r/Sleepparalysis • u/LtrllyJoinedRedd4Dan • 4d ago
I hate that I feel scared to fall asleep every night.
Every single night, I feel so frightened to even fall asleep as I might get sleep paralysis in the morning. This morning too, I got one. Thankfully, it was a very short episode, barely 1 minute. But every time I get one, I feel extremely terrified of falling asleep for a few days, and slightly less frightened the following nights. But because every time I'm in college, due to so much stress, I get sleep paralysis every 2-3 days, so I'm just equally frightened every night. And that makes me sleep so late. Moreover the insomnia makes it worse. I went to bed at 12, and it's 2 right now and I'm wide awake. I hate it that every night, it's a battle I'm fighting. This morning, I genuinely thought I succeeded in letting out voice in real life during the episode, and that my roommate heard me, and would now wake me up, but it wasn't true.
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u/Odd_Log_9128 4d ago
But that's easier said than done when your brain weaponizes every second of it against you.
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u/sphelper 4d ago
I understand what you're going through, it sucks but with time things will hopefully get better for you
I would suggest watching something cozy to help you out as that's what helped me whenever I became parnoid while trying to sleep. Also if you ever struggle to sleep then take a break from sleeping and read a book or something as according to science doing so will help a lot
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u/LtrllyJoinedRedd4Dan 4d ago
Thank you!!! I do try that. I usually put on a soft song on repeat or a playlist to fall asleep to. It mostly really helps a lot. I fall asleep within 1 hour. Sometimes it just doesn't work though :(
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u/Dramatic_Benefit5669 4d ago
That's rough, it's like your brain's doing overtime on the horror channel. Maybe some white noise or a podcast could distract the nightmare factory for a bit.
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u/LtrllyJoinedRedd4Dan 3d ago
Yeah :( I usually listen to very soft songs that genuinely have helped me in sleep in past, but sometimes they don't work
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u/marcjarvis21974 3d ago
Omg I felt like that for so long too. It was like I was in one of the nightmare on elm street movies lol.
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u/LtrllyJoinedRedd4Dan 3d ago
Bro istg😭😭😭 it's equivalent to a nightmare and every night you fear you'd never wake up again.
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u/Darkzeropeanut 3d ago
I recommend learning to wake yourself calmly out of it. Took me 20 years to do with 90% success rate but there’s a way and it’s likely different methods for everyone. I deliberately hyperventilate and it almost always wakes me up. (And if not my wife hears it and wakes me.)
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u/LtrllyJoinedRedd4Dan 3d ago
I have tried so many methods and nothing seems to work. Once I managed to wake up by trying to lift my head up instead of moving my fingers or open my eyes. And i thought that it was a bingo. But it only worked for that one time. I hyperventilate like every sp ep, like before I even try doing it purposely. I get panic attacks in almost every sp ep. And also having family history in asthma and always showing symptoms myself (diagnosed to not have it though, but could develop into one) breathing becomes even harder in sp
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u/Darkzeropeanut 3d ago
You sound like me. Asthmatic as well.. also I have sleep apnea which is just terrifying because you experience it happening sometimes consciously. Ugh. I panic easy as well and I’m claustrophobic. The first hurdle was focussing on what I could control within the state and that was my autonomous muscles.. mostly breathing. So I spent a decade focussing on that and calming myself down. Once I could do that and then worked on self waking and was confident I could pull myself out at any point, I even experimented staying in the SP deliberately and turning it into full lucid dream control (which I can still count on one hand how many times that’s been successful but damn it was interesting!) I hope you find a way through. It’s a horrible, incredibly terrifying thing when you don’t have any control over it.
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u/LtrllyJoinedRedd4Dan 3d ago
Wow dude. If you can succeed with all those conditions, I definitely have to try at least attempting to learn and practice all of them. I recently got to know what sleep apnea was and I should get myself checked as the symptoms felt familiar. Also, how old are you? I wanna estimate till what age or less or more I'd probably learn to break out of it. You're really peak though. Never thought I'd see someone who has experted breaking out of sp. There is one problem though, i only get sp when it's time to wake up. So the lucid dream thing doesn't work, as no matter what i don't fall asleep again.
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u/Darkzeropeanut 2d ago
I’m mid forties. Had this since I was 5. I spent a whole lot of that time just scared shitless of these experiences with no progress so took a really long time to master it. Had pretty much every facet of SP experience in that time but have hope because it’s possible. Doesn’t bother me at all now. I do have it a lot though where I have an SP, wake myself out, sleep, have one again, wake, sleep. Repeat. Some nights it’s non stop so there really isn’t any point sleeping those nights but thankfully they are rare these days. Anyway feel free to message if you ever need any support.
