Do you get Sleep Paralysis (The work of by Night Mares and Incubi…)

Do you get Sleep Paralysis

  • Yes

    Votes: 14 53.8%
  • No

    Votes: 9 34.6%
  • Maybe

    Votes: 3 11.5%

  • Total voters
    26

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PFunk

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I will occasionally get sleep paralysis and am wondering if anyone else in the CWE community also experiences it from time to time?

Basically, when you hit REM sleep, your body releases a series of chemicals to prevent you from acting out your dreams. When your mind awakens, you’re body stops producing the chemicals so you can move. For people with sleep paralysis, sometime when your mind begins to awaken but your body doesn’t stop producing the chemicals. Thus you’re awake but you can’t move your body.

Here is the Wikipedia article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

I was a teenager when it first happened. I dreamt I was drowning. I remember trying to get up and move my body but it felt like lead. I started to panic because I couldn’t breathe (I might have been face down in the pillow). Finally after exerting all my mental strength. I was able to role on my side, gasp for air and move my body.

It’s probably happens to me once or twice a year, always upon awakening. I feel trapped in my body in a half awake, hazy mental state. My arms and legs feel as though sandbags are holding them down. All I want to do is move, but feel as though I’m buried. I try to stay calm as a feeling of panic sets in. It takes an enormous amount of effort to toss myself awake. Sometime I contemplate whether it’s better to give up and try to fall back asleep.

Now mind you, this usually happens before a much needed early morning bathroom break. When I come back to bed, I always pause a minute or so, debating whether I truly want to go back to sleep. In the end, sleep always wins.

I asked my epileptologist and he said they have not found correlation with epilepsy. He also said his wife gets it from time to time.

If you read the history and folklore section in the link, you will see our present day term “nightmare” came from sleep paralysis, hence the Incubi and Mares reference in the title.
 
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ive also wondered if there was a connection between epilepsy and sleep paralysis as i suffer from it too, but have since been told that its due to anxiety more than epilepsy.
i absolutely hate the feeling of it when you cant move but have learnt over the years just to be calm through it, though i generally cant fall back to sleep after it happens.
 
I certainly have woken up and not been able to move...but I always wonder if I'm post-ictal or having sleep paralysis, although it is unnerving. I wait it out.
I don't think I've ever felt that sense of panic.
My sister has experienced it (actually the one that doesn't have epilepsy) and she has found it terrifying.
So really, I don't know.
 
I'm claustrophobic and hate the feeling of being bound. My worst case scenario would be a cramped crowded space filled with heat and humidity.

Being conscious, but physically powerless during sleep paralysis evokes these feelings. That would be the root of my panic... being imprisoned in a dark, semi lucid hell. When I'm finally able to move, I become awash with relief. Literally feeling as though a great weight has been lifted. The feeling of freedom. That's why I always hesitate going back to sleep after. But sleep is delicious and I can't say no.

For me the feeling of sleep paralysis revivals the feeling of falling into a TC. For both I am equally powerless, trapped and just want it to be over. That said, the outcomes are very different. Given that, I choose sleep paralysis.

jh2: I wouldn't be surprised if a correlation is someday found, given areas of the brain involved. I can understand how you don't want to sleep after. Luckily for me, it has never happened twice in one night. I usually will have 6-12 months until it happens again... sometimes longer.

LJ: Post-ictal or sleep paralysis.. that's a tough one especially since you have a family history of both. Now I'm curious to know. Tell your sister, I can sympathise with her.
 
I've had sleep paralysis before, but not in a long time. I can remember waking as a child or teenager and it being really hard to move but it soon went away. A friend had mentioned the same thing happening to him, which is why I remember it so clearly. To my knowledge he didn't have E.

It's not been associated with seizures for me.
 
no.guru I have tried to message you and it is not working.... am I being blocked from messaging on here?!
 
I haven't had it in a long time, actually, but the only time I ever get it is when I'm also having seizure activity. There has to be a correlation.
 
The neurologist who just diagnosed me with seizures thinks my sleep paralysis is related.

