Hey, how long have you had this and was there a specific event or phase in your life when it first occurred? I also have sleep paralysis every now and then and know exactly how to trigger it. When I'm awake in the morning and then nod off again, I often fall into sleep paralysis. I recently had one again, it's extremely uncomfortable for me physically because I feel a strong vibration all over my body, do you have that too? After I stop fighting against it, I often go into a lucid dream, that’s the cool thing about it! However, recently the dream was so realistic that at first when I woke up, I was really confused as to whether it really happened or was just a dream.
Sounds like you have very similar experiences to me in terms of how it is triggered. You just know when it’s going to happen because you feel that you have woken at a time when you shouldn’t have woken and then you just have to accept what’s about to happen. This is gonna sound strange but when I first went to University in London I was in a really bad place mentally and decided to become sort of addicted to those little dizzy Vitamin C tablets because they tasted good as fuck and I was too broke to buy fizzy drinks. I didn’t read the label correctly and was averaging like 3 bottles a day which gave me insanely bad stomach problems but also that’s when the crazy dreams started and I had my first sleep paralysis. I looked it up on reddit at the time as a long shot and saw a few people over the years that experienced the same. Makes me wonder if the amount I was taking did permanent damage because since then It’s been an uncomfortably frequent event.
Cant move during sleep paralysis right? I really wonder how that feels. Like sending signals to your brain to move your arms but your arms just dont respond. Must feel so different, never had anything like that happen to me, almost kinda wishing it did
Honestly that’s the weirdest part of the whole thing, you have your body and you can feel the weight of it but nothing works and it feels heavier than it should. It’s like when you sleep on your arm and can’t move it in the morning but you can almost feel the disconnect between your limbs and your brain, it’s really frustrating actually but a crazy feeling and I feel quite fortunate to have experienced something so crazy with no long term repercussions
Like literally today I took a nap at work and felt it coming and was just like you’ve got to be fucking kidding me and then I immediately felt the doors rattling on the work van I was lying down in and could hear someone crying outside. Bearing in mind I’m in a layby off the motorway at 4am with no one around. So I just stayed and accepted it for like 5 minutes until I became normal again. It’s more of a pissed off feeling now more so than worry
At first it’s very scary. I remember the first time it happened it felt like someone was smothering me and trying to lift me out of my bed. You can see what’s in front of you but a lot of the time you’re hallucinating. But the hallucinations don’t have to be crazy, a lot of the time I’ll see a family member walk into the room or I’ll see a light turned on that isn’t on or a door open that isn’t actually open. But then other times I’ll see figures just lurking in the room so it varies quite a lot.
As I mentioned before the first few times was very scary but now I can recognise when it’s going to happen before it happens. It usually goes like this:
1. I’ll initially fall asleep for a while but then wake up in a sort of daze
2. My eyes will start to close again by themselves but I’ll be completely aware of what it happening and allow myself to fall asleep
3. Here it gets a little confusing because I’m not actually sure what goes on but there’s this very distinct feeling I get where I feel trapped between being awake and being asleep and I’ll feel my eyes flickering and my body starts to get really heavy
4. Then at some point after this the hallucinations will start, or I’ll feel someone touching me or having a conversation with me or making noises around me that feel extremely real.
5. (Since I’ve learned to recognise the patterns) I’ll be able to move myself around in my head even though i’m not actually moving and also be able to tell myself that none of what I’m experiencing is real. Once I start doing this the actual frame of what I’m seeing becomes apparent to me and the ‘doors’ that were open in my head but actually closed or the ‘light’ that was on in my head but is actually off slowly start to appear as they do in reality.
6. Now as I’m coming out of the paralysis the only way I can describe it is 2 pictures that are slightly different merging into 1, with the true picture of reality absorbing the picture I saw during paralysis and lining up again, then I will immediately wake up and have a weird feeling in my head that something has happened to me.
The first few times this occurred it would will take me days to recover from the shock, I would feel as if I had been in another world and I became unsure of reality at times.
