About 7% of healthy people and more than 30% of traumatized people experience sleep paralysis, a situations where they wake up from sleep, unable to move their body. There are different theories why this is happening but the most common is that the sleep phases are messed up and something went wrong during REM sleep. If you struggle with disorganized sleep you are at greater risk to experience sleep paralysis. There is also a connection to chronic stress and hyperarousal. Sleep paralysis usually lasts for a couple of minutes but rarely more than 20.
Fear and panic
Most people experience a sense of pressure on their chest that seems to push them down. It gets worse the more they try to get up or fight the paralysis.
People often don’t have active control over their breathing. It is locked at how they breathed during sleep, which might not feel deep enough. People trying to breathe deeper or faster realize that they are unable to do so and panic. The fear is a natural response of our brain that goes into threat-mode, activating flight/fight behavior when breathing is restricted.
Because of the hyperviligance, sounds are perceived as more intense and are more often interpreted as a threat. This can add to the sense of fear and panic.
Hallucinations
Sleep paralysis can also be accompanied by hallucinations. Your wake state is overlapping with your dream state in your brain. Hallucinations can be hearing voices, foot steps and movement as well as seeing shadows and figures in the room. Some see people or monsters. Combined with the paralysis this can cause fear of death.
Some traumatized people also experience hallucinations of abusers and get caught in flashbacks. This can become an intense experience that is hard to end, even after the paralysis lifted.
Out of body experiences
A few people don’t have hallucinations but they feel like they are moving, sometimes like they are sucked out of their body or floating in the room. There is an indication that this sensation is caused by certain brain activity connected to movement.
If you experience sleep paralysis you need to know that you are not going crazy. You are not experiencing psychosis, you are not being attacked by demons, your brain is messing with you because of irregular sleep patterns. Knowing this is key to getting through it with less panic and hopefully without fear of death.
What you can do:
You cannot stop sleep paralysis. All you can do is manage your fear well.
Tell yourself that you are experiencing sleep paralysis, that it is a sleep disorder, that it is accompanied by fear and therefore it is normal that your body is experiencing fear and that this experience will end in a few minutes.
Don’t try to move, that will make things worse. Usually sleep paralysis lifts in fingers and toes first, so if you want to try to move something, start there.
Try to get oriented. Usually the eyes can move and you can look at part of your room and tell yourself where you are.
Remind yourself of the day and year.
It might help to have an anchor near your bed.
The brain does function, even if you are experiencing hallucinations.
If you see or hear things that cannot be real, tell yourself that you are having a hallucination and that this is not real.
Find reasons why it can’t be real.
Try to listen to your thoughts instead of paying attention to the hallucination.
Distract yourself in your mind, maybe using some of these exercises.
You can contain the hallucination using imagery. Pretend that the noise is coming from a radio or TV. Do this especially if it is a hallucination of abusers. They are just a projection in that box or on a screen, they are not real.
You will still experience fear, that is in the physiological nature of the experience, but hopefully it won’t be fear of death.
After experiencing sleep paralysis
Sleep paralysis that is paired with hallucinations of abusers and flashbacks is one of the worst re-experiencing situations that ever happened to us. It is normal to have a bad day and feel vulnerable. Invest in self-care and don’t be too hard on yourself. Avoid more triggers and stress. Do something relaxing. Make yourself laugh. You need to pay extra attention to staying oriented and grounded because you might tend to dissociate more.
Prevention
Sleep paralysis is very difficult to deal with when it is happening. It is better to find ways to prevent it.
Pay a lot of attention to sleep hygiene and developing rhythm in your life. It might help to get the chaotic sleep pattern back into order.
Some antidepressants (like SSRIs) influence sleep phases. Ask your doctor about something that limits REM sleep. It will also reduce your risk for sleep paralysis.
Relax before going to bed. Make it part of your evening ritual. Sleep paralysis is connected to the hypervigilant state of the brain. Reducing the chronic stress will reduce the likelihood of experiencing sleep paralysis.
Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis? And did you find a strategy to deal with it? Let me know in the comments below.
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