I don't think that I have ever had normal sleep patterns. My normal is to sleep about 3 or 4 hours usually in the morning hours and then I am good to go. I always hated workdays because I never could just lay down and go to sleep at night. Fortunately, I don't seem to need a lot of sleep and can go several days on 3 hours of sleep. Then I will sleep for about 10 hours and be good to go again for several days. I easily can go 48 hours without sleep. I used to be able to go 72 hours but as I have gotten older I can't do more than 48 but 36 is easy.
When I was a kid I was a sleepwalker and seemed to have a lot of nightmares. I recognize now that some of those "nightmares" were a form of sleep paralysis. As Baby-bunter-boo commented the worst part of sleep paralysis is the terror. Along with being paralised, you feel a dread that just sucks the life out of you. You just KNOW that if you don't move that you are going to die. In my case, there are EYES that are right on the edge of my peripheral vision that I'm sure is something that is about to do something horrendous to me.
As I've gotten older the night terrors are gone and it has been many years since my last episode of sleep paralysis. I hope that I never have to deal with that anymore. The sad thing is even knowing and understanding what is going on doesn't matter. You are still terrorized when it happens.