[Ben3721]

I’m a bit under 30, been suffering from sleep paralysis since about 18, before then it was vivid nightmares every night.

These days I work a 7 to 3:30 job on weekdays, typically getting to get around 11 and waking up around 6:30 to get to work. On weekends or off days I find it impossible to get up to an alarm unless I have something important to do.

I describe myself as generally upbeat but my internal world view to be quite negative which tends to drag me down.

My sleep paralysis requires a trigger, something that makes me hesitant to fall asleep. Such as sleeping on my back which cuts off my breathing some, or stress of any sort will trigger it continuously.

I had sinus surgery to help me breath which helped for a year to stop my sleep paralysis almost completely somehow. But that no longer matters with the added stresses of life.

When my sleep paralysis tries to trigger I can sometimes abort and get up and try to wake myself up, which helps reduce the chance of another attack.

For some reason I dream well before I’m fully asleep or paralyzed properly. If I am lucky the dream continues and I fall asleep properly.

But when the sleep paralysis sets in, I get about a 3 second blur of black and gray in the middle of my vision. I have to fight to wake up or my sleep paralysis takes control. This is where my hell comes to life. Because sleep paralysis is lucid anything I fear at that moment becomes the focus of my out of body hallucination. My brain has my bedroom memorized so even if I fight to cover my head or if I’m able to get my eyes closed, I can still look around the room somehow. Heck even when I moved my brain instantly memorized the new bedroom down to every detail. Most the attacks are shadows.

However I have had a few that weren’t like my normal sleep paralysis attacks that have me questioning reality.

I have had a few vivid hallucinations with my eyes open that haunt my mind every night.

#1 was a man wearing a old top hat and a old long jacket, he had red eyes and a dark shadowing figure but still had detail to his outfit.

#2 was a old woman, very nasty looking.

#3 was a large horse with red eyes standing right in my bedroom inches from my face.

Lastly was probably the most unique experience I’ve ever had, a little girl wearing 1800’s Era dress holding a teddy bear, she was a ghostly blue but with deep detail of her whole outfit. She reached her hand out and somehow I was more out of body ghost like and reached my hand out some then pulled back and woke up. That one really messed with me a lot.

All these hallucinations are blurring my conception of what is reality and what is not. My memories from the day aren’t being clearly wrapped up as they should and it’s breaking my mental state.

I also tend to cover my head when I sleep to avoid being able to see to no avail, but this tends to cut off my oxygen causing a debilitating migraine for a couple days after.

I know this was a bit sloppy and TLDR but it’s what reality I’ve been slipping into lately.

I’ve had a sleep study for snoring and that’s about it.

I don’t know if seeing a doctor will help with my mind this messed up from this all. I fear sleep aid medication will just force me into a deeper sleep paralysis attack than I’ve ever handled. Sometimes it feels super natural like an attack, I already have crosses around my bedroom to check that box. But obviously the delusion is merely in my head. The out of body experiences make me fear I might not be able to get back to my own body sometimes. Heck sometimes I have to push other shadows away to get back in, but that’s probably just the lucid dreaming aspect of it.

Not much else to say about this… just tired of it rulings the time I should be in deep sleep.

[Martin Reed]

Unfortunately sleep paralysis is outside my area of expertise, so I can’t offer any suggestions here. Sorry I can’t be of any more help.

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[Ben3721]

That’s unfortunate no one here has any experience with sleep paralysis.

I guess I’ll have to try posting around on other forums too.

Most of the online info pages on it lack any detail about reducing triggers. Which is my goal at controlling the issue.

[Author]

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