Sleep Paralysis

I do/did. It used to happen to me almost monthly. It started in my early teens and lasted until my mid-20s. It rarely happens anymore, though.

I talked a little bit about it later on, in this thread: http://forum.infjs.com/showthread.php?t=2436&highlight=sleep+paralysis

 

Sleep paralysis is a classic symptom of narcolepsy. Are you sleepy a lot? If so, have a sleep study done.

 

No, no - you're fine. The thread became more of a sleep discussion, and the title was sleepwalking. You probably wouldn't have found it - I only remembered because I was part of the discussion.

And it's nothing to really be concerned about. I conquered mine by gently talking myself through it and reminding myself that it's just sleep paralysis and it's okay to return to sleep. That, and prayer. Tell you what: You'll learn to pray when you think demons are attacking you. Ohh, yeah.

 

Don't sleep on your back... for some bizarre reason I find that makes it a bit worse. I kind of like Sleep Paralysis myself. I know that's odd.

 

I've never had it. But it does sound kinda scary! I'm glad you didn't freak out!

 

I've been overcome by sleep paralysis three times. Each time it happens, I've been trying to take a nap during the day and my mind just wont quiet down. It usually happens to me if I lie in the same position without moving for a half hour or so. My body falls asleep but my mind stays active and I end up having extremely lucid (and very ordinary) dreams. I find that the easiest way to snap out of it is to wiggle a toe, they seem to be the least affected.

The first time I had it was terrifying. I was still living at home with my parents and my little sister had a friend over. I was in my room trying to nap (it was probably about 3 in the afternoon, or 1500). I never actually did fall mentally asleep, and after an hour or so of not moving, I opened my eyes and tried to get out of bed. I was frozen in place. I couldn't move but it wasn't scaring me, yet. Within a few seconds I hear a man's voice, very dark and raspy sounding coming from above my head. It's what I'd imagine the devil's voice to sound like if you believe in that sort of thing. The voice started circling around my room and it was reading my mind, telling the world my most pent up memory and my worst thoughts and actions. Then I felt it's breath on the back of my neck and the whispering went from floating around my room, to being inside my head. It was little a miniature person was inside my brain yelling at me. It kept repeating over and over again "I'm going to kill you", "you're going to die". This was tied together with different voices screaming in pain around my room. These were the loudest sounds I'd ever heard.

The whole time this is happening, I can hear my sister and her friend in the next room down the hall and I keep trying to call them for help but I couldn't make a sound. Then randomly, as quickly as it all started, it went away. My toe twitched and I was free. The whole ordeal lasted about 10 minutes and was possibly the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced. More so than any of the "bad trips" I've had on a plethora of psychoactive drugs. The second and third times it happened were nowhere near as eventful because I knew what was going on. I heard the voices again but I was able to ignore them to an extent because I knew this time I wasn't going insane or about to die.

 

Yeah, that's the best state for lucid dreaming AND meditation actually. Mind awake, Body asleep. I had lucid dreams the most when I was working a very physical job and I'd be bone tired but my mind was still like a live wire. I wiggle a toe or twitch a finger to get out of it. The only sucky part about the lucid dreaming was the horrible loops of false awakenings I'd get into.Perhaps my brain was just confused because I'm not sure how natural it is to have that level of awareness when you're supposed to be sleeping. I go back and forth on whether its healthy to lucid dream or not. Like perhaps non lucid dreaming is like a little rest for your mind and being self aware kind of mucks up the works so to speak.


I've never had the voices or seen shadow people during it though, so that's probably why I'm not afraid of it. Plus I've had SP as long as I've been alive as far as I can remember. I just think of them as going hand in hand with lucid dreaming and that sort of stuff.

 

I had a friend who told me of a sleep paralysis experience. She heard lovely trumpet music coming from her closet, so she listened. It became louder and louder until it turned into unbearable static noise. This made her uncomfortable, so she tried to move but she couldn't. She said she just had to lay there terrified and paralyzed. We thought it was some weird supernatural thing. But then she did a little research and found it was sleep paralysis.

She thought she was awake the entire time. I guess that's what sleep paralysis is, though. A lucid dream in which you think you are awake, but you are really in a deep sleep and so your body does not respond to your mind.

I've never had it myself. But that's the only story I have to offer.

