Sleep Paralysis anyone?

How many of you have ever had a sleep paralysis experience. They are pretty terrible and for those of you who don't know what it is here goes. Your brain prevents your body from moving when your asleep to keep you from injuring yourself. Sleep paralysis is when you semi- wake up and are aware but unable to move because your brain is still preventing movement.

I have had about 15 or so experiences in the last 5 years or so. Most times I see these shadows coming at me like off the movie ghost. They fill the whole room and I think they are going to get my soul so I start struggling to move to get away and once I actually came out of my body and looked down and seen myself before waking up.

For those that have had it know it's sowhat like a dream and somewhat not but is very common. I just would like to hear of some others experiences to compare.

well, I used to have it a lot...in total, probably well over 30 times. I used to get it sometimes every other morning waking up, but I never really saw weird stuff like most people report. Recently (within the last year or so) I havent had any...they werent too scary once I realized what they were and how to get out of them.

Originally posted by Hoppinmad1
Most times I see these shadows coming at me like off the movie ghost. They fill the whole room and I think they are going to get my soul so I start struggling to move to get away and once I actually came out of my body and looked down and seen myself before waking up.

They are after your soul. Waking up changes nothing. Thakfully the decision is up to you, and they are powerless observers.

it only happens if I sleep on my back or side, or on my stomach with my head to the left. I think I probably have a sleep problem, but I get use to it. Once I couldn't breathe, I felt like i was being smothered. I see minor things nothing like what you see, so far.

the thing about your body is paralyzed to prevent you from hurting yourself is a bunch of crap. think about sleep walkers, sleep eaters, or kicking or turning over in your sleep. see you are not paralyzed when you are asleep or dreaming! i have thrown punches in my dreams and hit things and awoke fully remebering the confrontantaion in the dream and realizing i just puched the marble bull on headboard. so where in the holy crap does everyone get that the paralysis is a defense mechanism.

Please fill me in if i am wrong. sleep walkers are dreaming and they're not paralyzed; i punched the bull in my dream and i was no paralyzed because i actually hit. so what gives?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

i move around in my sleep all the time, but the other night i had my first experience of sleep paralyzation about a week ago. it was horrying.

i had a nightmare. i was driving home from school, it was late and night and rainy. i could hardly see the road in front of me. then, to my right i see this gigantic, cloaked figure to the side of the road. it's holding a book opened over its face, the pages facing me. i see text on it, but it's all just squiggly lines. i watch it as i pass, and it turns but doesn't seem to turn to watch me. i look back to the front of me as my car flies off of the road, flips upsidedown and into some woods. everything in the dream goes black. i woke up, my eyes were open. i could feel them, but all i could see was black still. i thought i was dead. i couldn't move. i couldn't scream. i was so afraid. after about 30 seconds i could move again and my eyesight came back as if my eyes had suddenly adjusted to the darkness of my room. i didn't fall back asleep that night. i was too afraid.

There is SP (Sleep Parilysis) and HSP (Halucinatory). This is the origin of the Hag. Vibrating feet, Screeching in Ears. Feelings of Evil. Strange Lucid Dreams. That is just the topping.

I was a psych student once and learned about a condition call cacodemonomania ( yes, thats the name). I learned about it in a class called abnormal psych. When there is a build up of pressure on the cerabellum a person will wake up but be in sleep paralysis. Aside from the paralysis people would also see demons sitting on their chests or surrounding them. Back in the day people who had this would swear that they had just slept with the devil. But in reality it was just the build up of pressure causing their hallucinations. Maybe this is what you are experiencing. Don't quote me on the spelling of the disorder but feel free to look it up.

Originally posted by panchovilla
the thing about your body is paralyzed to prevent you from hurting yourself is a bunch of crap. think about sleep walkers, sleep eaters, or kicking or turning over in your sleep. see you are not paralyzed when you are asleep or dreaming! i have thrown punches in my dreams and hit things and awoke fully remebering the confrontantaion in the dream and realizing i just puched the marble bull on headboard. so where in the holy crap does everyone get that the paralysis is a defense mechanism.

