Sleep Paralysis study
Posted , 4 users are following.
Hello, I am a student currently researching sleep paralysis for my extended project qualification. It would be most helpful to me to have first hand accounts from people who have experienced sleep paralysis. If anyone who has experienced it could answer a few questions, it would help me out a lot.
1. What do you experience in a typical episode of sleep paralysis?
2. What have you expereinced in your most servere case?
3. What age are you?
4.Do you have a history or are affected by any other mental illnesses?
5. Do you take any drugs, recreationally or medically?
6. Have you noticed anything that particularly triggers episodes of sleep paralysis?
7. Do you do anything to try and stop it happening?
8.How often do you experience it?
9. Anything else you think is important about sleep paralysis in general or personally.
Thank you, feel free to answer as many of the questions as you like.
0 likes, 6 replies
lily65668 grace1807
Posted
Hi Grace,
I'll get back to you by private message. PMs via this site don't expose details of either party or carry viruses.
grace1807 lily65668
Posted
jane75220 grace1807
Posted
lily65668 jane75220
Posted
Absolutely not Jane! Everyone gets it once or twice in their life, but up to 5% of the general population experience it regularly throughout life. Some of us hallucinate, but only during the episodes of sleep paralysis. This is nothing to do with the hallucinations of schizophrenia, for example, as we never hallucinate during our waking life. It's just a minor brain glitch that doesn't interfere with our lives in any way. I qualified as a general nurse while experiencing this phenomenon, then went on to get an honours qualification in a neuro nursing course. I'm 72 now and apart from a transient depression in my mid-20s - unrelated to sleep paralysis and at a time of life when many of us get a bit low - I've never had a day's serious illness in my life, either physical or mental.
k93909 grace1807
Posted
k93909 grace1807
Posted
I get sleep paralysis regularly and more so with psychiatric medicine. I've no serious or delusional type of mental illness. But if I'm really tired my mind can't always switch off with my body when I lie down to sleep. I could make it happen at wilI. I think if I panic it can cause bad hallucinations/ dreams. But if I stay calm and in control I can use it to have a good lucid dream. It is scary, and really uncomfortable. I usually get out of it with a 'jump'. If I can't get out of it I dream about having an out of body experience and it going good or bad. There have been a few times where it didn't lead to this and just straight to a dream, maybe because I largely accept the whole thing as nothing more a dream now. I used to feel vibrations' and hear noises with it but not anymore. Recently as my body froze I felt a mild electric current run down my body. Only a couple times have I been held down but the bad dreams were always about trying to escape.On a couple occasions I have felt pain, during conscious sleep paralysis and ensuing nightmares. I was confused at first when this started happening, because initially it felt very real. Part of the reason I won't do it is probably because I am still scared somewhere that it could be real one time.