 

hey all, first post. ive been a natural lucid dreamer my entire life and ive had SP as long as i can remember as well. as a child it used to scare the crap out of me. id have huge panic attacks, while still paralyzed, and once i finally woke up out of it my heart would be pounding in my throat and id be bathed in sweat.

SP was one of the reasons i was certain i was being abducted by aliens. i could feel other people in the room with me but i couldnt move my head to see them and that always freaked me out.

a couple people have talked about how loud noises get and ive experienced that as well. i remember the street cleaners that used to drive up and down the street in my old neighborhood. in the summer, when i slept with the windows open, they would almost always wake me up in SP. it was like torture. i could hear them very faintly, all the while being unable to move, and theyd sloooooowly get closer and closer and louder and louder until my entire being shook with the vibration from the noise. its a wonder i didnt end up in an institution.

now im older and alittle wiser so i know whats happening when i get into that state. now i use SP as a springboard back into dreams. if i liked where i was or what was happening, or if i feel like i need to go back, ill picture the last scene i can remember of the dream and melt back into it. if not ill picture something/somewhere else and go there.

 

I've put myself into the hypnagogic state before; it is difficult to bring about the hallucinations (like floating out of your body or seeing ghosts, etc) because you are aware that you are paralyzed, and it feels like you can't breathe. You have to relax and know that you're still breathing.

I've also woken up paralyzed, but I usually panic and then pull myself out of it. If you want out of it, think of your feet, start by moving something small like a finger or a toe, and you should wake up quick.

I do not have narcolepsy (I have insomnia).

The other thing that I have done is put myself directly into a dream state through deep meditation. This isn't the same though because you don't maintain consciousness.


Okay, I'll stop talking about myself. I don't think sleep paralysis is something to be afraid of; if it happens to you, calmly try to regain sensation, and you should wake up. You have to differentiate between your dream body and your real body though because moving your dream body wont wake you up.

Usually when this kind of thing happens to me, I try to maintain it and have an OBE, which usually results in ending it quicker.

 

This makes me wonder if certain types are more prone to sleep paralysis than others.


The very first time I had sleep paralysis, it was not scary. I was lying on my back in the dream and watching a helicopter hovering over me. I could not move a muscle. I was just lying there in my front yard, watching this helicopter hovering directly above me. The blades of the helicopter were spinning just a few feet aeway from my face, and obviously, it was making a VERY loud noise but it wasn't scary, just curiuos. My dreams are always vivid and off-beat and this was par for the course.

I did not learn that they called it sleep paralysis until much later on after I came to America.

However, I have also had some scary ones. In one of them, I was lying there, and there was this gigantic black monster drilling into my spine. I felt every blow to my spine, and it was vibrating very hard as if a jack-hammer were there. I could not move at all, and there was a LOUD, repetitive sound. It seemed to go on forever too.

I think that sound is a key part of sleep paralysis. for there is usually a very loud sound when I have these experiences.



The worst sleep paralysis are the ones where you wake up, and you can actually see the things around you inside your room.

But you just can't move.

These ones feel like an out of body expriemce, and I wonder if there is a connection. People who talk about out of body experiences often use dreams as a vehicle.

Also as I hinted above, my dreams in general are invariably very umm...colorful to say the least.

Sometimes when I'm dreaming, I see a face. And when I stare into this face, a feeling of overwhelming love just pours out of me. Alas...I can't describe it, but it's a sensation I never feel in waking life. There are many vivid feelings (for lack of a better word) that I experience in dreams that make waking life feel like a pale, dull reflection in a mirror.

I call this the "Dream Theory." Which isn't a theory at all, but I can't explain it here. It's as if, in my case, the dreamscape is where I belong, and where I feel most alive, and I constantly try to capture the echoes from my dreamscapes as I go through my day in real life.

(If that didn't make any sense, I apologize. It's really hard to put this thing into words)

 

I've had it before. I too tired (or lazy) to go into detail right now I might edit this ,but all I can say is that it scared the crud out of me. And because my subconscious was still dreaming I hallucinated some really scary things. In the back of my mind I knew it was not real but it didn't stop me from praying and praying in my head. In one of them I was half dreaming and I pulled myself out of it; but I actually didn't I had actually slipped back into dream mode and it was part of the dream and then I was out again and still stuck there... I'm afraid to sleep on my back now...

 

I go into weird half-sleeping states when I take naps in the afternoon. Like a lot of previous posters, I often hear a buzzing noise or feel paralyzed.

My medication dose changed recently, which might be why it's happening to me more often than usual.