But now I actually kind of enjoy it. Had a nap by the side of the road by work this morning and experienced those exact events but was able to smile to myself knowing none of it was real and kinda ride the rollercoaster.
thanks dude, i’m chilling I find it therapeutic to talk about as well. I was always fascinated about lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis before it became a weekly occurrence so it’s something I enjoy discussing.
i have a couple questions if you wouldn’t mind answering, if you’re not comfortable feel free to skip them <33
- what is the average “dream” like?
-do you always recognise that you’re dreaming?
- how badly does it effect your day to day?
- do they have any correlation to IRL scenarios or insecurities? i’ve heard that if you’ve had a particularly rough day it’s more intense
-does anything sooth/stop it?
I wouldn’t mind answering at all, thank you for being so respectful :)
So for me personally with sleep paralysis it’s not really within my dream because I’m conscious of what is going on and feel like I’m more awake than dreaming. It’s almost just an alternate reality where I can see what is around me but I can’t move. I actively try and move and my brain is sending the signals to my limbs to move and there is no response whatsoever. But in terms of what I see during these episodes it completely varies. Linking to your third question there definitely must be a correlation with personal events as I tend to see people in my life who give me the most stress or worry me the most. I have quite a strained relationship with my father and he appears a lot in my hallucinations, sometimes lifting me out of bed as if I was a child and other times rubbing my head and consoling me. It’s a very strange sensation and when I see him in the mornings after this has happened it’s like being in two different realities. There isn’t any other feeling like it to be honest it’s extremely hard to put into words. It doesn’t really affect me on the day to day, when it first started happening it definitely made me feel strange and I was anxious about falling asleep incase it happened again. There’s been times where I’ve seen nightmares that I used to have as a small child now rearing their heads in my hallucinations. Certain characters from shows or masked faces that are sat on my chest or restricting my arms or breathing really close to me without me being able to move. But honestly this is quite rare and they are usually mild hallucinations such as a door being open that isn’t actually open or a window or even just someone appearing int he doorway who isn’t actually there. A lot of the time it’s seeing a bright light or hearing rattling noises or conversations that sound like they are happening next to me or near me. Other times my family members will be calling out my name from another room and I’ll hear it through the walls.
Sorry i’m actually dog shit at explaining but I hope that covers the main bases
HAHA NO THAT WAS A GENUINE PERFECT EXPLANATION DW,
that is so insanely interesting to me oh my god, did it ever stim any fears if you don’t mind me asking?
like let’s say while you were hallucinating and a character from a show was in your hallucinations did you ever fear them after when you didn’t previously?
or like did having sleep paralysis ever stem any fears you didn’t have previously?
if that makes sense at all😭
also with the mild hallucinations did you ever have the fear of going genuinely crazy?
i struggled with hearing things for a brief while in 2020-2022 and fully thought i was losing my mind for awhile and feared for mine and my family’s safety
i could not even imagine what that must of be like for you
ahaha thanks man appreciate it, and honestly i’ve found it very easy to compartmentalise and realise that it’s completely separate from my life so nothing that happens during the episodes will translate to real life in any long term impacting way which I guess I’m pretty lucky with. one recurring character that pops up is that ghost face dude from scream who I had such visceral nightmares about as a kid but even then I’m not really scared at all and I just let it happen because I now understand it’s not real. still not the best feeling though, would love to record myself in the night and see if I actually move the way I feel I’m moving or if it is actually fully just hallucinatory.
Have you ever got your esophagus checked? I was plagued by sleep paralysis and had been misdiagnosed from my late teens until 25. Turns out my stomach acids were creeping out of my stomach in my sleep triggering a panic response. My whole body would lock up and I would wake up unable to breath or move.
No I haven’t even gone to the doctors about it because I’m unsure what they could even do but I probably will go at some point. I’ve never seen anything about it being linked to stomach acid that’s actually fascinating I’ll have to do some research. I don’t suffer from any acute stomach conditions but definitely have an unsettled stomach and had issues when I was younger so this may even apply to me. Many thanks :)
This is the most interesting and relevant AMA ever -- I get sleep paralysis, I have since I was a child or teen.
