Sleep paralysis - what does it really encompass?

[pusspusslet]

Sleep paralysis is a temporary inability to move or speak that occurs when you're waking up or falling asleep. It's not harmful and should pass in a few seconds or minutes, but can be very frightening.

This is the NHS definition, which seems fair enough. What I don’t understand is why instances of people ‘waking up’ to find people sitting on their beds/their chests/attacking them are commonly explained away as being instances of sleep paralysis. I chatted with somebody at work yesterday, who told me that she experiences this, and there’s a lot about it on t’internet and on MN.

Why are those instances of people seeing things lumped together with sleep paralysis? I’m not a medic, but I don’t see a connection. I do believe in ‘the woo’, and it seems to me that when somebody wakes in the night to see something scary sitting on them/on their bed there’s no logical reason to suggest that it’s due to sleep paralysis.

What do other people think?

There's a book called paranormality that explained about brain activity while you're falling asleep and why people see ghosts during certain sleep cycles.

I have sleep paralysis a lot. I clearly remember, as a child seeing, a giraffe eating our washing from the laundry basket. I remember that image to this day... it was just my brain activity as a child!

Sleep paralysis occurs when your coming out of a sleep cycle. This would coincide with a period of increased brain activity.

@NotSoThinLizzy since you get it so often you’ve probably tried these things but just in case... I’ve found that I very rarely get it if I a) listen to something as I fall asleep, like a relaxing audiobook or cricket sounds, and b) properly wake up every time I wake up - so I force myself to have a sip of water or check my phone or whatever. If I wake up and let myself fall straight back to sleep I’m guaranteed to get it!

I am sure there are many things that we cannot explain, do not understand or even know about.

I have also experienced sleep paralysis, occasionally as a child and often in my mid twenties living a stressful and overly busy life in London. I have felt the mattress jumping and tossing, the room has been filled with voices, I have felt weight on me. The dread and terror was horrendous until I learned what it was and how to 'wake' myself, I can now fight them off. That's how I know it's sleep paralysis I am experiencing. Who knows why we all seem to experience similar things but as you can tell by this thread, we do and we all also know that we understand what we are experiencing and we're not 'explaining it away by all means possible'.

I can say for sure though that what I experience is not real in the slightest. I just somehow inherently know that it's something my mind is doing to me. I undertood this to be the case before I knew what SP was and had experienced it many many times prior to learning about it. Terrifying as it is, it's not otherworldly. To me, anyway, it's exactly the feeling you get after waking from an intense nightmare, except a more 'in action'. In the same way as you know instantly that a nightmare you had isn't real pretty much instantly upon waking. You nevertheless feel an awful, very real, feeling, during and after nightmares. you've got one foot in the real world so the nightmares manifest as visions/hallucinations.

Yes seems to be a cycle if I go straight back to sleep I get it again but I'm soo tired lately it's hard to wake up properly

That made little sense, so many mistakes, apologies.

Hmmm... I’m still not quite sure what to make of it all. Many thanks for posting, though, all of you. The whole subject is very interesting!

It's bloody weird isn't it! Fascinating stuff!

I know it's a hallucination because I don't really believe in paranormal stuff and the physiological explanations for what I've experienced are more plausible than paranormal explanations.
Plus, if it was paranormal, it would happen during normal sleep as well and not just during paralysis episodes.

I get it as well, it’s horrific, never thought of it the way you have OP the thought of the grey man who is looming over me might actually be real 😱.

Vivid/lucid dreams and SP since I was 14. My dad was the same. This thread is so interesting. Sometimes I really think watching creepy films or reading scary books has a lot to do with it. I haven't done either for many years as I know my imagination is very, very vivid. As to all being the same kind of experience I guess it's a 'what would be your worst fear' thing. For many it would be, chased by a monster and I can't move

I occasionally get sleep paralysis but not with any visual hallucinations.

It's still quite scary at the time as I feel like I need to take a deep breath and I feel like I can't breathe. Just as I start to panic about suffocating it stops.

Funnily enough I also occasionally get hallucinations when falling asleep but never at the same time as sleep paralysis and it's always of spiders, not demons.

@Deedeecherry I've experienced sleep paralysis and lucid dreams too. I've also walked in my sleep occasionally and had what I recently found out via Google is "exploding head syndrome"(!) ie I "hear" someone banging on the door, always four times, and it wakes me up. I think I'm just not very good at sleeping as sleeping is often eventful for my! I am quite anxious (as in been diagnosed with anxiety) so that probably doesn't help.

As for why people's experiences match, surely that's because it's an objectively observable phenomenon in each case?

@pusspusslet

I presume that I have moved myself to the end of the bed. It seems a more plausible explanation than a demonic presence having done it!

Like a lot of other posters have said. If you have had several SP episodes you start to understand them and how to control them which for me is evidence (alongside numerous scientific studies) that SP is a medical phenomenon.

I started to be able to control them - I could make some people appear or disappear and I could wake myself up, clear evidence that this was merely a battle between myself and my unconscious mind, not me and Freddy Krueger.

In addition on most occasions the people who 'visited' me were still alive so most definitely not a visitation from the other side.

When I had SP and felt a demonic presence it was almost always when I had a high fever when your mind is far more likely to go to horrible places.

If you want to believe they are 'woo' and that SP and hallucinations are not linked then that's totally up to you. I think you have lots of evidence here from people who have experienced it that don't think a paranormal explanation is necessary or correct.