tomorrow only knows

onemoretimewithfeeling:

thewordunheard:

My attitude toward sleep paralysis in the past has been a little bit like a neocon’s toward waterboarding: it only lasts for a second or two, how bad can it be?

It is scary as hell. That is the answer. It is awful and no one should have to go through it. I had also somehow fallen asleep with cactus arms, which only served to further the experience of being pinned down by an intruder while I couldn’t move. Because I was in the midst of an absurd dream, the longer I stayed immobile, the louder I heard a cacophony of terrible horn sounds; there were also lines of blackness encroaching on my vision from the outside that looked a bit like a camera shutter, and the blackness consumed my vision as I felt someone pressing harder and closer on me. 

The second I was able to move again I wanted to call my mom and curl up at the foot of my parents’ bed.

I’ve had this one time in my life and it was terrifying. I was taking a nap and my college roommate was in the room and she said that right before I woke up it sounded like I was having a panic attack. 

I get sleep paralysis all the time. Actually not so much anymore … maybe once every couple of months, and now that I know what it is I’m able to control it when I feel myself having an attack (most of the time I can pull myself out of it before it happens). But the first time it happened in college, and the few times after before I knew what was going on was terrifying. My attacks usually have the normal sleep paralysis thing of feeling like someone is holding me down, but sometimes there are mean dogs involved, or I can feel someone walking on my bed. I hallucinate too, which is the worst part. I’ve seen a huge Indian chief, a little sailor boy, an old-timey nurse (who poked her head around my door and said “We’re just here to help” …. yeah, that one freaked me out). So now when I feel an attack coming on I just don’t open my eyes. Usually that makes it go away faster too.

Long story short, sleep paralysis sucks. When it was really bad for a couple years in college I was going to go to a sleep center, but I didn’t want them to put me on sleeping pills. The one good thing that has come from the sleep paralysis is that I’m able to lucid dream now and control my dreams. Very Inception-like.