During the calm of the night... - Don't move!
What is the sleep paralysis? Why are we bound to the bed against our will?
Calm down, Renzo. This happened before. It does not last for long. Breathe. No, wait, thinking about breathing makes conscious that you need to. Oh, crap, you're not choking. You're not running out of air. Don't try to move that arm. Do not try to turn around in the bed. Everything is OK. Just a few more seconds. Some sound will save you. There, something will set you free... Oh, no...
At least once every few weeks I wake up with a fatigue worthy of a Marathon and a pressure in my chest of immeasurable strength. Me, a night owl that "sometimes" wakes up with the alarm clock. Me, that after completing my daily schedules don't go to the gym or running. Me, that has less insomnia than a patient in comatose vacations.
"My Dream, My Bad Dream" - Fritz Schwimbeck
Source: Wikipedia
I open my eyes, flirt with the bed sheets a bit more, and a nightmare starts.
This will not be the first time the author is a complete ignorant and is not making any effort to conceal it (before every sentence there was a "I think that...", that I removed for the sake of the word count tool).
When I was younger I saw a movie where Courtney Love acted at. A police-drama movie, or something like that (that kind of cheap movie where punches sound a lot more than in real life, people do acrobatics all the time and bullets that move in slow-mo). The thing is, that the part that I remember today is when Courtney had her "enemy" on top of her in the the bed. The dude gave her an injection in the neck and told her: "now you cannot move but you can hear me, understanding everything, you brain works perfectly, the rest... heh". Some Amazonian tribes use(d) a drug (/poison) called "curaré" that did exactly the same thing, with the small addition that it also inhibited breathing, and you could die like that. Back into the movie, the effect lasted a while, but I remained thinking how despairing that condition could be: Full conscious and impotence to do anything. Not even the slightest movement.
If you feel identified with that feeling, welcome to the "Why do I hate sleeping" Club. If you don't, then you're about to take a tour into what is called Sleep Paralysis, that basically is: when your brain decides that your body is jut not worthy of his instructions.
What is it?
Technically "sleep paralysis" is an unhappy-unoriginal name to what we could tag as a temporary inability to perform any voluntary movement. It happens during that short lapse of time between being asleep and waking up. I get it when I wake, but it can also happen when you're about to fall asleep; that moment that you're expecting, to get a well deserved rest... but, no, you will be tortured for just a bit of time before that. Given the short time it lasts, this sleep disorder is classified as a parasomnia.
It does not interrupt your resting time and it does not affect the time you're awake, but: It IS fucking annoying. During the paralysis one is totally conscious, with all the senses working perfectly; but unable to move. And not being able to do something that we want causes, as normally, surprising nobody, indispensable drums playing: Anxiety. Sometimes, even anguish in the shape of a weird feeling in the chest.
What are the causes?
Among the causes of this cursed Limbo there's Stress as one of the main causes. -You didn't see that coming! huh?-. The thing is, at the moment where we get in bed and try to stop thinking, the body is still alert to the supposed threat (or whatever the stress reason is), that hinders the body relaxation. But it gets worse as we relax and that "stress" filters into our thoughts. And then... Courtney Love scene.
During the REM period one dreams a lot, yet the muscles do not move. This is a protection mechanism that prevents us from moving as we sleep. If we look back several thousands of years back, in our evolution, it had a lot of sense to prevent that a young pseudoape walked out of the cave he lived at to get into a heroic fistfight against a saber-tooth tiger... As he was doing in his dreams. Better paralyzed than dinner. Even today, this mechanism has a good purpose, it prevents me to get off the bed, head into an Airport and go meet people I am in debt with, to tell her that I Love her while I Kiss her deeply, while I get run over by a bus in the meantime.
When the REM are interrupted (those interruptions happen around the 90 minutes of sleep) is when this disorder kicks in. The interruptions happen more frequently as the night passes, and near the time of waking up almost all the time is REM that is why a BUNCH of people (sorry, I had to use this word!), like myself, experiments the paralysis right in that moment. During that hour and a half, dreams are more than eloquent, cardiac rhythm paces up, the brain is really active, while the body is not. In this confusing interruption, many people sworn to see people's silhouettes in the room, feeling a "presence" on top of their chest. Sometime attacking, pressing; other times... "Being on top". Because during the REM we can pass by a peak of sexual activity (erections in men, tumescence and lubrication in women), but with the underworld... All very vivid. (does "Succubus and Incubus" ring a bell?).
"The Nightmare" - Thomas Burke.
