Hi TT
I've had similar distracting sensations of being crushed. Or of odd crushing weights in the form of spheres rather.
This is going to sound a bit odd, but before the sleep state hit, I used to have strange feelings of huge spheres rolling on thin wires.

Does that makes sense? It wasn't a dream, and these..... sensations, or whatever they were, used to make me very uncomfortable. SO much so that I had to go get a drink of water to and walk it off.
They went away on their own though, thankfully. It is possible it could just be a mental stumbling block brought on by fear?