Sleep Paralysis

An out of the blue posting from me? How odd. But I've been feeling under the weather for the last few days, for a variety of reasons, and should be in bed sleeping, but instead I've been obsessing over a lil' something called Sleep Paralysis. Now, it's been a few weeks since my last episode, so I'm not sure what triggered my obsessiveness today about it, but I've been doing nothing but reading in the last couples hours, so I thought I'd share it with the world.

I have suffered sleep paralysis for more years then I can remember. I'm not going to touch on the mumbo-jumbo medical terms of it, but I'm going to try and explain it as best I can. And then afterwards, I'll share with you what others in the world experience.

For me, SP always happens right before I fall asleep. I know it is happening, and if i get up and walk around or read for a bit, I can sometimes stop it. The begining stages of it for me always starts with a throbbing sound. It gets increasingly louder, sometimes lasting the entire span of the episode. During the episode, I am completely 100% incapable of moving or speaking. What feels like 15 minutes is actually only a few seconds time span, but in that time I struggle with every little bit of me to bring me out of the state. Usually I can eventually wiggle a toe which will start bringing me out of it. I know I try to scream and cry out - with little success. After my most recent episode, my dear husband said to me the next morning "You were laughing in your sleep last night", a sound which was actually more like a grunt or short hum. In reality, that was my attempt to scream "HELP ME!"... unsuccessfully. While completely and 100% terrifying, as I mentioned it only in reality lasts a few seconds, and no harm done. However, having it happen 2 or 3 times in a row is a little disturbing when one is trying to sleep!

Now here's what I've found out in my obsessive search of SP tonight on the internet.

This state is actually a very normal human function. Turns out, when we're in a deep sleep, our brain kinda turns off our body, so we don't hurt ourself while we're dreaming (the wonders of the human body!) Sleep paralysis happens when there's a s mall glitch, and your brain turns your body off before you actually fall asleep. Glitches happen right? So at least I'm normal. Also, according to an ongoing University of Waterloo research project, up to 40% (yes, Giggles I know your recent post on statistics, to which I full agree btw) of Canadians have suffered from this at one time or another. I'm frighteningly normal!

Now what else I discovered (or re-discovered, as years ago I remember trying to do some research on this as well) is that millions of people around the world suffer from this, and compared to them, my symptoms are mild to say the least. (Thank God, because if I had some of the experiences I've read about, I'd be in the loonie bin!)
It turns out that SP seems to be the culprit in alien abductions, ghost sightings and out of body experiences. Some people even claim to be able to bring on an out of body experience while paralysed. And if they wanna do that - more power to 'em. Not me tho!

As I was saying - many people report an "evil presence" in the room, and many have hallucinations of aliens, ghosts and demons while in the paralyzed state. This, of course, is because of the glitch between awake and dream world. Some people have the sensation of being smothered, or of a heavy weight on them suffocating them. Some have had aliens staring them down, some have had ghosts reaching into their brain. All very scary if you ask me! There's even some still that are said to have "slide up the wall", and of course the OOBE - floating above themselves, watching themselves sleep. But for me - a throbbing noise, and a complete and terrifying inability to move or speak or open my eyes for an eternity. Or at least a few seconds.

So that's my story for tonight. I don't know of anyone else that's ever had this happened to them, although statistics say I should. My husband certainly has never experienced it, although Sheryl Crow suffers from them! (Ya, I know, just ANOTHER way i'm similar to Sheryl Crow, right? ;)

But on that note I'm going to go lay in bed, probably without sleep... hopefully not paralyzed!

Take care all - until next time... whenever that may be!