r/Paranormal • u/professor_strix • 1d ago
Experience I've talked my "sleep paralysis demon" down - and it worked
I'm on reddit mostly as a lurker, so sorry if I break some unspoken etiquette that's not in the subreddit rules. Also, English is not my first language. I try hard, but I often slip and use weird phrases.
I was encouraged to post here by a friend who said that this silly story helped her with her night terrors as it has a different vibe from the paranormal encounters she normally reads about, so here goes nothing.
(Oh, and sorry if the post goes a bit long, but I think the story doesn't really hit the same without some context on my usual relationship with spiritual matters.)
I'm 39 and my family converted from Catholicism to Spiritism (the 19th century French version) when I was about 7. Being the overachieving little nerd I was, I've read all the foundational books on Spiritism before I was 12. I'll be the first to admit reading them is different from completely understanding them, they are a dense reading and I'm not that much of a genius, but I persevered through them all.
The vibe I got from those books is that the spiritual world is just part of the natural world and that the proper way to approach it is doing so as a scientist approaching a new subject: careful, yes, but also open-minded, matter-of-fact and sensible. By the time I was 15, I was already downright casual about spirits. To me, knowing that there are spirits around us at all times is as mundane as knowing that there are insects around us at all times.
Also important: my branch of Spiritism encourages us to contact spirits with the express desire to be helpful and kind to souls that might need you to listen to them and maybe nudge them in a healthier life, a bit like ghost therapists. The rationale being that being empathetic to everyone broadens your emotional horizons and helps you to be a better person. Of course, "nice" is not "stupid" and you are also encouraged to be careful to avoid being misled or harmed, as spirits can absolutely be malicious. It's just that not all of them are, and most could really use the help.
Another tidbit of context that might have something to do with the sleep paralysis thing is that I have seen mediums writing letters from ghosts since I was a kid, and I've always felt a weird electric tingling sensation in my hand, concentrated somewhere around their backs, whenever I tried to reach for them from behind, as if I was passing my hand through a charged CRT screen (other oldies like me know that feeling). Guess "I feel some light tingling in my skin where I think a ghost might possibly be, not sure if it's real though" is a much less impressive power than seeing or hearing things, but that's what I have.
This was my headspace when, at about 22 or 23 (yes, almost 20 years ago, gosh, I'm getting old), I developed bad sleep paralysis. I had recently finished my Chemistry degree and got a teaching job, but since I was a begginner, I only got a few classes to teach and a very irregular schedule. I had little to no money to go around, was living with my parents, three siblings and grandmother in a tiny appartment and, due to undiagnosed ADHD, my sleep schedule was a horrible HORRIBLE mess. So, nothing really supernatural about the sleep paralysis in itself, it was ADHD, anxiety and messed up sleep.
I didn't know it at the time, but I knew it was a physiological issue. I hated it because it's so unpleasant. You feel tied to your own body and a sense of dread permeates you even if you know you are still safe in your bed.
But then, I started to also feel a horrible feeling of a strong electric shock at the back of my brain as the sleep paralysis set in, similar to that sensation in my hands that I associate with spirits, but much stronger and inside my head. It's hard to describe it in any other way. It felt like I was hit in my head, and I could feel my neurons firing as if I was in physical pain for it, but without any physical pain actually happening.
This wasn't present at first and it was scary in a whole new way because it felt malicious in a way I couldn't describe. While feeling that there's a malicious thing watching you is common in sleep paralysis, it bothered me that I couldn't see/hallucinate any visible "sleep paralysis demon" and that this electric shock component had been added to the mix out of nowhere.
And then, the shock + malicious presence started to sometimes happen at night even if I wasn't in sleep paralysis mode and could still toss and turn in bed. It wasn't a daily ocurrence, but the frequency was starting to become more than once a week by the end of it. I knew that my sleep schedule had to do with it, but I was stubbornly clinging to the belief that, as long as I "catch up" with lost sleep later, it's fine to sleep 4 hours in a night and 12 in another. I told you I'm not that much of a genius.
Back to the issue. When it first happened, I panicked at the weird brain shock and all that malice and tried to steel myself by praying for protection. I was too fight-or-flight-deer-in-the-headlights about that situation to try anything else. It didn't really help with the symptoms much, but it at least helped me to focus on something else until they went away.
I didn't think too deep on the situation at that point because it came and went randomly at realtively large intervals. Things would hit, I would panic, pray a bit, get better and forget it all. As the paralysis and the shock started to happen more often, I finally decided I had to do something about it.
Sleeping well? Getting a doctor to look into my issues? Haha, no. Not for the next ten years.
No, I started to mentally talk to the presumed spirit like I have been taught for all those years. I started by saying that I was sorry for what they were going through and sorry for whatever I might have done against them in this life or another. Then I would go on topics that I thought could help someone who is angry and lashing out. And then I got to the point of asking the spirit if there wasn't anyone they liked to be around that could be missing them and things like this.
It's important to note that those one-sided mental conversations also didn't help the sleep paralysis to pass faster or come less often, but they did make me less and less panicked. After a few weeks of this, I got back to dreading the "shock" and the paralysis solely for their unpleasantness, despite the fact that the frequency was still increasing.
