How often do you experience sleep paralysis ?

This is kinda a follow-up to mjorh's thread with the same subject.

You know, sleep paralysis, a temporal state just before falling asleep or just after waking up, when you can't move your body and can't speak, which is often accompanied by terrifying hallucinations, such as the existence of a demon around you.

The big question is, if you are NOT suffering from any mental/psychological disorders especially depression and anxiety, how often do you experience this ?

It has never happened to me except when I have lucid dreams and I feel like I can't move and then realise I'm trying to move my real body instead of my dream body, then all is well.

According to Wikipedia it is "often accompanied by terrifying hallucinations", but not always. I think on one occasion I did experienced some paralysis of my body just before/in the process of waking up, but no hallucinations. I wanted to move my body and couldn't and I had shortness of breath. Scary.

I used to get it quite a lot, but haven't had it recently. It might be linked to stress

@korvus , @Master_LiveAre you guys sure it hasn't happened to you more than once ? Maybe it has and you just have no recollection of them all ?

I should look for more replies. If there are too many "random" people who don't experience this often, then I guess something is wrong with me. I experience it several times a week.Maybe twice or three times.

@elkoldo: If we have no recollection of it how are we supposed to know? It's the same as me asking you if you're sure you don't have it every day and you just remember it 2 or 3 times a week =P

@korvus: Hence the word "maybe" :P

But now that I come to think of it, maybe I have it every night but I just can record it a few times per week?

Never happened to me even though I have anxiety and OCD which leads to the former.

@elkoldo: Now you're just being paranoid =) There's no reason to think it happens more often than you can recall. Also, why is this such an important topic for you? It is because it's scary or because you think something serious is going on? Because normally sleep paralysis is not something that requires treatment nor is it dangerous and it's often linked to not enough rest and too much stress (apparently it's also more likely to happen if you sleep on your back). So if you're really worried about it, talk to your doctor...while he/she is probably not going to do anything about the sleep paralysis itself, there might be something that can be done to reduce what's indirectly causing it.

@johnd13: OCD is shit man, sorry to hear you have it. I've had my bouts with it as well, so if you ever need somebody to talk to about it I'm always around =)

@korvus: Thanks man. :) Yeah it IS shit. It's draining me most days of the week lol. I can't even remember the last time I was completely carefree of that.

@johnd13: I can relate...it fried my mind so badly at one time that I clearly remember standing in front of a traffic light and I couldn't, for the life of me, remember if red meant stop or go...had to wait until somebody else needed to cross the street and just follow then as they went. But I don't want to derail the thread, just PM if you want to talk =)

I've only experienced that during my second year of college. I was depressed during my first semester that year and had a few episodes of sleep paralysis. Thankfully, it went away after that.

I don't anymore. It kind of stopped when I became an adult, I don't even lucid dream anymore which sucks.

@korvus: Yeah you're right let @elkoldo have his thread back. :P

Sorry to hear you had a hard time with it. In any case, I think I've spent enough time with that for today. Tomorrow is a new day and I hope for the best. Whenever it gets worse though I know where to find you. :)

Same here. Based on what i've experienced for like gazillion times it is definitely linked to stress , whenever i had some heavy stresses during the day with personal especially emotional issues this shit occurred to me and some how i got used to it and gotta admit it's frickin true death-like experience and each time it's terrifying as hell....

@elkoldo How u doin buddy? , in your case i think it'd be better to visit some doctor .....i mean if u don't have any stresses yet u go through this shit ...but as far as i know it ain't dangerous..

I have experienced it before. I don't think it's directly linked to stress. It's linked to not having a good sleep. I mean only times it happens to me is when I actually try to control my body in my sleep and hence try to stay awake or become awake. Which apparently leads to being both awake and asleep hence the paralysis.

What I did was that I tried to totally chillax in my sleep. Whenever I go to bed I focus on those images that my brain sends me instead of focusing on how to fall asleep. By images I mean those images that are a prelude to a full dream. Don't know how to put it really.

I don't think I've ever experienced it.

i have had it like 5 times in my live, all in the last 4 years.

Its horrible and sort of painful at the same time. I can never go back to sleep from the fear it leavest me in or becuz my heart wont stop racing.

It feels like the devil is standing on the foot of your bed, ghost are hovering over you, and aliens are waiting for you outside.