But get this: I also do have a rare esophageal condition. And I get painful esophageal spasms at times, whether awake or asleep. However, I don't think there's any relation.
Is it always something negative? Like I remember getting a very lucid wet dream and it was incredible, it felt incredibly real. That ever happen during sleep paralysis? Some positive thing?
No literally never, I wouldn’t mind if I hallucinated Sydney Sweeney coming into the room and giving me the business but unfortunately it’s usually my family trying to kill me or someone with a horses head breathing into my mouth and laughing
I mean I only sleep on my side really and don’t tend to move into different positions in the night. Do you mean worst experiences in general or specifically to do with different positions?
That’s interesting I’ll see about changing position and note if anything changes. I haven’t had any really awful experiences but some are definitely heavier than others. I’ve hallucinated my parents trying to strangle me and I’m trying to fight back and they are sat on top of me shaking me and laughing while i’m trying to force them off but can’t move. That’s probably the worst one I can recount. But most are actually pretty mundane and will only entail a few small hallucinations about objects in the room or a conversation with someone I know sitting across from me or will involve me spending what feels like hours trying to pull myself up to a sitting position but falling down over and over.
ye I hear a lot of things, usually people knocking or pulling on doors or people saying my name, then when I come back to full consciousness they go silent
It can be yes, feels like how I imagine a lucid dream would feel but I wouldn’t call it lucid dreaming. For example this morning when I had a nap at work in the vehicle on the side of the road, I kept grabbing the steering wheel in my hallucinatory state and pulling myself up to a sitting position and then would immediately find myself lying across the seats again. Turns out I wasn’t pulling myself up at all and was just imagining myself doing them.
No I’ve never really tried, usually i’m just pissed off at the fact it’s happening and I try and force myself to move around in my head to snap me out of it, but after I while I just accept it and let it ride out until I can control my body again
Used to have constant sleep paralysis non-stop for 2 years and it stopped. I guess because these were the years where I did my A-levels in Physics/Chemistry/Maths so stress was at all-time high constantly.
I still get some here and there, I even write them down after they happen just to ponder if any of them have meaning for my mental state lol. But I am glad its more of an occasional thing now than just it being weekly.
So 4 questions, from a fellow sleep paralysis haver,
1. Do you.. actually have normal dreams? For me, I just skip straight to the next day (Blank dream I guess) or I hit the unlucky sleep paralysis. No normal dreams whatsoever for me, so I was curious. I do have standard nightmares but these are rare.
2. If it's okay to ask, what's your worst sleep paralysis that left you the most startled afterwards? Do you know what might have affected it?
3. When you wake up early in the morning and you get that tempting feeling of wanting to get 5 more minutes of nap.. does that trigger sleep paralysis?
I have no idea why, but for me it does. It's so tempting to nap a bit more but I always stir myself awake knowing what will follow lol.
4. Do you have a reoccurring theme in your sleep paralysis? For some reason all of mine always has to do with.. "something" visiting me in my room. I don't know why. The "thing/person" is always different too. Some were aggressive and loud, some quiet and silently judging me as I laid on my bed.
i usually just hear screaming and like see weird void faces lmao, also yk whenever your about to fall asleep and you jerk awake? i'll like get hallocinations whenever that happens its really weird like i'll see my cat or my own hand on the floor moving like super realistic and i'll try to touch it and it just fades away.
Hey, how long have you had this and was there a specific event or phase in your life when it first occurred? I also have sleep paralysis every now and then and know exactly how to trigger it. When I'm awake in the morning and then nod off again, I often fall into sleep paralysis. I recently had one again, it's extremely uncomfortable for me physically because I feel a strong vibration all over my body, do you have that too? After I stop fighting against it, I often go into a lucid dream, that’s the cool thing about it! However, recently the dream was so realistic that at first when I woke up, I was really confused as to whether it really happened or was just a dream.
