Waking Nightmare

Mouth shut. Eyes open. Cannot speak. Cannot move. All you feel is a strong pressure on your chest and a dark presence hovering over you.  

A billion questions begin to bombard your mind. What is happening? You cry out for help but nobody seems to hear you. Whispers begin to creep in your ear and get louder as the seconds pass by. Strangely, out of nowhere, you feel a huge relief on your chest and gain function in your arms and legs again. What just happened?

This is what you call sleep paralysis: a waking nightmare.   

Mouth shut. Eyes open. Cannot speak. Cannot move. All you feel is a strong pressure on your chest and a dark presence hovering over you.  

A billion questions begin to bombard your mind. What is happening? You cry out for help but nobody seems to hear you. Whispers begin to creep in your ear and get louder as the seconds pass by. Strangely, out of nowhere, you feel a huge relief on your chest and gain function in your arms and legs again. What just happened?

This is what you call sleep paralysis: a waking nightmare.   

I have consecutively dealt with sleep paralysis for about five years now, though my head never wrapped around how much it really affected me. I used to be afraid to sleep because it would mean coming into contact with the dark presence lurking around. It would hit me randomly – sometimes, every night for a few weeks straight or about three times a month. During the first couple of nights I used to lay in bed and wonder: why is this happening to me? Am I sick? Should I visit the doctor? This is when my Google skills came in handy.  

According to Mayoclinic.org, "Sleep paralysis mimics the type of temporary paralysis that normally occurs during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the period of sleep during which most dreaming occurs. This temporary immobility during REM sleep may prevent your body from acting out dream activity."

Sleep paralysis is not particularly harmful, though it makes you hallucinate crazily.

There are two different ways to experience sleep paralysis. Hypnagogic is the state while you are falling asleep and hypnopompic is the state immediately after you wake up. Hallucinations during these two states get to us the most. This is where the dark presence I spoke about comes into play. You feel as if someone is watching you struggle while you are most vulnerable. 

This frightening paralysis is also a symptom of narcolepsy, though not everyone who experiences sleep paralysis is diagnosed with narcolepsy. For something so disturbing, it comes with treatments that would need to be adjusted to your daily routine. According to thesleepparalysisproject.org, "Try to adopt a sleeping pattern with strict times of going to bed and waking up. Caffeine and alcohol should be avoided close to bedtime, as these have been shown to disrupt the sleep cycle."

Hopefully, these treatments will help narrow down the root of the problem. 

I still experience this strange state of paralysis at times, but I am not as scared of it as I was before. I guess when something happens to you so often, you forget how terrible it used to be. Maybe cutting down on coffee would do the trick – but I do not think that will happen anytime soon.