- cross-posted to:
- sleepparalysis@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- sleepparalysis@lemmy.world
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Thank you brain, very cool
I’ve had this since my late teens. It’s more common when you have irregular sleep patterns. Nowadays it’s more rare.
It’s scary shit, specially if you panic. In time I’ve learned to control it when I have an episode and mostly succeed. But occasionally I still panic, but not like before.
Wiggling a toe will make the movement come back slowly and if you recognize what’s happening and keep calm you’ll avoid the most disturbing hallucinations. You can even succeed in controlled lucid dreaming during an episode.
I never saw the demon but I have felt its presence. It’s actually not as scary as it sounds. The scariest hallucinations were actually feeling people had entered my room and were intending to hurt me and I couldn’t budge. Once it happened with my old landlord when I was in college. He lived upstairs and I had an episode after falling asleep in my living room. I heard him enter my unit and saw him stand over me talking gibberish. It was so unsettling. I finally moved in a panic and I was by myself. He was actually a very chill guy, best landlord ever.
A few times I was unable to move, alone in the dark, and suddenly moved unexpectedly only to see my girlfriend or room mate towering over me and tell me I was moaning heavily in my sleep and thought I was having a bad nightmare. I’ve wondered how many of the sleep paralysis are actually nightmares and we ARE asleep.
Man…
For me it happens when I’m under extreme stress, like my 3 year long “come back, I love you. I don’t love you anymore. I’m not cheating, he’s just a guy I snuck out with for no reason while I thought you were gonna be at work” divorce.
You said wiggling a toe got you out of it. For me it was tapping my pinky and trying to scream.
I even learned to control it and it was like an acid trip. Well, more like I learned to ride it and not be afraid.
One of the wildest ones I experienced though, I had recently purchased a hamster for my daughter that turned out to be a pregnant female. I tried to give the babies away, no one would take them. They slaughtered each other. I didn’t know they did that.
I was laying in bed watching my comfort food, Star Trek TOS. Suddenly the hamster cage appeared on my stomach with the gate opened. 40-50 hamsters crawled out and started eating my fingers and burrowing into my chest and stomach. I couldn’t move. My ex appeared at the foot of the bed as a shadowy creature with wild hair rocking back and forth laughing at me and hissing. I tapped my pinky and tried to scream once I was aware it was sleep paralysis. A hamster crawled up on my face and started eating my nose. I finally managed to mumble scream enough to get my exes attention and she reached out and touched me. As soon as she did I snapped back to reality.
The last time it happened I wasn’t expecting it. I was in a decent place in my personal life, work was chaotic though. I thought my house was full of distant relatives and they were killing people from outside of the family in my living room.
I hate that shit when it takes me by surprise. When it happens regularly I take control and I don’t mind it.
I get that feeling of “someone’s in the house” every single time… Horrid even though I know that it’s not true.
Don’t worry that’s just me… Really nothing to worry about , I promise
ಠ_ಠ
Dude once I had this particular episode living in a first floor apartment. I was facing the opposite direction, but I heard my bedroom window slowly open and an intruder step inside my bedroom. I was absolutely fucking terrified thinking I was about to be murdered. Nope! Just sleep paralysis!
I haven’t had an episode in a long time but I would try to tell myself to just breathe through it. The moving an extremity would help too. The worse part was that I’d get them in bunches. If one happened I’d have to stay awake for a bit or I’d get them over and over. Thankfully never saw any demons; just a vision of my surroundings but I couldn’t move.
I have extremely irregular sleep patterns and I’ve never had this happen… weird
I got shaken by the demon until it got shoved over by a white light in my teens. I wonder what kind of wires snapped in my head, probably knocked a few screws loose.
I’ve had this once in my life, when I was 3. It’s my oldest memory I guess, 30 years later i still remember the animals staring at me from the wall at the other side of the room. Until they started running towards me and I could not even scream.
Same, except it was toy of Petrie from land before time. It had multiplied and i was surrounded by Petries.
Mine is similar but my bedroom had stretched out like a giant hallway and tiny figurines of my parents were stacked floor to ceiling at the far end with their backs to me. In the hallucination I said, “What the fuck?” and they all instantly turned towards me in anger and fell over making a tsunami wave that crashed over me, fully waking me up.
It was horrifying and I thought I was going to have a heart attack at the age of eight.
Treeeee starrrrrr
I experienced it once during college. Mine was literally the hair ghost from grudge movie starting inside my window. Wasn’t that scared even when i had been in an accident. Can’t believe there are some people who experience this shit on a regular basis.
A lot of times before I’m falling asleep I think about “you know, I usually don’t remember anything from when I fall asleep so what if it’s actually some horrific experience you have daily and just forget about?”
Have you watched Severance?
I have this every now and then except i kinda just half-wake up and everything feels profoundly wrong in some ineffable way, like the dream world merges with the real world and there’s a sense that something bad is going to happen at any moment.
This is consistent with my experience. I didn’t have a paralysis demon, but I was convinced my ceiling fan was plotting to kill me. Not that it was going to fall and hurt but that it was scheming to have me assassinated and would take matters into its own hands if necessary.
My sleep paralysis demon was a black cat, and it stepped on my balls, causing astonishingly realistic pain
This one is strangely realistic.