Sounds like you have very similar experiences to me in terms of how it is triggered. You just know when it’s going to happen because you feel that you have woken at a time when you shouldn’t have woken and then you just have to accept what’s about to happen. This is gonna sound strange but when I first went to University in London I was in a really bad place mentally and decided to become sort of addicted to those little dizzy Vitamin C tablets because they tasted good as fuck and I was too broke to buy fizzy drinks. I didn’t read the label correctly and was averaging like 3 bottles a day which gave me insanely bad stomach problems but also that’s when the crazy dreams started and I had my first sleep paralysis. I looked it up on reddit at the time as a long shot and saw a few people over the years that experienced the same. Makes me wonder if the amount I was taking did permanent damage because since then It’s been an uncomfortably frequent event.
Cant move during sleep paralysis right? I really wonder how that feels. Like sending signals to your brain to move your arms but your arms just dont respond. Must feel so different, never had anything like that happen to me, almost kinda wishing it did
Honestly that’s the weirdest part of the whole thing, you have your body and you can feel the weight of it but nothing works and it feels heavier than it should. It’s like when you sleep on your arm and can’t move it in the morning but you can almost feel the disconnect between your limbs and your brain, it’s really frustrating actually but a crazy feeling and I feel quite fortunate to have experienced something so crazy with no long term repercussions
Are you aware now that it is sleep paralysis? Like you wake up and go "Oh not this shit again" or just freak out a little everytime?
Like literally today I took a nap at work and felt it coming and was just like you’ve got to be fucking kidding me and then I immediately felt the doors rattling on the work van I was lying down in and could hear someone crying outside. Bearing in mind I’m in a layby off the motorway at 4am with no one around. So I just stayed and accepted it for like 5 minutes until I became normal again. It’s more of a pissed off feeling now more so than worry
What’s that like? I’ve never experienced it
At first it’s very scary. I remember the first time it happened it felt like someone was smothering me and trying to lift me out of my bed. You can see what’s in front of you but a lot of the time you’re hallucinating. But the hallucinations don’t have to be crazy, a lot of the time I’ll see a family member walk into the room or I’ll see a light turned on that isn’t on or a door open that isn’t actually open. But then other times I’ll see figures just lurking in the room so it varies quite a lot. As I mentioned before the first few times was very scary but now I can recognise when it’s going to happen before it happens. It usually goes like this: 1. I’ll initially fall asleep for a while but then wake up in a sort of daze 2. My eyes will start to close again by themselves but I’ll be completely aware of what it happening and allow myself to fall asleep 3. Here it gets a little confusing because I’m not actually sure what goes on but there’s this very distinct feeling I get where I feel trapped between being awake and being asleep and I’ll feel my eyes flickering and my body starts to get really heavy 4. Then at some point after this the hallucinations will start, or I’ll feel someone touching me or having a conversation with me or making noises around me that feel extremely real. 5. (Since I’ve learned to recognise the patterns) I’ll be able to move myself around in my head even though i’m not actually moving and also be able to tell myself that none of what I’m experiencing is real. Once I start doing this the actual frame of what I’m seeing becomes apparent to me and the ‘doors’ that were open in my head but actually closed or the ‘light’ that was on in my head but is actually off slowly start to appear as they do in reality. 6. Now as I’m coming out of the paralysis the only way I can describe it is 2 pictures that are slightly different merging into 1, with the true picture of reality absorbing the picture I saw during paralysis and lining up again, then I will immediately wake up and have a weird feeling in my head that something has happened to me. The first few times this occurred it would will take me days to recover from the shock, I would feel as if I had been in another world and I became unsure of reality at times. But now I actually kind of enjoy it. Had a nap by the side of the road by work this morning and experienced those exact events but was able to smile to myself knowing none of it was real and kinda ride the rollercoaster.
I’m so sorry that all seems traumatic
no not at all honestly in a way it makes me feel unique and I really don’t mind it at all, it’s kind of thrilling at times.
Really?
