Got a PM from the OP, who was having difficulty responding within the thread: "there are no magnets near the phone but it seems to have stopped doing it for now...i have a magnet in my car that i stick the phone to when i'm driving and this never happens when i do that so i dont think it would be about magnets.... do you have any other ideas?
thanks for your help"
Hard to say, unless it happens again. If it does start happening again, see if Safe Mode gets rid of it:
How to turn on safe mode on Huawei Mate 8. If it does, then something you installed is probably causing that instability -- you'd have to uninstall apps one by one to figure out which one.