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Once you're able to remind yourself at the onset, that "oh, this again, been here before and I wont be really hurt" it takes much of the terror out of it, though it's still not pleasant.
Sometimes you can't breath during SP. No matter how consciously aware you are that it's SP, it can still be terrifying.
It basically turns into a "gotta wake up gotta wake up" kind of struggle.
Always been a bit of a skeptic myself but I think this is nicely written.
"...or like a fish in the bottom of the ocean hearing of a mystery world without water."
I appreciate the compliment. Indeed skepticisim is natural for anything one's not familiar with. And honestly, with all but one acception, it's not really something you can just dive into and quickly experiance the depths of as you could, say, with an experiance such as skydiving or accupuncture, (two probablly poor examples at pre-7am :P) since it's dependant on the individial, not entirley dependant on exterior forces, circumstances and experiances as in many other things we may be skeptical of. It's practiced, learned yet never really masterd.
Quote:
Originally Posted by genjy
Sometimes you can't breath during SP. No matter how consciously aware you are that it's SP, it can still be terrifying.
It basically turns into a "gotta wake up gotta wake up" kind of struggle.
Completley understandable. I'll say it like an old radio asthma awareness commercial put it "when ya can't breathe, nothing else matters." Entirley correct. Which makes me wonder....
If during SP sometimes it feels that breathing is not posibble, and sometimes if feels like it goes on for easily past 5min, must it not be just the sensation of suffocation and not the actual act? Else wouldn't brain damage come of oxygen deprivation?
And now that I'm actually thinking about it, though I've had many experiances like these, it's never inhibited or seemed to inhibit my respiration that I can recall, so I can't really comment personally on my experiances in that regard.
Another thing to ponder, when you felt breathing was restricted, I wonder if it was phisical (as a hand on your throat, for example), entirley mental (as in it felt like your breathing was hindered to whatever degree yet your body actually continued to breathe normally) or if it affected you to the point that it caused your brain to respond by changing your breathing, i.e., you make yourself slow/stop breathing without wanting or meaning to, like it triggered that response in your brain with that desired intent?
Well, ya got me thinking this early morning....
This started happening to me in my 20s. It has happened maybe 4-10 times a year for about 10 years.
Every time it happened it felt like I was awake, but I couldn't move. I felt fear and panic. I tried to at least roll over or bend/straighten my arms or legs but I couldn't even do that.
I tried to talk but I couldn't, so I often made myself breathe loudly so that I was making noise. I'm pretty sure that I made myself breathe heavily on purpose. I don't recall feeling like I was suffocating.
It felt like there was someone else in the room. A demon. Sometimes it felt like the person was sitting on my bed. Sometimes he talked or sang, but usually not in English or in any human language.
I never got the feeling that I was floating though. I always felt that I was in bed.
I've been experiencing what I believe to be isolated sleep paralysis (ISP) since, I've always guessed, about the age of four or five and have never simultaneously experienced any kind of hallucination, lucid dream, whatever--absolutely nothing. The scientific medical explanation--that sleep paralysis is caused by a chemical malfunction that occurs in between the REM and waking stages which causes temporary muscle atonia--has satisfied me for as long as I've been aware that waking up and being unable to move is actually a classified condition or, in some cases, an auxiliary/secondary symptom.
But anyway, I can empathize to some degree. A mere 10-20 seconds of paralysis is frightening enough without the creepy imagery, wherever that comes from. It can happen to you for an entire lifetime and each time is just as freaky as the time before, even though you know you've survived it more times than you can count. The breathlessness doesn't help, either.
I have had two of them. Both were in mid-afternoon, while I was dozing on the sofa. In both, there was the strong sense of a dark, EVIL presence, and in both I was temporarily paralyzed. I have had a number of genuinely paranormal experiences but am willing to chalk these two up to the standard scientific explanations. What I do find a "bit odd" is that I have had only two in 63 years, they were within a week of each other, and both were in precisely the same location (on vacant rural land where we had just constructed our house, so no one had lived there before -- for whatever that's worth). There is no question in my mind, based on other experiences, that the "twilight" hypnagogic and hypnopompic states are doorways to whatever the Other Realm is, perhaps because we are free from our waking constraints in those states.
I had it happen last week. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep on the couch for a short time, could not have been for more than an hour. The TV was on, I could hear everything, even my kids talking to each other in the other room.
My son finally came over and touched me, that woke me up. I could hear him walking in the room talking to me, but the physical sensation of his hand on my shoulder roused me out of the sleep paralysis dream.
It has not happened in a long time, but I think I was so overly tired and exhausted. No big deal, it has happened before and I know what it is.
Sleep paralysis has been fairly well studied, and the experience you've described is pretty textbook.
Basically, instead of smoothly transitioning from one stage of sleep to another, your stages were overlapping.
When your body enters REM sleep, it shuts down your muscle movement. Otherwise, you would actually act out the actions that your body was taking in your dreams. When your sleep stages overlap, you get some cells in your brain telling it stay asleep, and blocking you from having control of your muscles, but you get other cells telling you to wake up, and raising your consciousness.
Feelings of fear or terror are very common during sleep paralysis. Your amygdala plays a vital role in processing the stimulus that your body receives and deciding how you should react to it. During a sleep paralysis event, the pathways around the amygdala become overloaded and start perceiving every stimulus as a threat. As a mechanism of evolution, when your brain encounters an unknown or unsure event or stimulus, the safest course of action is to treat it as a threat and generate fear.
