How do I stop this goddamn sleep paralysis?

As I may have mentioned here before, I get sleep paralysis constantly. In other words, I’m lying in bed completely unable to move, with my eyes open. I’m looking around the room. I’m trying to move my hands and arms, and I feel the sensation of them moving in my head, but they are in reality not moving at all.

I can wake myself up from it by straining really hard to make rapid motions with my body. Sometimes I simply cannot get my brain to engage my body, though. Sometimes I can lie there and “get up” five times in my mind without moving my body even once, and I have to give up and wait it out.

This began about 4 years ago, and when it started I had no idea how to handle it. It was terrifying every time. At this point, I’m so used to it that I can “wait it out,” but I still hate it and would rather not have to deal with it at all.

Is there anything at all that I can do to make this stop happening, or am I just doomed to have to deal with it? It happens to me maybe 50 percent of the times I wake up.

Do you take sleeping pills? Do you have a very stressful life? Do you sleep on your back? Do you have a very irregular sleep schedule?

I vary my sleeping positions. I get the paralysis more often on my back than on my side.

It usually happens when I’m taking a nap, so that may have something to do with it. But I don’t want to give up taking naps!!

I don’t take sleeping pills.

Your little fingers are supposed to be the last part of your nervous system to shut down or come back so perhaps you could concentrate you’re efforts there.
Personally I’ve just laid there a few times to see what would happen (nothing special) and found conscious control comes back fairly quickly by itself without any effort, as long as it’s established there is no problem with your breathing or the house not on fire, maybe it’s nots worth getting too up tight about.
I suffer badly from Tinnitus and psychologically accepting the situation is part of the treatment.

Have you ever mentioned it to a doctor? You may want to get a sleep study done. Maybe they will have some answers for you.

This WebMD page has some info.

I feel for you- I’ve only ever had it happen once and it was scary as hell.

Not to cause undue worry, but you may want to get that checked out. It may be nothing or it could be a serious problem. Basically, you want to have sleep paralysis, while you are in the REM stage of sleep. If you did not have this, you would act out all of your dreams much to the dismay of your SO. While in REM stage, the same neurons are activated for muscular movements as when you are awake, but you experience sleep paralysis so as you don’t actually move. If this is happening during non-REM sleep, this may be a problem. Or it may be that you fall quickly into REM sleep, force yourself to wake up out of fear of the sleep paralysis and then lose out on the important REM sleep.

As a slight hijack, you can teach yourself to do this, and I have on occasion. Sometimes to good results and sometimes to quite terrifying ones (but that is a story for another thread)

SGT Schwartz

I used to have this. Sleep on your side-- it happens almost exclusively when I sleep on my back.

I feel for you and I feel for me as well. I used to have sleep apnea and sleep paralysis together. That meant that I would often wake up not breathing and unable to move. I was the worst thing that I ever experienced. Luckily, the body’s will to breath is strong and it will always trigger a protection reflex as soon as the lack of oxygen gets to a certain point. It might take up to one minute.

I had surgery for my sleep apnea and although it is much better now, I still get it as well as sleep paralysis. Oftentimes my reaction to this is to literally throw myself off the bed as soon as the reflex kicks in which makes it disturbing to others as well. The only way I figured out to fix it myself is to find any muscle you can move and use it. Rocking your body in any way will fix it eventually.

I know that isn’t a good solution. Sleep paralysis is an unparalleled horror and I would never wish it on anyone.

You need to see a neurologist and spend a night in a sleep lab. Don’t put it off.

That happens to me a few times a year-- I can’t breath and can’t move-- it’s absolutely terrifying… I don’t know if I’m dead or about to die from lack of oxygen. I just lay there completely helpless staring at the ceiling trying to move and breathe. I’ll never get used to it.
Freaks me out just thinking about it.

There is something in your life causing some stress. When I worked in the field we always refered people with sleep walking disorders, sleep paralysis, apnea, etc…etc… to a sleep specialist, and 10 times out of 10 they had an underlying issue effecting them on the subconscious level. It could be something that happened decades ago, it could be something that is happening right now in your life. I would bet vital parts of my anatomy that if you lowered your stress [most people think they are champions at dealing with stress when they are definitely not…] the paralysis will subside.

Ditto.

And I have to respectfully disagree about the cause being stress. It has happened to me at times in my life when I was almost completely stress-free.

It only happens once every four or five months, and passes quickly, so I can cope with it. It is terrifying while it’s happening, though.

Most people don’t think it is stress, because most people - including myself - think they deal with stress perfectly. I’m not saying that it is definitly stress. But from my experience, sleep paralysis, sleep walking, and the like are directly correlated to some specific stressful discord in your life. Whether you know it or not. I was tested some years back and it was concluded stress was the leading factor. Some yoga and open conversation with my wife cleared the air and I ahve not had an issue in a long while with sleep walking…

I think it’s particularly common with adolescents. There have been a few threads on it in the past if you feel like digging.

Do you also sense another’s presence in the room?

No first hand experience, but here’s a link that may help.

Good luck.

I have always heard of this phenomenon described as having “a witch on your back.” It’s never happened to me, but my sister has reported it happening to her.