It is always right as I start to drift off to sleep whether in bed, or in front of the tv. Right as my mind drifts off I get stuck. If I was looking around or watching tv my eyes will get stuck too and stay fixed on where they were looking the entire time. Years ago I would fight inside trying to get myself to move something, anything, to break out of it. It took me years to stop fighting which, as another person said, makes panic. As soon as I get paralyzed I'll either get sounds (often conversation) or smells (e.g. gasoline) that I know are not there-- or an object that my eyes are fixed on might appear to move, or I might see a swirl of dust that that almost looks like a shape or form (very had to desribe). Never all at the same time. After the sound or smell I will get a feeling either that; my limbs are smashing into furniture (they really aren't but that's what it feels like) or that there is weight on my face and chest so my lungs can't work, or that I'm moving abruptly up to ceiling or across the room or spinning, or only recently, a feeling of electricity that moves from my stomach to my head with a zap feeling.

The older I get the more they make my heart and lungs feel like I've run a marathon when I come out of it.

Never in the 25 years that these happen have I actually made it into sleep. I just come out of it awake and everything is normal except my heart and breathing. It can happen 2-4 times before I actually make it into sleep which is exhausting and frustrating. It might be every day/night or every few days, every few weeks or every few months. It's totally random. I've been to countless mental health professionals about them and general doctors and they all just tell me it's anxiety, ptsd or sleep paralysis. I read about hypnagogic hallucinations and realized it had to be that-- but the neurologist thinks all of it is related and will go away or lessen when I treat the seizures. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
 
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Giveasmile, that really does sound like a combo of simple partial seizures (maybe absent seizures) and sleep paralysis. What a horrible way to try to fall asleep. I bet your neurologist is right, in treating the seizures will eliminate the paralysis. I wish you the best of luck, and keep us updated!
 
Scary Stuff - Sleep Apnea

Yes, I have it atleast once a month. I can feel it when it starts and it's usually just before I hit the coma stage of rest. My whole body starts tingling from head to toe, that's what usually wakes me. I can then hear the tv (which I never turn off) and anything else going on around me. I can feel the cat sitting on me, hear my husband snoring ect... but I can't freakin move. The tingling gets worse and worse, it feels like Im dying. I try despartlely to move something, finger, toe, leg it doesnt matter becuase once I do I cant then wake up and roll over on my side. It only seems to happen when I sleep on my back. It's happened once or twice while lying on my side, but mainly when I am on my back. It's very very scary. It feels like my body is shutting down and I've even felt like I can't breath. I didn't know what it was until I did a sleep study for sleep apnea which showed that I do stop breathing in my sleep. I refused the sleeping machine as I have refused everything else. I didn't want to complicate rest. I just want to rest, you know? Oh, yea, I usually end up with the headache from hell when ever I have this for the entire day. Oh Kill joy!
 
i do get that,it horrible makes me panic...it phenoma use to get when i was nurse it was well known and called nightnurse paralysis,as soon as someone called it went away
 
no.guru I have tried to message you and it is not working.... am I being blocked from messaging on here?!

Screamy, I hadn't seen this until now or I would have answered you.

I had spent too much time around the water cooler so by the time you posted this I had left for a long while.

Hope you're doing well.
 
I've had it from time to time.
I have had some whoppers of nightmares too.
Definitely because of fear and anxiety.
(I took 10 mg of melatonin and dreamt that I couldn't breathe because I was face down in the pillow - not asthma related.)
 
Actually, quite the opposite. My neurologist thought I had REM Behavior Disorder, but it appeared to be a possible aura. I would kick, punch, throw things, and the most odd, do situps in my sleep. I remember being partially awake for some, but had no idea why I was acting the way I was. After seeing repetitive behavior, likely not related to dream activity, I was prescribed new meds. It keeps me still for most the night, but I still drool and annoy the hell out of my wife by flip-floppin'.
 
OMG! All these awful nightmares and terrible experiences...does it ever stop? NOPE

(I took 10 mg of melatonin and dreamt that I couldn't breathe because I was face down in the pillow - not asthma related.)

I was taking that for a while but if you take it for too long your body won't make melatonin on it's own...or so I've heard...not currently taking it anymore...should only be used if you absolutely just can't sleep (and actually want to sleep)

but I still drool and annoy the hell out of my wife by flip-floppin'.

which is why we sleep in separate beds in separate rooms :lol:
 
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Actually, I went down to 1mg and I still get these weird dreams.
 
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