That, combined with the fact that you're paralyzed, which leaves you extremely vulnerable to attack, very often manifests as a feeling of another person or entity in the room. This other person is almost always accompanied by a sense of dread or terror.
As far as "out of body" experience, your brain has many systems working together to coordinate your bodily movements as well as tell to tell it what your body is doing at any given time, such as lying down, standing up, walking forward, etc... In sleep paralysis, these systems activate, but there is no movement, which is confusing and leads to a "floating" sensation.
Luckily, the one episode you had is likely to be the only one of your life, however there are cases of chronic sleep paralysis, although they are quite rare.
I had the EXACT same experience as yours, except mine were occurring on weekly basis. I thought I was loosing my mind. Then I went for sleep testing. All indicators in the testing were exactly those of sleep paralysis.
The initial problem I had with the results is that I simply did not believe them. I knew what happened to me. I was there, and I was terrified. I went in for counseling and psychological evaluation. I was diagnosed with depression, but that really did not relate to the experiences I had during sleep.
The psychiatrist prescribed two different meds. Everything stopped, and depression came under control. IT WAS SO REAL, THOUGH! I still remember the nights vividly, and they horrify me.
Regardless, I understand what was happening now. Keep an open mind about what happened and talk to a doctor that specializes in sleep disorders. I think that will give you some comfort. I HOPE!
I second the recommendation for those who suffer from this to seek out a doctor who specializes in sleep disorders (there are also sleep clinics in many larger cities).
I took a nap once and woke and was unable to move. Regardless how hard I tried to force a movement in my hands, arms, legs, feet, I was unable to do so. This must have gone on for about a minute, but seemed much longer. Shortly, I was able to move. No other strange things happened. It appeared as though my mind and my sight were awake to everything except the ability to move. Very frightening. Only happened one time.
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Originally Posted by RussianRedLipstick
This is one of my experiences with sleep paralysis:
I was renting a room in a 3-bedroom apartment in Rome, Italy at the time. I fell asleep on my back. I woke up in the same position, but immediately after opening my eyes I knew something was different. The lights were on, and I noticed right away that there was something off with my sense of sight and hearing. It was dead silent in an eerie kind of way, and all I could hear was myself breathing very heavily and so intensely - it was taking over my entire body. I could also hear my heartbeat, which was beating very heavily in an almost overwhelming kind of way and I could hear it so loud and clear as if it was right next to my eardrums. I could feel it pounding throughout my body so intensely; it felt like it was going to explode inside of me. The air was thick and pliable like waves in the ocean. I could actually see the air physically moving in space in this manner, and with it objects fluctuated, giving them a sort of blurry and distorted look as I observed the room around me. It was all so surreal. Then I started to hear other-worldly and frightening sounds. The best way I could describe it is the audio feedback or the ringing/squealing/screeching sounds produced by a microphone/sound system. It was deafening to the ears but there was nothing I could do to stop it.
At this point I could sense a presence in the room, a threatening and evil one and I felt in my gut it wanted to physically hurt me. I felt an impending sense of doom. I started to panic and all I wanted to do was jump out of bed and get the hell out of that room. I tried to move my limbs, but realized I was paralyzed! My brain was in life-or-death survival mode and was telling every fiber and muscle of my body to get off that bed, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get my muscles to even start to contract, let alone even feel my own body.
As I was in this state of panic and paralysis I started to get this sense that I was floating above my bed. The air felt even thicker as it now surrounded my entire body and it felt like it was carrying my weight from underneath and controlling my levitation in mid-air. Its wave-like motion was deliberate and with purpose. I could still feel the evil presence was in close proximity to me which made me feel even more terrified and helpless. All of a sudden the green wooden window shutters to the right of my bed started to open and shut by themselves so rapidly and violently. The banging noises were deafening as the shutters banged against the walls and against each other with such forceful rage, and it went on forever. At that moment, I thought I was going to die.
In an act of desperation, I did one thing that I thought could save my life: I started to pray the "Our Father." I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic schools but was never very religious (didn't go to Church every sunday or anything like that). I recited the prayer and probably mid-way through, it all came to a halt in a nanosecond. I opened my eyes for the second time waking up to the same room, lying in the same position on my back. Only difference was that the lights were off, it was pitch dark in the room. I knew everything was back to normal now, but still I was terrified to death to even dare to move an inch to get up and turn on the lights. I finally got the courage to run for the switch. As soon as the lights came on, I took a look at the green wooden window shutters, and saw that it was securely latched close. I spent the rest of the night in the living room horrified and wide awake with as many lights on as possible. For the longest time after that episode, I was terrified to sleep in that same room again without keeping the lights on and the door wide open all night long.
Call it what you like - a lucid dream, hallucination. To this day, I know in my gut that my experience had nothing to do with either. I was wide awake and fully aware to be sure, and I know in the deepest reaches of my soul that I was in a different dimension and that my experience was of a paranormal nature. This experience will stay with me forever.
I once "woke up" above my body and thought wow this is cool. I then saw a dark shadow with glowing red eyes. It glided over to my body and I remember thinking OMG I have to get back to my body now. I then somehow was in my body and could not move. Couldn't even open my eyes but I felt like I was on fire and I felt pressure on my body. Finally I yelled God help me and it was gone and ai felt fine. That happened to me once 15 years ago and it still scares me.
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Paralyzed
