[Polyakov]

Starting about 7-8 years ago I started experiencing a sleep disturbance known as Sleep Paralysis. For those that have never heard of it before, Sleep Paralysis is a malfunction of the body's REM atonia system which paralyzes your body during your sleep to prevent you from acting out your dreams and possibly injuring yourself or others. In the case of sleep paralysis, the disturbance occurs either when the sleeper is entering his/her REM sleep cycle or awakening from it. The atonia fails to release and the mind awakens to find itself trapped in a paralyzed body. The mind, still in a dreamlike state, hallucinates vividly. Other symptoms that I typically exhibit are auditory hallucinations (typically a very loud, distortion sound like someone screaming into a microphone) and a state of primal fear (my best description), this occasionally feels like an exhilarating adrenaline rush, but that might just be specific to me and my personal psychological issues.

In the past, I would experience these episodes rather infrequently, typically about once ever 6 months or so. Lately, however, these have been occurring multiple (2-4) times per week. They're beginning to take their toll as they are both mentally and physically exhausting, but at the same time they really make me feel alive;I've become somewhat addicted to them and have been actively attempting to trigger them purposefully. Anyone with personal experience or insight, I implore you to share them. Perhaps some use can come of it.

It just so happens I keep a sleep journal (a must for my own morbid curiosity), though I rarely forget the specifics. My last three episodes go as follows:

ep1:
I awaken. I'm viewing the room through partially closed eyes, my eyelashes dimming the light coming in through the living room window. (I sleep during the day.) It's very quiet, one of my cats is curled up on the bed next to me. I'm staring lazily through the doorway into the living room, and through the kitchen doorway beyond. A white humanoid figure enters the doorway from the kitchen. I'm alert. That's not my fiance. She's at work. My mind is racing, "GET UP. STAND UP. LIGHT SWITCH. STAND UP. PROTECT YOURSELF." The figure blinks from the kitchen doorway, through the living room, and appears in the bedroom doorway. My heart is racing, I'm hyperventilating. I can't move; can't even open my eyes wider. The figure is standing next to me, I can't see it. Him. I can't see him. He's right next to my head, suddenly a deafening sound explodes in my left ear. A metallic, robotic, 'BWAHN' sound, static and distorted. I fall asleep. I awaken. De ja vu. The figure appears, the figure moves, I can't move, the sound. This happens 4 times before I finally manage to gain control of my body and fully awaken.

ep2:
I awaken. I'm sleeping on the couch. I'm looking around the living room absently, i realize I can't move my body. This is becoming familiar, I know what is happening. There's a small girl standing in the corner behind the front door. Panic. Protect yourself. Kill her. She's featureless, she wears a long dull-gray dress with a large, flat collar. 40's era clothing, it strikes me as a Navy uniform for some reason. Her head is shaking violently. I watch her for what seems like 15-20 minutes, my heart racing and breathing rapid and shallow. I awaken fully and sit upright in a gasp.

ep3:
I'm at the beach house rented by my fiance's family, sleeping on the couch in the sun room. My fiance and her sister are sleeping on daybeds, one above me and one at my feet. I awaken. I'm staring down the hallway, through the sliding glass door, through the kitchen, through the other door, and into the adjacent sun room. I can't move. My heart is beating rapidly, my breath quick and shallow. I'm trying to wake my fiance. I can't vocalize. I try again and again to no avail. A white figure appears coming out of one of the bedrooms connected to the far sun room. It's a man, I think it is 'Jason', my fiance's aunt's boyfriend. He walks towards the kitchen and phases right through the glass door. It's not 'Jason'. Panic, danger. Wake up. Wake someone else up. Say something. He phases through the door into our room. Featureless, white humanoid. The sound. He hates me. He's gone. I lay here, motionless, gasping, trying to vocalize for what I would estimate to be about 45 minutes. I finally am able to make a whimpering sound and my fiance wakes up and runs over to me, shaking me to full consciousness. I slept for less than 2 hours, I don't go back to sleep.

3-4 times per week, every week for the past 3 months. I truly might be going insane.

[pgrundy]

Do you have a psychiatrist or a diagnosis other than SP? Are you on meds? If so, have you given your shrink a call? It might be something as simple as a medication adjustment.

Sleep paralysis is strange though. I've read a lot about it and have a lot of questions, but then I think that everyone who has experienced this has a lot of questions. I have had some very strange, hallucinatory experiences related to sleep that I've never gotten good explanations for. When I was having them frequently though (quite a few years back) it WAS exhausting and destabilizing.

In the city where I live there is a sleep clinic, highly regarded. Could you get a referral to such a place? They might be able to help you.

[Polyakov]

Originally Posted by pgrundy

Do you have a psychiatrist or a diagnosis other than SP? Are you on meds? If so, have you given your shrink a call? It might be something as simple as a medication adjustment.

Sleep paralysis is strange though. I've read a lot about it and have a lot of questions, but then I think that everyone who has experienced this has a lot of questions. I have had some very strange, hallucinatory experiences related to sleep that I've never gotten good explanations for. When I was having them frequently though (quite a few years back) it WAS exhausting and destabilizing.

In the city where I live there is a sleep clinic, highly regarded. Could you get a referral to such a place? They might be able to help you.

I don't/won't take medications, psychiatry is neither something I can afford nor something I've ever seen any benefit from. I don't have a diagnosis, but I could easily guess something in the aspd/schizoid/sociopathic genre of psychosis. To be quite honest, I feel I've come to accept my differences; they make me feel stronger. I'm not subject to the things that restrict the average person. It's quite liberating. The way I see it I'm just ahead of the curve. We may just be the next step in human evolution.