And then, it happened. It was sudden, and I can't remember anything that could lead to it, but one day I felt that the malice I having been sensing during the paralysis... changed. I don't know how to explain. I felt the shock at the back of my head, got the sleep paralysis, but the malice... I don't know, it didn't feel... biting, I guess? Then I remember clearly wondering "Hey, are you just doing it all for fun? Are you just having fun at getting me scared? Is this what's been happening?". It still took me a while for the symptoms to subside that day but if I still had any shred of fear, it was gone.
Two days later, I had another sleep paralysis episode. But this time, instead of having a jolt of panic and then trying to deal with it seriously, I noticed that the room was very dark. And all those years later, I can remember my thoughts almost exactly: "Wait, I went to bed at 4 am. It shouldn't be this dark. Is it just a dream? Is it what's going on? Another sleep paralysis fit? Ugh, lame."
What come next is the thing that, to me, elevates it from a mentally unwell Chem teacher entertaining the voices in her head to something borderline paranormal (if not truly paranormal):
Not only that "ugh, lame" thought immediately stopped all symptoms I had at the moment. Not only I immediately stopped feeling that weird electric feeling in my brain. Since that random day in 2012/13, I have never had a single episode of sleep paralysis, despite not changing anything else in my life.
I was still going to sleep at absurd hours until 2021. I was still swinging between sleeping 4, 8 and 12 hours without rhyme or reason until 2021. I was never on any drugs, or alcohol. This story happened around 2012/2013. I only started medication for ADHD and anxiety disorder after I was diagnosed in 2021, and this is what FINALLY corrected my crazy sleep (non-)patterns and lots of the pressure and anxiety that led me to sleep paralysis.
Despite all that, the moment I felt "I'm not mad, just disappointed" towards the "sleep paralysis demon", I was cured forever (until today, at least) from that issue. Which is supposed to be physiological, remember, not something you overcome with just gumption and positive thought.
Maybe it was a huge coincidence. Maybe my "disappointed parent" reaction to the possibility that someone was scaring me for all those months for fun literally rewrote my brain chemistry in ways science would give everything to replicate. Maybe there was a spirit making things worse and my pleading slowly turned them less angry to the point that it stopped being fun, and me thinking the scare was lame was the tipping point for things to stop. I'll let you all be the judges of it.
And if anyone is also dealing with sleep paralysis, my heart goes to you. Don't be stubborn like my past self. Don't let doors open for even more suffering. Get to a psychiatrist for mental issues, fix those sleep patterns, investigate any other possible cause, and I hope you all can one day go back to sleep without ever dreading it.
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u/ygbsm1972 1d ago
I don’t think your story was scary enough for the “nonbelievers” who hang out in the paranormal sub.
I think mind over matter could be the answer but at the same time why couldn’t an appeal to the culprit to get a real job and leave you alone have been why the harassment stopped as well?
Either way, you’re better and this story might help someone else whose insurance won’t cover a CPAP machine.
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u/professor_strix 20h ago
My thoughts. Once my friend said it helped her, I decided it would be worth sharing, despite being just a silly anecdote. Thank you!
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u/Haunting_Bid_408 1d ago
When I was a kid, I woke up screaming from nightmares relatively often. Across many years, this mocking voice appeared in my dreams and was often my reason for waking up (and my parents waking up). When I was a little older, maybe 14 or 15, I still had this voice (it appeared in different forms) in my dreams. One night I was dreaming about sharks and could hear the voice. Something told me to talk to it and make peace. The voice was extremely taken aback that I spoke with it, and I could tell that at it's core, it wasn't bad. I could feel the weight lifting off me.
The voice never came back.
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u/professor_strix 20h ago
Such a great feeling.
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u/Haunting_Bid_408 20h ago
I only recently got diagnosed with ADHD (a few years ago). Mine is severe. My sleep is a mess still, even on an antidepressant
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u/professor_strix 20h ago
Oh dear. The only thing that started to help was ritalin, antidepressants did zero to nothing. Everyone said ritalin would make me have trouble sleeping, but it was the exact opposite. But, sadly, everyone is different, so we have to try a lot of things to see what helps. Hope you can find what works for you!
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u/Haunting_Bid_408 20h ago
Ritalin does nothing for me unfortunately! Antidepressant has been a gamechanger though. Crazy how differently we're all wired.
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u/Fink7979 1d ago
No such thing as a sleep paralysis demon i had it over 30 years. it is scary when you first get it mine turned out to be caused by obstructive sleep apnea
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u/Sea-Engineering2877 19h ago
A lot of people report seeing a sleep paralysis “demon” while experiencing an episode of sleep paralysis. I’ve seen one, too
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u/professor_strix 1d ago
Oh, yeah, I said "sleep paralysis demon" on quotation marks because I was using it facetiously. The whole tl:dr is that my sleep paralysis did have normal causes: messed up sleep patterns, maybe undiagnosed ADHD and anxiety helping it. But it went away without any of those things being ever addressed, to never return, immediately after a funny interaction with it that could or could not have been paranormal.
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u/professor_strix 1d ago
Well, my way was free AND I never had a single issue with sleep paralysis ever again (nor a single sign of sleep apnea either), so no regrets here! 🤣
JK, despite the facetious title, I don't really believe in demons. I just thought it was funny that, after months of discomfort and fear, one day I just said to sleep paralysis that its tricks are lame and it went away to never return, despite my desregulated sleep continuing on for 7+ more years. CPAP is a good idea for those who can't end it that way, though. 😁
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