Please fill me in if i am wrong. sleep walkers are dreaming and they're not paralyzed; i punched the bull in my dream and i was no paralyzed because i actually hit. so what gives?

It's not crap. I did a study on this very issue for a speech on REM dreaming I was making once in college. There IS indeed something that shuts down your muscle tone during REM sleep which as everybody already knows is to prevent you harming yourself or as luck would have it, the poor unfortunate sleeping next to you :-S

To answer your question, Pancho, sleepwalkers SHOULD like everybody else encounter sleep paralysis, but this is why we have sleepwalkers, eaters, etc. This is a sleeping disorder and one of the many reasons we have sleeping disorder clinics. Sleep paralysis simply fails to occur.

sleepdisorders.about.com...

But yes, to answer the question I have indeed experienced sleep paralysis. It's always during a terrifying nightmare when I need to fight or run and cannot. I usually end up struggling so much until I wake up. Your body IS literally paralyzed. No bout a doubt it.

[Edited on 25-4-2004 by KayEm]

so according to that link the body is supposed to always become paralyzed upon slipping into REM. it seems, in personal experience, that too often i have experienced full-movement during a full blown dream(which i am assuming was REM)

i have read a decent amount on this topic already, and am fully aware that the scientific explanation for what occured to me was HSP. for a moment i almost believed the paralysis defense mechanism theory, but again i have been fully mobile in far too many instances when i was completely involved in full blown dream to believe that upon awakening i would become paralyzed with enities in my room.

i am gonna began to re research this area with a more thorough look at REM, but for more now, i believe that for my experiences, HSP is science's ill attempt to explain what they cannot understand.

Well it took awhile to get replies on this. This is a strange thing. It's not crap that your brain is supposed to parlyze you. Sleepwalking and moving in your sleep is also a disorder. Your not supposed to move but it's supposed to go away when you wake up. It's not happend to me in awhile thankfully. It is terrible but interesting. I've read where some people have it all the time and can project themselves out of their bodies and float around. Weird. Happens to a lot of people apparantly. ANYONE ELSE

My first sleep paralysis experience (that I can remember) was when I was about 12 years old. I've experienced it hundreds of times. Although, about 5-6 years ago, I figured out how to keep the experience from happening. If you know your body well enough, you should have no problem pre-empting the effects of the process.

From what I recall, sleep paralysis is usually caused by extreme exhaustion from lack of sleep, or from you just being physically and mentally beaten. Sleep paralysis hit's us when we are inbetween the dream world and the real world (yeah, sounds like the Matrix, lol). Normally we wouldn't notice when sleep paralysis hit's us, because we are fully unconscious. But, sometimes we become conscious of the process, and that's when we the "terror" starts. You can actually feel the effects of sleep paralysis coming on if you are fully aware and familiar with your body. So, how do you prevent it?

Well, most people don't realize what's happening until it's too late. You see, most of us let it happen without realizing it. When you wake up during the process, you are usually already fully "crippled" (as well as having many different experiences in the process caused by the frantic firing of neurons in our brain, which I can only explain as having our "dreams" become "reality" - hence, that is why so many people have so many different experiences with sleep paralysis and have a hard time believing it to be this thing called "sleep paralysis") The only thing most of us can do to snap out of the process, when we are stuck in the middle of it, is to try and call for help, or yell, or just say something. It usually takes a few seconds, sometimes a few minutes - though, it always seems to break the process.

So, to answer the question I presented above: how do you prevent it? Or should I say, how do I prevent it? Well, like I said, you must be fully aware of your body. The dawning effects always seem to be the same: You're in a dream (not always), yet somehow, you are also conscious. You feel your body becoming heavy. You start to feel strange tingling sensations. You become aware that you can't move your arms and legs. You become aware that it feels like someone is pushing down on your body. You began to feel etc...