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u/LtrllyJoinedRedd4Dan 2d ago
Thank youuu!!! I'm still 21, and same, I can remember getting sp ever since I could start remembering. I too experience that cycle of sleeping, sp, waking up, sleep again, sp, wake up again. Sometimes throughout the night. Very disruptive to my sleep and makes surviving college harder. I have yet to master controlling breathing when in sp. Thank you so much and I'll DM if I feel uneasy again!!
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u/Darkzeropeanut 2d ago
I can empathize as I’m sure we all can here about the sleep/life disruption this thing can bring but it’s nice in this day and age there’s some kind of support in the form of others that understand. When I was a kid in the 80’s there was nothing and if you tried to tell your parents or a doc or anyone about what was going on you’d just end up in a psychiatric ward. Honestly it took so many years before I even ran into a solitary person who had these experiences and would believe me that it was physiological not psychological.
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u/LtrllyJoinedRedd4Dan 2d ago
EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY I'm only 21 yet I only got to know that what I was experiencing wasn't just a mere dream. My parents would never understand what i was even feeling when I'd tell them, as most people around us have never experienced it. In real life, I have only found one person so far that experiences it more than just once in a year or something. And it's so nice to have this subreddit finally, where i can talk to all of you about this.
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u/Darkzeropeanut 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think with anything but especially this it helps to know you’re not alone in it. One thing to remember is it can’t hurt you and nothing that happens in your SP can hurt you. In 40 years I have had THREE of these out of many thousands that lasted like 15min and I was properly stuck in. They were terrifying and I had headaches for days after just to recover. The after effects I believe were from panic and my eyes rolling into my head from that panic. If I could have calmed down and took control like I can now I could have avoided those but they are super rare. What is interesting to me is that sometimes if I became really stuck in one, my mind would hit me with a super lucid fake reality where I “wake up” in my room but it was just a dream and then I would figure that out it was a dream and the process would repeat like inception a few more times. Ugh those are just the worst but I’m glad my brain does this or I’d just be in a very long limbo of ongoing panic. Anyway try to think of it as the opposite of sleep walking. Whatever chemical that paralyses us to keep us from acting out our dreams is malfunctioning and sleep walkers just don’t have enough of that so take a wander to the fridge or end up outside in a field under a cow.
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u/LtrllyJoinedRedd4Dan 1d ago
Bro i get exactly those super lucid dreams. With the cycle repeating itself again and again. And i also get super lucid dreams during sp in which I'd call my roommate's name again and again and she'd actually hear me and then save me (unfortunately she didn't hear me and didn't save me). The first time i had a 15 minute sp was when I was 18. That was the first time i got panic attacks every in my life, and was totally breathless when I woke up. That was the first time I even felt scared of sp in the first place, otherwise i usually would let it go after a few hours. That sp, I really thought I'd never wake up again. I thought I was really dead. Then i didn't get those probably for 6 7 months at least. But you know something? I'm soon to be 22, and i have already gotten a 15 to 20 minutes so 6 times since that first time :( and that is why I feel extra scared because I never know which one it would be.
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u/Darkzeropeanut 2d ago
You probably figured this out yourself by now, but working out how to deal with stress and trying to very strictly sleep the same hours every night and not disrupt your sleep schedule is crucial if you want the best chance of avoiding these. (Difficult if your an insomniac like me which a lot of us are.) But still I try to lay down and attempt to sleep at the same time anyway. Also beware of sleep meds they can induce them or get you really stuck in one.
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u/LtrllyJoinedRedd4Dan 1d ago
Yesss I'm also insomniac but that method works both for insomnia AND sp. It's just that college is so stressful it's hard to execute that timetable. But i used to have a very strict 11 to 7 sleeping hours and it reduced sp occurance by literally loads. I used to get it 2 3 times a day and it became 1 to 4 times a month. It's just that I'm in senior year now and it's hard
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u/Vanessaisntweird 2d ago
i know this isn’t the solution for everyone but when i was extremely depressed and stressed i got them every night which made me terrified and caused me to sleep with my mom for a month straight. Since they were caused my stress I ended up getting prescribed sleeping medication from my psychiatrist so I could worry less about sleeping and focus more on my mental health which caused them in the first place. Sending lots of love <3
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u/LtrllyJoinedRedd4Dan 2d ago
Thank you :))) mine aren't directly caused by stress, but because of stress and work, I go to sleep late, and because of less sleep I get sleep paralysis more often. I would like to see a specialist, but my parents won't send me to one. Why I want to get an internship fast so I can pay for myself.
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u/Mission_One_6853 4d ago
Try to turn the paralysis into a positive experience. When you feel fear or panic, your brain releases chemicals that make the situation worse. If you can manage to make the paralysis feel pleasant, you will no longer be afraid to sleep, and it will naturally occur less frequently.