Never had sleep paralysis, but i got major sleep disorder. I remain awake till late at nights , sometimes even full nights. Can't go to sleep easily. Dark patches under my eyes starting to show. I'm a ex drug addict ( reformed now but sleeping disoders are a sign i'm not completely cured yet) :(

The stress theory sounds legit. It seems to have a bit to do with fear as well. I used to get these a lot in my teens followed by the "terrifying hallucinations". The dreams are definitely lucid from my experience. This may sound cheesy or cliche-ish but in my lucid state I decided to control my breathing, understand that I can control my own feelings even if I lose control of my thoughts and face the "terrifying hallucination". Now, I don't experience sleep paralysis anymore and because I've faced what my mind thinks I should be terrified of, I also find there is much less in this world that I fear. Whatever it is to you, it may be good to see a therapist to workout what's going on in that noodle noggin of yours.

There was a time when I used to experience this every single night. Thanfully, it's stopped happening a lot, but there are days when this comes back, and it's something you never get used to. It's always a terrible, creepy situation.

Every time I lose myself in a lucid dream.

Used to happen quite a lot but not as much since the last two months because of sleeplessness probably? dunno.

Never had it happen to me. Heard of it but just isn't something that happens.

I'm not sure whether what I occasionally experience qualify as sleep paralysis. Ever since I was young I'd experience this strange state just as I'm about to fall into deep sleep. Somehow my mind wanders off into some completely arbitrary situation that usually ends in me falling down the stairs or plunging into a chasm from a height. At that point I suddenly and violently get up scared shitless. I never remember how I drifted into the state itself and it always happens involuntarily.

Yea that doesn't sound like sleep paralysis whatsoever but its still strange. Now that I think about it, its been a while since I experienced this.

@GazaAli: I think that happens to everyone...to me it mostly happens when I'm restless and exhausted at the same time and I end up falling asleep suddenly and my body just jerks me awake which gives me that feeling that I was falling.

Except that its always accompanied by some lucid dreaming or a state of trance. Its like I'm half-conscious and dreaming about something that ends up in that fall that jerks me out of sleep.

Have you ever attempted to control it? Because it is reoccurring, it would seem like you could have a greater possibility of controlling your lucid dream. If you could, that's when the real fun begins

You can't totally control yourself in lucid dreams. Yes you do have some control like what choices you make in your dream or where you walk but scenario changes are almost entirely unprecedented. I guess that's what happens to Ali, he sees the dream and just right when he's about to wake up, he's thrown into that scenario where he's falling from the stairs. So far, from my experience of lucid dreaming, I haven't been able to defy the laws of physics though, so whenever I'm falling in my dream, it seems like a real simulation.

Speaking solely of my experience; when my dream state entered into the state of sleep paralysis I would face the scenario/ fear hallucination. Doing this would allow me some control of my dream (lucid dreaming). When I used to try to force myself to wake up, it seemed to make the whole experience more horrible. I agree with you about not controlling the scenarios, due to the fact that I've never been able to do it. You are right again about making your own choices. So I wonder if he ever tried to control the fall down the stairs. The scenario is that he falls, but the choice of how he falls, how long he falls, and whether or not he wishes to stop the dream and wake up can be up to him. What is at the bottom of the stairs? It's an intriguing question.

I myself have not conquered the fear of falling. I have been able to jump the height of skyscrapers in my lucid dreams but it wasn't flying. Once I reached the peak of the jump I would fall with nothing to grasp around me. This always woke me up from my sleep. And yes it always sucked.

it comes from bad eating habitats. ive experienced it quite a few times.

Well, that solely depends on him. In fact, if he tries to 'choose' how long he's gonna fall, that's what usually ends up in a sleep paralysis. I had a dream once in which I was going through infinite loops of saving my friends and then getting them killed by some neo-nazis (lol I know, too much games can result in those kind of dreams). The moment I realized in my dream that I've been doing this for too long, I tried to end it but that resulted in a sleep paralysis while what I was seeing in the dream was that I'm on the road and my ankle is injured and I can't breathe because of the pain.

I think that's because of the 'real simulation' I mentioned earlier. Nothing ever goes against science in lucid dreams apart from time. It seems like we can control time but the rest of the laws of science, we can't betray them. It's a fun topic.

That's strange...after a few weeks of lucid dreaming I was able to control the dream completely. I used to dream a lot about me floating, so when I started realising that it was a dream because I was floating and that made no sense I started thinking "What if I could float a little higher off the ground?" and within a few nights I could, so I started thinking "What if I were flying instead of floating?" and again, after a few nights I could fly, so I started imagining "What if instead of me being in a shopping mall (for example) I were flying across the ocean?" and the scenery would change...it never required much effort for me to do whatever I wanted with the dream. I did realise though, that I would always wake up more tired than before I went to bed whenever I had lucid dreams (like I stayed up all night watching tv instead of sleeping) so I started choosing to end the dream instead of controlling it...with time I stopped lucid dreaming entirely.