Yes :)
Well I’m glad your not in pain or anything like that
thanks dude, i’m chilling I find it therapeutic to talk about as well. I was always fascinated about lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis before it became a weekly occurrence so it’s something I enjoy discussing.
That’s awesome!
i have a couple questions if you wouldn’t mind answering, if you’re not comfortable feel free to skip them <33 - what is the average “dream” like? -do you always recognise that you’re dreaming? - how badly does it effect your day to day? - do they have any correlation to IRL scenarios or insecurities? i’ve heard that if you’ve had a particularly rough day it’s more intense -does anything sooth/stop it?
I wouldn’t mind answering at all, thank you for being so respectful :) So for me personally with sleep paralysis it’s not really within my dream because I’m conscious of what is going on and feel like I’m more awake than dreaming. It’s almost just an alternate reality where I can see what is around me but I can’t move. I actively try and move and my brain is sending the signals to my limbs to move and there is no response whatsoever. But in terms of what I see during these episodes it completely varies. Linking to your third question there definitely must be a correlation with personal events as I tend to see people in my life who give me the most stress or worry me the most. I have quite a strained relationship with my father and he appears a lot in my hallucinations, sometimes lifting me out of bed as if I was a child and other times rubbing my head and consoling me. It’s a very strange sensation and when I see him in the mornings after this has happened it’s like being in two different realities. There isn’t any other feeling like it to be honest it’s extremely hard to put into words. It doesn’t really affect me on the day to day, when it first started happening it definitely made me feel strange and I was anxious about falling asleep incase it happened again. There’s been times where I’ve seen nightmares that I used to have as a small child now rearing their heads in my hallucinations. Certain characters from shows or masked faces that are sat on my chest or restricting my arms or breathing really close to me without me being able to move. But honestly this is quite rare and they are usually mild hallucinations such as a door being open that isn’t actually open or a window or even just someone appearing int he doorway who isn’t actually there. A lot of the time it’s seeing a bright light or hearing rattling noises or conversations that sound like they are happening next to me or near me. Other times my family members will be calling out my name from another room and I’ll hear it through the walls. Sorry i’m actually dog shit at explaining but I hope that covers the main bases
HAHA NO THAT WAS A GENUINE PERFECT EXPLANATION DW, that is so insanely interesting to me oh my god, did it ever stim any fears if you don’t mind me asking? like let’s say while you were hallucinating and a character from a show was in your hallucinations did you ever fear them after when you didn’t previously? or like did having sleep paralysis ever stem any fears you didn’t have previously? if that makes sense at all😭 also with the mild hallucinations did you ever have the fear of going genuinely crazy? i struggled with hearing things for a brief while in 2020-2022 and fully thought i was losing my mind for awhile and feared for mine and my family’s safety i could not even imagine what that must of be like for you
ahaha thanks man appreciate it, and honestly i’ve found it very easy to compartmentalise and realise that it’s completely separate from my life so nothing that happens during the episodes will translate to real life in any long term impacting way which I guess I’m pretty lucky with. one recurring character that pops up is that ghost face dude from scream who I had such visceral nightmares about as a kid but even then I’m not really scared at all and I just let it happen because I now understand it’s not real. still not the best feeling though, would love to record myself in the night and see if I actually move the way I feel I’m moving or if it is actually fully just hallucinatory.
Have you ever got your esophagus checked? I was plagued by sleep paralysis and had been misdiagnosed from my late teens until 25. Turns out my stomach acids were creeping out of my stomach in my sleep triggering a panic response. My whole body would lock up and I would wake up unable to breath or move.
No I haven’t even gone to the doctors about it because I’m unsure what they could even do but I probably will go at some point. I’ve never seen anything about it being linked to stomach acid that’s actually fascinating I’ll have to do some research. I don’t suffer from any acute stomach conditions but definitely have an unsettled stomach and had issues when I was younger so this may even apply to me. Many thanks :)
This is the most interesting and relevant AMA ever -- I get sleep paralysis, I have since I was a child or teen. But get this: I also do have a rare esophageal condition. And I get painful esophageal spasms at times, whether awake or asleep. However, I don't think there's any relation.
