Another horrible dream-awakening loop

I just woke up from another dream-awakening loop so I'm going to type this out while it's fresh in my mind (it is 3.30am here and I am just that shaken after it lol.) Keep in mind, I used to have these sorts of dreams two or three times a week during exam season, along with sleep paralysis. It is now exams season, so we are apparently back.

I'm not kidding when I say I must have "woke up" back in my bed about twenty times before I actually woke up. It was absolutely horrible and each time while dreaming I was trying to work up the courage to go to the bathroom because I was so scared, only to be thrown into another weird scenario, which all of them were different for some reason?

I had a couple where I woke up and was in the DVLA (which is equally terrifying on its own) and had to escape from a dog trying to maul me — this is a reoccurring theme here because there were several points in this dream where I was being bitten or chased by dogs and I'm not even scared of them even though I was while sleeping. Not just dogs either, I also got mauled (pecked ?) by a weird amalgamation monster with a huge beak and a clamshell for its back.

In one, I was in a massive underwater cave having to throw gloves at a creepy smiling octopus, in another I was the lawyer for the boy in the netflix series 'Adolescence', and most fresh in my memory is that of me having to lock my bedroom door and escape out my window from a woman chasing me with a knife, but when I open it it's suddenly far steeper a drop and she catches me.

The thing with these is that they don't sound particularly terrifying upon reading, but what was most scary was with each 'loop' things would go fine, until something would remind me I was asleep and that's when it would turn into a nightmare.

Also weirdly I kept experiencing like, fake sleep paralysis? As in, in my dreams I kept getting sleep paralysis... I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's the best way to put it!

I'm so creeped out from the end of the dream that I'm sleeping with my light on. I 'woke up' again in my bed and needed to use the bathroom but I was scared and started calling for my mum, (this is something I do a lot in my sleep when I have nightmares) but she walked backwards into my bedroom singing Happy Birthday in this extremely eerie way that made my skin crawl. And I mean it was scary, don't know where the fuck I got it from. In my dream, I pulled my covers over my face, but then multiple pairs of hands pressed down, and when I peeked up, there was an old man sitting on the bed next to me just staring. So weird.

I woke up feeling very confused, very creeped out, and now I am typing this because I can't sleep with the light on but I'm too scared to turn it off!