[pgrundy]

Yes, actually I agree. I think there are issues of consciousness involved in some dream experiences and that the content isn't necessarily pathological. This has been my issue with my own experiences. I consider them to be in some sense 'real' and the consistency of the content seems to me to validate this conclusion. But if I ask professionals about it they either say they don't know and change the subject, slap a label on it (like 'sleep paralysis') and consider the discussion over, or start talking physiology.

You know, there's a physiology to explain how a person smells a rose. It doesn't explain WHY the rose has fragrance or the meaning of the experience in that moment. Nor does it mean there's no such thing as odors simply because the physiological mechanism can be described.

With sleep paralysis and the contents of sleep paralysis, the question for me is why this mechanism, what is being conveyed, why, why now, why repeatedly?

Sometimes there's no answer, but simply considering the question can put a person in a new frame of mind, a kind of 'reset', and that's not nothing. And we can't say for certain there isn't intent behind it.

There's a bracketing off that occurs with mental illness. Sometimes its a way for society to push away what it doesn't want to see.

[Polyakov]

Originally Posted by pgrundy

Yes, actually I agree. I think there are issues of consciousness involved in some dream experiences and that the content isn't necessarily pathological. This has been my issue with my own experiences. I consider them to be in some sense 'real' and the consistency of the content seems to me to validate this conclusion. But if I ask professionals about it they either say they don't know and change the subject, slap a label on it (like 'sleep paralysis') and consider the discussion over, or start talking physiology.

You know, there's a physiology to explain how a person smells a rose. It doesn't explain WHY the rose has fragrance or the meaning of the experience in that moment. Nor does it mean there's no such thing as odors simply because the physiological mechanism can be described.

With sleep paralysis and the contents of sleep paralysis, the question for me is why this mechanism, what is being conveyed, why, why now, why repeatedly?

Sometimes there's no answer, but simply considering the question can put a person in a new frame of mind, a kind of 'reset', and that's not nothing. And we can't say for certain there isn't intent behind it.

There's a bracketing off that occurs with mental illness. Sometimes its a way for society to push away what it doesn't want to see.

I am not a spiritual person in any sense, I don't believe in god(s), fate/destiny, love, ghosts, souls, Good/Evil, or any other supernatural construct. I'm a very rational, logical person and look to science to explain the universe around me. People don't like the idea of being like that. They cling to notions of life after death, divine retribution, and karma because they feel the universe needs to be fair. They need balance and justice. People that remind them that the universe isn't just or fair, but rather chaotic in nature are undesirable.

Speaking of the senses, I recently read an article written by Richard Dawkins detailing the possibility that people do not interpret colors in a universal way; your red might be my blue. An interesting concept, even if it isn't necessarily possible. In any case it has metaphorical value.

[pgrundy]

I'm not talking about spirituality though. All I'm saying is that describing the mechanism by which something is perceived doesn't tell us anything about the object of perception. It doesn't explain it OR explain it away.

Either there are objects of perception or there are no objects or perception. If you are going to say that sometimes there are no objects of perception but other times there really are objects, then the you have to show WHY people are perceiving objects that aren't there, not just how.

[Polyakov]

Originally Posted by pgrundy

I'm not talking about spirituality though. All I'm saying is that describing the mechanism by which something is perceived doesn't tell us anything about the object of perception. It doesn't explain it OR explain it away.

Either there are objects of perception or there are no objects or perception. If you are going to say that sometimes there are no objects of perception but other times there really are objects, then the you have to show WHY people are perceiving objects that aren't there, not just how.

In most cases, I would quantify perception (and the malfunction there of) as a product of the temporal lobe (and the malfunction there of). Hypnagogic hallucinations (those associated with the sleeping mind) seem to be more of a hiccough in the brain's ability to discern between the conscious and unconscious state. Hypnagogic hallucinations interest me mostly due to the fact that I know they're not real, and yet my body feels compelled to believe otherwise. This may or may not be relevant to where you're going, but I've never put much weight in philosophy so we may be on separate wavelengths here.

[pgrundy]

Hypnagogic hallucinations interest me mostly due to the fact that I know they're not real, and yet my body feels compelled to believe otherwise.

Right. If you follow that interest to its logical conclusion you either have to decide that you can't know for sure if anything is 'real', or that your faith in science, materialism, and reductionism is misplaced or overstated. Those are the choices.

But no need to beat a dead horse here. Philosophy really IS boring and people are interested in SP for all kinds of reasons.

My reasons have to do with the contents of the experience itself bleeding into 'real' life and the impact of that sort of thing on philosophies about how we 'know' what we think we know. That's pretty esoteric and dry I guess but that's my interest.

[Polyakov]

Originally Posted by pgrundy

Right. If you follow that interest to its logical conclusion you either have to decide that you can't know for sure if anything is 'real', or that your faith in science, materialism, and reductionism is misplaced or overstated. Those are the choices.

But no need to beat a dead horse here. Philosophy really IS boring and people are interested in SP for all kinds of reasons.

My reasons have to do with the contents of the experience itself bleeding into 'real' life and the impact of that sort of thing on philosophies about how we 'know' what we think we know. That's pretty esoteric and dry I guess but that's my interest.

Eccentricities are what make life bearable; typically the people you interact with on a daily basis are insufferably boring. As for science, if there's one thing that I've learned, it's that NOTHING is absolute. It's been proven that even events already in the past can be changed by the simple act of observation. Everything is subject to change. That can really make you question whether or not anything is real.

[pgrundy]

Eccentricities are what make life bearable; typically the people you interact with on a daily basis are insufferably boring.

On the other hand, supposedly there's a Chinese curse that goes something like, "May you live in interesting times."

For most of my life, I've been living in interesting times. A bit of boring would be OK with me right now.

Well, I'm rarely bored. There's always that.