I hate sleep paralysis. Rather than taking the form of a demon, it takes the form of my friends/family/anyone I know walking in, seeing me with sleep paralysis, then leaving. I’d rather it be a demon.
I used to get sleep paralysis fairly frequently a while back. Some nights it would happen multiple times in a row. I never had any hallucinations, and for some reason I could always wake up properly by focusing really hard on my right foot.
Sleep paralysis is just the summoning ritual for the Hat Man.
I wish I had that at least once, to know how it is like. Also why do people open their eyes instead of keep trying to sleep?
I’ve had this. No you don’t. It isn’t fun. Experiencing full body paralysis for a minute was a deeply unsettling and terrifying experience. I hated every second. Unless you’re prepared in some way, having the presence of mind to try to sleep again seems difficult.
I didn’t have a hallucination with that one though. I have that with a different parasomnia. I’ve had a hypnopompic (upon walking up) hallucination one time. That was freaky but only lasted a few seconds.
Interesting, for me it doesn’t sound scary. I can imagin it’s scary if you do not know what it is. But if you know, isn’t it mostly annoying, like you want to move but can’t? Sorry if this is uncomfortable to you. To me it sounds relaxing, I often want to sleep, but my body still constantly wants to move and only when I notice my body got really heavy, almost unmovable, I know I’ll fall asleep any second now.
Waking up could be a bit more annoying, like if it takes longer than a few minutes. But I usually need 15 minutes or more before I move out of the bed anyways. I can however only imagin it.
Edit: sorry if my language offended people, English is my second language and I didn’t intended to sound condescending.
I’ve had it before and it was actually more annoying than scary. I even had a hallucination with it, I saw a shadowy figure standing in the doorway to my room. rather than being scared I was just annoyed and frustrated that they weren’t closing the door and I couldnt get up to do it myself. It was like reality and dream logic were weirdly combined for a while.
My brain always interprets the crushing as being smothered by friendly dogs and stuff like that.
It’s not a feeling that you can rationalize by looking at It from the outside.
It’s a primal and visceral feeling, a fight or flight situation. Sometimes you even think “hey this is a sleep paralysis, I can just ignore and go back to sleep”, but you usually can’t, and your body screams “danger, danger, danger, run away, fight back”, but you can’t move, or scream, or “wake up”. It bites of our instincts, and It’s hard to describe afterwards, but you wake up scared and bit relieved that you’re alive.
It gets worse If you hallucinate, all sorts of distorted figures and creatures appear, all fabrication of your brain of course, but since you’re half awake, they are half real as well, you can feel their presence like a sixth sense, when you look at a dark corner or a dark hallway and you know something is lurking there, sometimes you can even “touch” them if they come near enough.
I had and episode one time that I had to keep pushing a floating demonic mask away from me, I could only move my right wrist, and yes I could somewhat touch the thing, and I had this primal fear that If that thing approached my head, I would die.
It’s a really hard concept to describe, but once you experience It, you never forget the feeling.
Woah, thanks for sharing. Doesn’t sound pleasing at all.
But if you know, isn’t it mostly annoying, like you want to move but can’t?
Not really. Not being able to move while you feel threatened is a very primal kind of fear, so it’s hard to rationalize your way out of it even after you realize what’s going on.
But knowing what the cause of it is does help a little bit. It doesn’t get rid of the intense fear, but there is a relief you feel knowing that there’s a way out (assuming you know your body well enough to know how to reliably wake yourself up).
I knew what it was, but I was panicked and unable to calm down before it passed. I was deeply affected by not being able to move anything. I imagine other personality/neuro types would handle it differently, but I did not care for it.
That said, I get being curious about experiencing something benign but possibly scary.
I wish I had that at least once, to know how it is like.
It’s really fascinating in retrospect. The intense fear can be upsetting, but if you’re used to nightmares then you’ll be fine. I’ve always loved terrifying/surrealist art/media, so after I wake up it’s like my brain gave me a gift. (Here’s my favorite experience if you’re interested)
Also why do people open their eyes instead of keep trying to sleep?
For me, it’s poor mental health and a terrible sleep schedule lol. I can’t do it as often anymore because I have a job now, but I used to resist sleeping for some mental health reasons. So after I was too tired to want to be on my phone or anything, I’d end up staring at my ceiling thinking about whatever I was stressed out about at the time. I think that prolonged daydream-like state is what does it.
Try sleeping on your stomach. Happens to me if I do
this was me about six hours ago! thanks, brain.
How can I get sleep paralysis? It’s been years since my last experience with it :(
Sometimes when I get sick I can sense that it might happen when I go to sleep. I think it’s mainly about being the right amount of tired, though.
The other key element is having enough brain activity to keep your eyes open or to reopen them while your body tries to start REM sleep. People say stress will do that, and that tracks with my experience.
Also, try sleeping on your back. I’ve never had it while sleeping in any other position. It could vary from person to person, so maybe try sleeping in different positions.
I can fall asleep physically while remaining awake mentally with relative ease, I’ve never had the entry paralysis ever associated with the typical exit paralysis sleep demons.
The worst that happens is my brain is just incredibly disoriented when I open my eyes after it thinks Im asleep. The paralysis is pretty fun actually, sometimes it can be a real challenge to break.