Well bro.... have you watched 'Ghost Hound'?

@top_lel: I have not my friend, and don't think I have ever heard of it. Care to tell me what it is? =)

@korvus: it's a psychological thriller anime. The main characters have the same exaggerated symptoms of lucid dreaming as yours. They call it 'soul travelling' in the anime. What they do was that their 'souls' got out of their bodies every time they fell asleep and they could fly around the city or wherever they wanted. The unprecedented progression of 'when','where' and 'how' to fly was the same as yours. That's the closest thing that gets to your experience. You're a strange one buddy... strange indeed.

@top_lel: That's interesting, maybe I should watch it. I think I had an unfair advantage though, a lot of people start realising they're dreaming because (for example) they're walking down the street completely naked and they would never do that in real life, so they must be dreaming (from what I hear it's a fairly common dream but I don't recall ever having it). Since, for some reason, I used to dream of floating that naturally evolved to flying, and as soon as you get the flying part down you pretty much broke all laws so your subconscious just says "you know what? Screw it...just do whatever you want, I'm done trying to make sense of stuff...have fun being a dragon or whatever floats your boat..."

yea it was a good anime. A 8.5/10 for me at least.

whoa, I had that naked dream once too but as soon as I realized that I was naked in the dream, I was magically covered up lel. I wish I could be a dragon. But I've been a hawk and a wolf once. In one peculiar dream, I was even a bed! damn it that was a funny dream

@top_lel: As long as you weren't your own mom's bed...ewww >_<

Sorry for the derail @elkoldo. Shutting up now =D

well..... I don't even remember the details.... ooops

Sorry for the derail @elkoldo. Shutting up now =D

Never had it, don't plan to.

Haven't happened in about 30 years.

Thank you all guys for the replies. I gotta admit something's wrong with me, 'cause according to your responses this shit seems to be happening to me more often than the average. It can have something to do with stress or mental state during the day.

I visited a psychiatrist yesterday; she thinks it has something to do with depression and therefore gave me a prescription for some antidepressant (Zoloft, anyone ?) and also tablets that will ease the process of sleeping (Propranolol, Clonazepam, anyone ?).Still, I don't fully trust her (she's a baby-young doctor), and I'm not gonna take the pills , until I consult my therapist next week.(who is also baby-young, but at least certainly doesn't consider medication as a first choice).

@korvus@johnd13

I prefer a derailed , populated thread to a non-derailed deserted one any day of the week !

@mjorh

I don't go through a lot of stress (I'm a cold-blooded asshole :D ) but somedays, mostly those days that I go to the goddamn university, I go through severe depression.So I could point the finger at depression....

No episodes that I can recall fortunately.

I've found that your expectations matter in lucid dreams. For example if you're near a door and you want to meet someone you have to imagine and "expect" to find that person behind the door.

I used to have them very often when I was a kid (Let's say, until I reached 10 years old, I had them), but it wasn't accompanied by any hallucinations though....

@elkoldo: "I don't go through a lot of stress (I'm a cold-blooded asshole :D ) but somedays, mostly those days that I go to the goddamn university, I go through severe depression.So I could point the finger at depression...."

After Afghanistan, I had issues with sleep. I get the cold-blood nature so I think it's good that you are going to see a therapist. Pills may just cover up the issues but not really deal with them. I had repressed issues that I didn't want to deal with, so I tried to forget them. I talked about the issues with the therapist and used some of the techniques that he told me to try before sleep. It took several weeks but I was able to sleep through the night. Several months later I was able to move on somewhat completely (somethings you just have to learn to live with).

But big kudos to you for facing your issues and trying to fix them. Not too many are that bold

@DaX_Factor: Thanks - that was heartwarming. Yes, now I know that I must learn to live with somethings. Taking pills won't teach that to you, they only put a lid on the real problems as you said, not to mention that they are addictive and once you stop taking them, the issues will just bounce back. That's why medication is a no-no for me, at least until my therapist who also doesn't really believe in medication, convinces me that's the sole way out.

Also,

I salute the good ol' veteran !

@matt2790: eh... I am in the same boat. But I am used to it. Last time I laughed at the scary things I saw, told them to kiss my hairy ass, and focused in moving one limb till I woke up, rolled over, and went right back to sleep.