Last night I dreamt that someone was in my bed with me. I was thinking as though I was awake (whether I was really lucid or just dreaming that I was, I dunno), and wanted to turn to see who it was. But I couldn’t. I tried and tried, and I’m fairly sure I only accomplished it when I actually awoke.
Q1) Could I, as a result of this event or with “practice,” overcome sleep/dream paralysis, barring any other factor?
This whole thing put me in mind of this question:
Q2) I read stories all the time about severe sleepwalking, people killing/maiming themselves or others while asleep, etc. How does this kind of thing happen? How does the body and mind not only override the paralysis, but survival instinct and morality also?
Not as far as we know. Sleep paralysis is, by definition, unconscious. You can’t overcome it by conscious action. What you can learn to do is to wake up from it, just as you can learn to wake up fom nightmares.
This whole thing put me in mind of this question:
The body doesn’t overcome the paralysis, it isn’t paralysed to start with. The body isn’t paralysed during all sleep. If it was people couldn’t fall asleep while standing, which requires constant postural adjustments. Nor could they change position in their sleep, The paralysis only kicks in during REM sleep, and it’s intended to stop the body acting out the movements associated with dreams.
Sleepwalking is a glitch in the system. It doesn’t occur in the normal REM sleep cycle, rather it’s caused by a failure of the brain to come out of REM sleep correctly. So the paralysis has been turned off already. There’s nothing to overcome.
As for overcoming survival instinct and morality, well, it’s all occurring in a dream. Have you never had a dream where you’ve done something immoral or self-destructive? The vast majority of people certainly have.
Does this happen during every REM sleep cycle for everybody, or only during some cycles, or only for some people? Does this happen during the entire duration of every REM sleep cycle, or only for certain parts of the cycle?
AFAIK.
Out of interest, has anybody actually cut their own throat in this manner.
I’m no expert, but as far as I know it occurs in every REM cycle for the full duration of the cycle. It’s not perfect paralysis either. People will normally twitch when dreaming, but the “paralysis” constrains the movements.
Actually, practice can help. I’ve had a sleep paralysis problem for a few years now, and right now I have an “episode” about once every other night. I’ve found that if I concentrate all of my efforts on moving a particular part of my body, I can overcome it. I’ve taken to kicking my wife’s feet or just shaking my hips back and forth to make the bed move, and she responds by waking me the rest of the way up.
It’s not as bizarre as it sounds. If you sleep alone, well… see if you can get a signal to that creepy guy standing at the foot of your bed. For some reason mine always has a scythe.
I get sleep paralysis especially when I go to bed especially anxious. I am sure I only remember a fraction of the times that it happens but it is pretty terrifying when I wake up and cannot move. I have found that I can often move one body part a little, often the tip of my left pinky finger, with extreme effort and work my way up from there gaining one muscle at a time on my left hand and then arm. Sometimes, I can get my left hand functional enough to use my fingers to drag it to the right hand and manipulate it that way to get it to respond. The process takes about 45 seconds to two minutes.
I have learned from experience not to get too scared because I know I am going to come out of it eventually but there can be an awful lot of effort involved. I also have sleep apnea so I sometimes wake up paralyzed and completely unable to breath as well. That is the worst but I just have to wait it out because a suffocation reflex will kick in within about a minute and bring me out of it almost instantly but uncoordinated. I have also gotten enough muscle control before in my left arm to push myself off the bed onto the floor and that will bring me out of it right away as well.
I used to have some serious sleep-walking and hallucination issues in college when I was severely sleep-deprived that caused several embarrassing incidents. Screw Toyota, I want a recall and repair on the model year of my body for this design flaw. As far as I can tell, there is no way to prevent it completely if you are prone to such things other than healthy sleep habits. I also get sleep paralysis much more easily if I sleep on my back as well though.
I’ve also awoken myself from sleep paralysis by wiggling my fingers, eventually my wrist, then arm, and about then I can wake up. It’s a very unpleasant process. If you can manage it, your much better option is to realize what’s going on, calm down (it’s difficult), and fall back asleep, then you can wake up normally later.
I think the latter actually happens a lot more than I can remember. Your memory is still in that hazy dream mode. Sometimes I’ll have an episode of sleep paralysis that I won’t remember upon waking up, but only having something remind me of it made me remember it.
I have been aware I was dreaming quite a few times. Most of those times, I could control the dream I was in. On a few occasions (maybe 5 times in my whole life) I am aware I am asleep, but the dream is terrifying and I can’t control it. I have screamed at myself to wake up, and twice the noise of my shouting has startled me awake. Both times, the people around me have confirmed I made a strange audible noise that sounded like exhausted terror, but at a pretty low volume. I have also tried waking myself up by physically hurting myself in my dreams, and only been successful once, by violently punching myself in the dream, which translated into a shrug in real life. I think sleep paralysis doesn’t usually 100% prevent any movement for me, but it’s just “enough” to stop me from doing anything drastic. That’s why my desperate screaming sounds like exhaustion, and why my violent grand gestures turn into shrugs.