Similar outcome: you awake quickly in a panic, just the difference is hypnic jerk feels like something interior and you know it wasn’t a noise or something. I get these occasionally, and they’re easy to ignore because I just “know” it was dream-like falling feelings. Annoying in the moment but I drift back off to sleep quite quickly afterwards.
I am sure that hypnic jerk is related. Distortions of sleep/awake transitions have quite a universal pathology mechanics caused by brain stem / nerve damages. Either physical or metabolic. POTS is also a related condition. All those pathologies belong to a more broad pathological condition called dysautonomia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk
Similar outcome: you awake quickly in a panic, just the difference is hypnic jerk feels like something interior and you know it wasn’t a noise or something. I get these occasionally, and they’re easy to ignore because I just “know” it was dream-like falling feelings. Annoying in the moment but I drift back off to sleep quite quickly afterwards.