Terrifying Sleep Paralysis

While I have had strange encounters with what I believe to be harmless ghosts, nights have always been difficult for me. I constantly have had disturbing nightmares since I was a small child, but shortly after I turned 20 years old, a new phenomena began to take place.

Usually after a nightmare, I would wake up thrashing and overall freaked out, but lately I have experienced waking up, completely unable to move except for my eyes looking around. As I look around, an overwhelming fear envelops me, as if there is something in the room. Sometimes I feel a pressure on the side of my bed climbing over me, and the most disturbing part is that at times that I am feeling this paralysis, I feel what almost feels like hands pushing down on me, pushing me into the bed.

I do not know approximately how long these experiences last; they seem to last at times at least 10 minutes, but after I feel the pressure, all of a sudden I regain movement and I feel a burst of energy as I just collapse out of my bed, sometimes gasping for air.

Is there anyone else who has ever felt this, or has any idea as to what this could be? I feel it getting worse at times to the point where I have been avoiding sleep as much as possible or I only sleep if I am at my boyfriends house, where he can keep an eye on me.