As soon as you start to feel your body becoming heavy, and you start to feel the tingling sensations, that should be your trigger to wake up! It takes a while to perfect, but it can be done. The only problem with it is, if you wake up and then go immediately back to sleep, the effects will return in a matter of seconds, or minutes, because you are still not fully conscious (at least, thats from what I can see and feel). So, you must stay awake for at least five to ten minutes, maybe longer. Walk around, read - do something other then lie in your bed, close your eyes, and stay motionless. I've helped a few people perfect the pre-empting "procedure." =-D

You can sometimes be so exhausted that the dawning of sleep paralysis might occur multiple times throughout the night and you have to do the above quite a few times. I very rarely have sleep paralysis episodes any more, and when I do, I natually pre-empt them now. I figure the more you can pre-empt them, the less conscious you become of the sleep paralysis and it's effects (you're not caught inbetween the dream world and the real world as much :-). You can even get a better night's sleep.

What type of episodes have I had? Well, before I was totally familiar with sleep paralysis and night terrors (which, in my mind, are caused by sleep paraysis - because sleep paralysis is definitely worse than a nightmare), I had many "full effect" episodes. I'll talk about one episode that always sticks in my mind.

I was living in Japan, and I was home alone. My mother was off on some type of vacation in China. I went to bed like normal. I slowly started drifting off to sleep. I started to feel the effects of sleep paralysis a little while later. I still was ignorant as to what was actually happening to me at the time. So, I didn't wake up or anything, I didn't know how. When the effects fully enveloped me, I tried opening my eyes, but I couldn't. My whole body felt like it was being pushed into my bed. It felt like I had many "hands" pressing me down. I felt the strange "tingling" effect (it feels like electricity going through your body). I then started to hear "voices," many of them! It felt like there were beings in the room, other then me. And then I started to see bright "lights" through my eyelids. I tried yelling, but I couldn't. I kept on trying and trying, and then finally, I was able to let out one loud yell... the effect subsided. I was back in control of my body. I was a little shaken up to say the least.

My question is, does this sound familiar to anyone? It sounds like a typical "alien abduction," right? Think about it. When I awoke, there was nothing there but me and my ignorance. I never really talked about it with anyone - I had a feeling there was something more to it then a bunch of damn "aliens."

Anyways, I talked about that episode (and some others) with a therapist (I was seeing a therapist to please my family - just talk my problems out, and to see if the vascular headaches "with a side of migraines" could be cured, lol) years later, just to see if she knew anything about such episodes. All she brought up was night terrors, nothing about sleep paralysis. And of course the information got to the shrink of the building and I was prescribed an Anti-Depressant, as well as an Anti-Psychotic (which supposedly had the effect of treating vascular headaches and migrains - BS. I found out later she told my Uncle I might be developing mild Schizophrenia, lol). I won't go into how many type of drugs they put me on and I willingly took, just to please the family, but that Anti-Psychotic literally made me dead. Not only did it enhance the effects of my vascular headaches and migraines, it kind of cut of my higher functioning. That inner-voice that everyone talks about - it was gone. It did a lot more, but anyways... :-D

All that because those morons couldn't tell that I was waking up during sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis probably never even crossed their minds. Hell, maybe they had never even heard of it.

Suffice to say, I've been prescription drug free for over a year and I'm feeling fine. I think it is very rare to find a credible doctor anymore. I think most of these doctor's are getting kickbacks from the drug companies to prescribe everyone these drugs. All of my immediate family members have been on Anti-Depressants sometime in their life. One of them has been on Effexor for over two years. I was even on Effexor. That family member thinks it helps him, but I think it's because he can't deal with his problems very well, as well as his stress. In fact, all those family members who have been on them have never been able to deal with their problems or stress very well. I'm just going to put this one out there, but I think most people can't deal with their problems or stress very well. So, they get put on these drugs and truly believe they have a "chemical imbalance," and everything is hunkey dorey because of drug X.

