sucking the life out of me. I just shut my mouth as fast as I could and regained my breath. Ever since that I've had this fear of not breathing right, as if that negative air around me might come back one night. It was the craziest thing, it felt like there was a monster in the room that wanted to break me down the second it got a chance. And when I woke up completely out of breath and feeling the way I did, it freaked me out like crazy. Is that just a thing with sleep paralysis? If so why the hell was I completely out of breath? I swim a lot and have great lungs, but it felt like I stopped breathing for 3 minutes straight and before I slept I had this gnawing anxiety about my breathing.