Do you ever have night terrors or similar experiences?

I’m not exactly sure what it is that I experience, but it’s something that happens to me every now and then and it seems like a night terror. It’s an intense feeling of fear, sometimes caused by something identifiable and sometimes not. I can think of instances where it was so intense that all I wanted to do was just scream as loud as I possibly could. It’s often accompanied by a feeling of falling through a “vortex” as I call it, or being grabbed at. Sometimes it comes in waves, where it happens once and then happens again a second later and then again a second later than that. I almost always fully wake up after these night terror things. The time I wake up can be any time of night, but usually around 2–5. Last time it happened, which was last night at a motel, I woke up at 5:11. Luckily my boyfriend didn’t seem to hear me moan and was still asleep. What’s weird is that I’m always aware that I’m making a sound.

Anyway, I really hate it. It’s very unpleasant and I always make an audible noise when it happens, usually heavy breathing, gasping, moaning, or a combination of the three. I can never actually scream, it just sounds like a tortured moan. It’s also embarrassing.

I want to know if I am alone in experiencing this or similar things.