I thought every one (as in, the world) was doing pretty well until we were introduced to all these brain drugs. Sure, you have the mental cases here and there, but overall, not too bad. But now, it's like every one is a head case - or so they want you to think. Effexor was the last prescribed drug I was on. I felt myself having this false happiness on it. I really felt brainwashed. I really didn't give a damn about much anything anymore. There were more effects then just those of course. I was on 150mg of the stuff. I had been on it for over 6 months. I started running out of the stuff, I called my (a different shrink from the one before) shrink to get another precription and the moron, even though I told her my name, thought I was some other patient and was saying that I didn't show up to my appointment 3 weeks before, lol. I didn't have another appointment from the time I called for another month. So, I dropped her, and I decided to do the worst thing anyone can do on that type of dosage - I went cold-turkey.

I got the shakes, slight fever, trouble balancing, and a similar sensation to the tingling felt from sleep paralysis. It lasted about 24 hours. It took another few days to become fully balanced again. And another 2 weeks or so to revert back to a non-drugged human. I found myself thinking clearly again. I found myself feeling again. Not the false drug feelings that everyone get's from being on those drugs - they are very different feelings indeed. You really forget the difference - that's why so many people become dependent on them. They truly began to think they need them. It also doesn't help when your family and shrink tell you that you need them.

The fact is, the sooner we start facing our fears, problems, and stress head-on, the sooner we can gain back control of ourselves. We are out of control because we aren't dealing with ourselves anymore. Dealing with ourselves comes in the form of a pill now. And for those who say it makes them happy again - of course it makes you happy, the damn things are firing off your natural happy-brain-drugs. But the happiness is a false one, because we are never truly happy on them - we make ourselves believe we are.

Happiness genuinely comes from within, it is not something that can be given to you. Those natural happy-brain-drugs can be fired off naturally from doing the things you love. Also, the number-one thing prescribed for depression is exercise. But, most people are unwilling to exercise because it takes effort. So, they get their doctor to prescribe them a drug, or the doctor never brings up exercise to begin with (I still think there are kickbacks for them). Music can also take you out of depression, but it has to be good music. Hanging out with positive people helps. Sticking with negative people (especially a negative family) will just make it worse.

So, what the hell does this have to do with sleep paralysis? Because sleep paralysis helped get me put on Anti-Depressants and Anti-Psychotics because of ignorant doctors, or most of them intentionally falsely diagnose you with certain things to put you on prescription drugs. Hell, that's all they seem to do anymore. Tell them a few things, and they put you on a drug. Somehow they are able to "diagnose" you with something that quick? And they can put you on a drug just like that? It really makes you wonder. Kickbacks, kickback, kickbacks...

Anyways, for those who read my rant, you have a lot of time on your hands. :-D

For those who need help pre-empting sleep paralysis, U2U me.

[Edited on 6-20-2004 by EmbryonicEssence]

Sleep Paralysis is very interesting. I have actually tried to achieve this, I only ever got as far as the tingling sensation, then I would either fall asleep or just simply tire of trying to "drift in to it".

I had one strange incident however, this was before I knew much about this. I was vast asleep, I can�t remember that I was dreaming but I think I was in a REM period. What happened did happen VERY fast:

1. Half sleeping, half wake I saw the silhuette of a BIG spider by my feet in the bed, it was probably 6-8 inches in diameter.

2. I pretty much FLEW out of my bed, and ran out of my room, standing outside & waking up, trying to understand what was happening.

3. Walked to the doorway of my room, flipping the lights on, which is just a small lamp giving off a very dim light.

4. Looking into my room, started to question my sanity, Really, I thought I was going insane. I couldn�t see anything out of the ordinary, so I walked inside beside the bed, turned on the bedlamp.
Investigated the sheets, pillows and under the bed, nothing. I realised I was deadtired and couldn�t stay awake much longer so I decided to just let it go. I fell asleep suprisingly fast considering 1 minute ago I was basically scared out of my bed.

