It’s something that used to happen to me a lot. I would work long, tiring bar shifts from 4pm
to 1 am. When I would wind down enough
to finally go to sleep, I would be so still and ready to fall asleep… then
suddenly I knew it was coming. Seconds
away and I couldn’t do anything about it.
I would fall into a sleep paralysis.
I would try so hard to get up, but couldn’t move anything. Sometimes I would even imagine myself,
visualize it, getting up and turning on the light, but when the light didn’t
brighten the room I would realize that I was still asleep and I was back in bed
with my eyes slit open slightly so I could kind of see the room but couldn’t
move to do anything. It would happen so
often that I even tried to yell or shake my husband (boyfriend at the time),
but nothing. It was a scary feeling
because I would feel a sudden rush of energy, sometimes it felt like it was
right in front of me, but I couldn’t see it or confront it. I started to do some research and realized
that there is a perfectly scientific explanation for it.
Sleep paralysis is when I person is having
trouble transitioning from one sleep cycle to the next. Usually, most of your sleep is in the NREM
state (non-rapid eye movement). Then
later in the night or possibly early in the morning you transition to REM
(rapid-eye movement). During REM sleep,
cells in your pons send messages that inhibit the motor neurons that control
the body’s large muscles. Usually when
you wake up the cells shut off and you regain your muscle control, but occasionally
the pons remain in the REM state for a few seconds or even a few minutes. Before I researched what it was about, I knew
that it had to be something like that. I
was conscious but couldn’t move. It’s a scary feeling especially because there
really was a sense of evil or something lurking around you. Even scarier when I started reading about how
people in other cultures interpret it. They
all have explanations about ghosts, the devil, or demons sleeping on your
chest, possibly trying to take your soul.
I just have to take a step back, calm down, and listen to science. Haha!
Check out this link that explains it exactly as I experienced it. With a few scholaraly quotes to accompany it.
And a documentary trailer:
I remember this happens a lot to me as well, and could relate to the frustrating feeling of not being able to wake up. what I can remember from sleep paralysis is that I try to scream really hard so "that I can be able hear myself and wake up". It is just scary because sometimes I feel that I would never wake up again even though I know it is just a dream stage.
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