For those of you who have experienced sleep paralysis, you know how scary it is. I started getting it last September. I have been dealing with it ever since and it has been becoming way more frequent as of the past couple months. It has been so difficult and I barely get any sleep and wake up so several times in the night. Has anyone else dealt with this? Do you know anything that helps? I'm so done with this and I don't like the idea of maybe getting sleeping pills because it seems like thats the only way i'll get siine sleep. I'm just worried about the side effects that could come with that so if anyone has advice I would love to hear it<3

You probably have bad sleep habits. You should try sleep between 8 and 9 hours, and avoid using your phone or tv before sleeping it helps a lot.
And at least whenever you feel you're in a sleep paralysis try to think in a logical way, i mean try to think you are moving an arm or leg something like this, because the sleep paralyses happens when the brain has relaxed all the body muscles, when you think in move an arm for exemple it makes the brain turn on the muscles again.

Try it and you won't have sleep paralyses again, trust me!
Sorry about my typos.

Sleep paralysis might seem scary, mostly it´s no big deal after all.
Asking out of interest: When paralized, do you hear anything? Do you see anything? What do you see/hear? How often did you have sleep paralysis since September?

You need to know that there are two types of sleep paralysis. One is not cohering with other chronic insomnia, occuring irregular and infrequent.
The second one is often accompanied by hallucinations, occuring more often and seems to be a part of chronic insomnia. I´d like to know which type you are.

Further questions:
Did anything change in your environment before/in September?
Did you move to another house? Are you stressed out? Weary?
Has somebody else in you family sleep paralysis? Sleep paralysis is possibly genetically heritable.
Do you have a nocturnal pet? Younger siblings? Noisy neighbours?

I have sleep paralysis for years now - the second type - the one with the hallucinations. I got used to it. What I found out for myself is, that you get it more often when you sleep on your back, because the muscles are more relaxed that way. You need to know that sleep paralysis is the state in which the body is set while REM sleep - the phase when you are able to see dreams. In the REM sleep phase all muscles are relaxed, otherwise you would move a lot while dreaming of fighting or whatever. This also means that if you suddenly wake up while REM (because of a loud noise for example) you can get sleep paralysis too. In this case this wouldn´t be a sleep disorder - it would only tell that you are a light sleeper.

Hello! Really appreciate the response like seriously.
To answer your questions in order:
1) Sometimes I do hear things, I can remember it being myself screaming at someone to wake me up. It is usually myself that I hear but when my roommate was around me when it occurred once she said I never said anything.
2) I do hallucinate sometimes, the first time it happened I saw a shadowy figure looming over me. It depends, I don't hallucinate every time but I have had some scary hallucinations.
3) The amount of times I have had it since September is relatively frequent and comes in waves. Sometimes I would get it a few times a week and then have a month of no incident. But the last few months have been more frequent, at least once a week.
4) Yes, I had a big change in environment in September. I started my freshman year of college so that was a pretty big change. I moved around 4 hours from home and was living in a dorm.
5) College came with a lot of stress both academically, physically, and emotionally. It was pretty difficult for me to adapt to all the new things that come with it. By the end of the year I actually lost 15 pounds somehow because of the stress I assume. 15 is pretty significant for me because I was already pretty light before and I ended the year at 85 pounds (I'm 5'2 btw)
6) No one has had sleep paralysis in my family to my knowledge.
7) No pets, no siblings, no noisy neighbors.
Its been so difficult and I thought being home for the summer would make it stop but it still has been such a problem. When it occurs its so scary I can't breathe and I feel like I'm going to choke and die until I snap out of it. It taken a toll on me and its so scary. No one really seems to understand that its more than a nightmare.

>>4 Thanks for your reply.
I see. It´s right what your roommate said, physically you can´t scream. When sleep paralysed you aren´t able to move, so you´re also unable to scream. Nevertheless you´re definitely screaming inside yourself, your voice is just unable to leave your throat. Means nobody is able to hear you calling, but you think you´re screaming your mind to the heavens.
By the way, does your body hurt? Do you feel something like prickling?

In my opinion you´re suffering from stress. Going to college is a one-eighty turn of life; all the new impressions, new places, new people, a lot of stuff to learn - when you´re psychical labile it could become too much pressure at once, causing loss of weight and sleep disturbances.
You should find a way to relax - may it be drawing pictures, playing instruments or doing yoga - something to equilibrate your inner balance. It could take some time, but it might help.
And don´t be afraid of getting sleep paralysed again. Being unable to breath is often only caused by panicking because of being unable to move.

One last question out of interest: When sleep paralysed, are you able to leave your body? Kind of like an out-of-body experience?

I haven't experienced any pain or prickling really. I usually am just kinda shocked and out of breath when I wake up. And from your last question it seem like you're talking about lucid dreaming. I haven't been able to do that. I'm always trapped inside. I really would want to. I feel like it would help me deal with this by having some type of movement, or maybe it would just put me into a nightmare. The thing about the relaxing thing is that I am currently on summer vacation and am pretty relaxed. I'm not really stressing about school or anything which is why i'm so troubled by the continued paralysis. I don't understand why this is still happening. I've always been a night owl but its almost getting out of hand. I never really go to bed before 5:00 am and the sunrise usually is when I sleep. And you said you've been dealing with it for 4 years? When and why did it start? How frequently do you get it? How have you managed this long?

Yeah, I was talking about lucid dreaming. I see...

To be honest, it must already have been about 5 years now - I can´t recall it probably. When I was younger (maybe 11 or 12) I realised having the ability of lucid dreaming, without knowing what lucid dreaming really is. Everytime I dreamt, I found some mistakes within the dream, realising that I´m dreaming right at the moment. I started shaping my dreams and tried to create dreams by myself (more or less successful). Back then I hadn´t experienced sleep paralysis yet. After months I talked with a friend of mine about my weird dreams and he told me that it´s lucid dreaming and also mentioned the out-of-body experience, what I wanted to try since then. I somehow imagined leaving my body, but before it worked I usually fell asleep. A few months after, I had my first sleep paralysis.
I was at a friends house, sleeping in the same room. When I suddenly awoke, my whole body hurt as if there was electricity running through my vains. I felt like I couldn´t breath and wanted to move my arm but it didn´t work. I saw strange red-eyed shadows lurking around me and thought they were demons trying to possess me. I really panicked, trying to fight them with all my strength of will. Somehow I managed to get up (to be honest I think this was only a haluzination) and tried to wake my friend, but when I tried touching him, my hand ran through his body, unable to touch him. I panicked much more, believing that I´m already dead and a ghost right now and wanted to open the door, but my hand ran right through the doorknob like it ran through the body of my friend before. Somehow the shadows vanished and I became conscious of my body, which still felt strange and somehow weak. I lay in bed as if I´d never gone to the door, unsure if all of this was a dream or if I´m losing my mind bit by bit. The next day I told my friend, but he laughed at me; he thought I´d be kidding, because I tend to talk bullshit since I´m young. And because I said I saw demons, he gave me the stupid name "devil´s kid".
However, I kept it a secret, still believing there were demons around, wanting to devour my soul. From this day on I experienced the sleep paralysis more often, though irregular (sometimes twice a week, sometimes only once a month - it varied)...

By the way... this post is really getting long...
Want to contact me via email? I think it´s the better way to talk and maybe I could help you somehow, telling you what I did to "manage it this long".
In case you want: chronos.dollars0404@gmail.com