It wasn�t until the day after I realised that it would have been impossible for me to actually have seen this spider, my room is pitch dark when sleeping. So I guess it was just a dream mixed up with a violent awakening, but whatever caused me to wake I�ll never know - I sleep very hard.

Another thing that is cool is the fact that when I woke I ran out of my pitch dark room without hitting anything, if you were to see my room you�d congratulate me on this feet alone.
Let me just say I have a hard time walking in my room at daytime without tripping on corners of desks, speakers, closets and various stuff on the floor.


It�s interesting I think, that in Sleep Paralysis ALOT of people report being intimidated by shadowmen or other dark entities, what would cause alot of people seeing the same thing?
I�m really just leading the question as I believe pretty much what dbates said earlier. Alot of these shadows I think are real, if you see them you have pretty much invited them earlier on. Basically you were tricked into it. Saying prayers in your head before sleeping should help. Heidi Hollis has info at her site www.ufo2u.com Click on Shadow People and Shadow Gallery.
Actually she talks predominantly about seeing them while clearly awake.

Important to note though: I do NOT think this is necessary the case all the times, it might just be a, "Sleep Paralysis", without any demons, except for those in your heads, Sweet Dreams.

I had an incident a couple morning ago.

I woke up and my door was open.. and I heard female voices coming from the other room. I tried to get up.. but I couldn't move.. I called out thinking it might be my sister.. but I got no answer.. then I must have passed out again

When I woke up my door was closed and the cat was still on the other side.. which pretty much rules out that my door was ever open. I did ask my sis, and she hadn't been there.. must have been some odd half awake dream.

Dawnaj,

That spider is the strangest thing. I have had it happen to me twice! And the experience is exactly as you described. I jumped right out of bed and turned on my light, lol. I wonder what the spiders are all about? :-D

EmbryonicEssence,
cool - I was kind of hoping that I wouldn�t be the only one. Hopefully we�ll never have to endure a "spider incident" again. Were your 2 visitations exactly the same or did size, place of spider or anything else differ in any way?

Also, I gotta admit I have a slight case of Arachnophobia (fear of spiders) - believe it or not but it was worse before this incident. However the spiders I used to fear were those the size of a walnut, I saw little point in being afraid by something that didn�t exist, for example an 8 inch spider.
(maybe they do exist but not here in Sweden)

Dawnaj,

I think I'll have a spider incident every now and then. :-D The "spiders" are definitely big. I'd say about 8-12 inches in size. Its so weird, because you just wake up, and boom, you think there is a damn spider on your bed or on the ground!

I've never really been an arachnophobe, but when I see something that big in my bedroom, and it is sitting right there, I tend to react quickly! lol. :-D

It is so strange though. I never thought I'd see someone on here posting about that, lol. What are the significance of these spiders? Does it mean something? :-D Maybe its just one of those things you can't explain, still, I wonder.

Originally posted by EmbryonicEssence
What are the significance of these spiders? Does it mean something?

Well, it would be kinda interesting to know if it�s something widely experienced, or if it�s just the serious crackpots who gets it

But serious, why spiders? I�m more scared of snakes, lizards, scorpions and turtles!!!

I have no idea why it would be spiders, lol. I guess it means we're losing it. ;-D

Well It is awesome this thread is slowly very slowly getting responses. I am greatly interested in the fact that people have similar experiences such as the spiders. Things like that is what interest me. I have had one mild episode of paralysis since my first post but it was not in bed. It was very brief and I had just drifted off to sleep sitting it a chair. I woke up and just for maybe 2 seconds couldn't move. I am beginning to belive like one of the above posters that body position while sleeping has something to do with this. I know realize every time it occurs I have basically been on my back.

Well please anymore experiences please post them ! I enjoy reading them and I am sure those who have these enjoy them too!