Source: Wikipedia
This kind of hallucinations, far from being "wow man! cool!", usually trigger panic in the victims. It is a very usual sleep disorder among psychiatric patients. It is very common in narcoleptic people (the ones that -unofficial definition- fall asleep all of the sudden) because they achieve the REM state very easily.
Still today, a concrete responsible for the sleep paralysis has not been found. At a point the neurotransmitter glycine was pointed out; but it was held free of responsibility when it was blocked with pharmaceutics and the disorder keep happening. Along the line of things that explain a part, yet not everything, is that we know that the threshold of stimulation needed to wake up someone out of the REM state is rather large. Yet, the victims of sleep paralysis do not: we wake up easily; any small sound, noise even breathing can be enough. In that moment there's an imbalance because we are NOT supposed to wake and we still have our muscles "OFF" in a major part of our bodies.
Can it be cured/treated?
some of the ways to treat is "could" be a controlled respiration, that theoretically is one of the relaxation techniques that can lead us into waking up, jaded, with this ghastly orgy nightmare. But there's a lot of variable factors that remain unsolved by just breathing (for instance, narcoleptics ans people with MDD).
Anyways, the woods behind this tree are always the same. I'll keep going to bed exhausted, while stress pushes me from time to time into sleep paralysis... After all, I'm already familiar with it, and every single time it happens I try to "stay" that way to analyze it even deeper: And while I attempt to do so, I fully wake up, never allowing me to dig deeper in such strange phenomenon. In the meantime: FREEZE!
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It is truly terrifying I have had it too. Avoiding sleeping on your back helps a lot as does avoiding extreme stress or exhaustion (easier said than done). Alcohol and certain medications may also trigger it due to disrupting the normal sleep architecture.
Most people only suffer it transiently but in certain cases (e.g. narcolepsy) it can be a life long nightmare (literally). It is frightening enough to be paralysed but the hallucinations which arise can make it even worse.
I experienced a little goblin type entity running along up the bed and onto my chest before pulling it's face right up to mine and screaming in my face. Even knowing that you are suffering from sleep paralysis does not diminish the terror of this.
Beg for a Succubus next time, You wont want to wake up if you're into masochism.
Lol. Knowing my luck it will end up being an Incubus!
Ahhhhhhh!
It's hideous and a truly feel for those like yourself who have frequent "attacks"
Extreme stress or a very bad bout of depression usually trigger it for me. I usually get the feeling of a large dog sitting on my chest with it's nose against mine or the good old shadowy bloke standing at the edge of the bed.
I don't try to explore it further, I think about my toes until i can move one. once I've moved one I can calm myself down pretty quickly.
PS I like the informal tone.
Pop is always a better tone if one wants to cover more people than the ones that already know about a topic.
I had that too. terrible feeling
Never experienced this before, though I slept on my arm once and it was totally numb when I woke up.
I freaked out cause I could see my arm yet not feel a thing. It felt like somebody's else arm was there lol.
I don't have time to do my usual epic reply here, but i'm wondering if this condition could be linked to use of cholinergic agents of the type people use as nootropics or for inducing lucid dreams.
I've heard it can, but it's never happened to me while on all sorts of cholinergics (including galantamine - which is very popular for lucid dreaming).
I do have a "kinda" of control over my perception whenever that happens.... And, yes, the mental method is very similar to the ones used for lucid dreaming.
The major episodes of sleep paralysis are the fun ones. I was "paralyzed" for about 20 minutes one time and started to panic because I thought I was having a stroke.
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Hate to be 'that guy' but I've known a lot of people who've found that Christianity puts a stop to it. Non-believers who ask Jesus for help find it ends immediately. No need to believe our pray or tithe or anything, you don't even need to be able to speak. Just ask him in your head.
Please, stay away from my posts :)
I'm not one to tell you how to 'freethink', but an alternate reply might have been.
"Thanks for your well meaning advice. As a proud skeptic I very much doubt that it would help. That said, since my problem has proven chronic, and beyond the scope of my ability to solve, and your advice has some anecdotal support and carries no opportunity cost, I'll add it to my list of experimental solutions, and anticipate reporting it's failure soon.
Naturally it would look quite arrogant and closed minded of me to discard a very simple, free possible solution, out of hand, when I could, instead follow your instructions, report their failure, and somewhat offset your obscure techniques' claimed anecdotal success".
Yeah, but the alternate reply would invite you to keep throwing ancient superstitions into science posts. Don't make a joke out of yourself.
The mere concept of "think about this carpenter we depicted as a blonde jewish to solve your problems". Is simply ridiculous.
If you give me to think, please, let it be somehow attractive... IDK, Angelina Jolie. At least I'd give a try to experimentation, out of just the bait.
Thank you for dismissing this nonsense so expertly