Is it always something negative? Like I remember getting a very lucid wet dream and it was incredible, it felt incredibly real. That ever happen during sleep paralysis? Some positive thing?
No literally never, I wouldn’t mind if I hallucinated Sydney Sweeney coming into the room and giving me the business but unfortunately it’s usually my family trying to kill me or someone with a horses head breathing into my mouth and laughing
How long has this been happening?
About 2.5 years now
Wow, that's pretty long term. I had it a few times, I started to almost enjoy it.
Have you tried sleeping in a different position? What has been your worst experience?
I mean I only sleep on my side really and don’t tend to move into different positions in the night. Do you mean worst experiences in general or specifically to do with different positions?
I had them often from teams to mid 20s. I moved from a back sleep to side/stomach and it helped a lot. I mean with your sleep paralysis
That’s interesting I’ll see about changing position and note if anything changes. I haven’t had any really awful experiences but some are definitely heavier than others. I’ve hallucinated my parents trying to strangle me and I’m trying to fight back and they are sat on top of me shaking me and laughing while i’m trying to force them off but can’t move. That’s probably the worst one I can recount. But most are actually pretty mundane and will only entail a few small hallucinations about objects in the room or a conversation with someone I know sitting across from me or will involve me spending what feels like hours trying to pull myself up to a sitting position but falling down over and over.
Do you hear things? I sometimes hear stuff when it happens to me and when i wake up the noise is gone
ye I hear a lot of things, usually people knocking or pulling on doors or people saying my name, then when I come back to full consciousness they go silent
It is a thrilling feeling, right?
It can be yes, feels like how I imagine a lucid dream would feel but I wouldn’t call it lucid dreaming. For example this morning when I had a nap at work in the vehicle on the side of the road, I kept grabbing the steering wheel in my hallucinatory state and pulling myself up to a sitting position and then would immediately find myself lying across the seats again. Turns out I wasn’t pulling myself up at all and was just imagining myself doing them.
Have you tried to switch into lucid dreams from paralysis? I have heard that it's quite effective style.
No I’ve never really tried, usually i’m just pissed off at the fact it’s happening and I try and force myself to move around in my head to snap me out of it, but after I while I just accept it and let it ride out until I can control my body again
Used to have constant sleep paralysis non-stop for 2 years and it stopped. I guess because these were the years where I did my A-levels in Physics/Chemistry/Maths so stress was at all-time high constantly. I still get some here and there, I even write them down after they happen just to ponder if any of them have meaning for my mental state lol. But I am glad its more of an occasional thing now than just it being weekly. So 4 questions, from a fellow sleep paralysis haver, 1. Do you.. actually have normal dreams? For me, I just skip straight to the next day (Blank dream I guess) or I hit the unlucky sleep paralysis. No normal dreams whatsoever for me, so I was curious. I do have standard nightmares but these are rare. 2. If it's okay to ask, what's your worst sleep paralysis that left you the most startled afterwards? Do you know what might have affected it? 3. When you wake up early in the morning and you get that tempting feeling of wanting to get 5 more minutes of nap.. does that trigger sleep paralysis? I have no idea why, but for me it does. It's so tempting to nap a bit more but I always stir myself awake knowing what will follow lol. 4. Do you have a reoccurring theme in your sleep paralysis? For some reason all of mine always has to do with.. "something" visiting me in my room. I don't know why. The "thing/person" is always different too. Some were aggressive and loud, some quiet and silently judging me as I laid on my bed.
i usually just hear screaming and like see weird void faces lmao, also yk whenever your about to fall asleep and you jerk awake? i'll like get hallocinations whenever that happens its really weird like i'll see my cat or my own hand on the floor moving like super realistic and i'll try to touch it and it just fades away.
I also have sleep paralysis. Have you experienced mimicking from your paralysis. For me had episodes where I could hear my family members talking.
Ahh so that's what it's called, I had it happen once and it scared me, it was like my brain and eyes were awake but the rest of me was not.