Sleep Paralysis - A terrifying but unique state of consciousness

***Trigger Warning: The content of this post may be disturbing and frightening for some audience, please proceed reading with caution***

● UNDERSTANDING SLEEP PARALYSIS

Imagine waking up in your room to find you can't move a muscle. It's dark, but you're sure you feel a presence in the room, hovering near your bed — or perhaps sitting on your chest, crushing the breath out of you, you can feel an evil entity but it's not visible to you. This weird and nightmarish phenomena is termed as sleep paralysis.
Let me try to make it more clear for people who have never experienced it.

I was awake in bed … In the corner of the room there are two men. I cannot see them but I know that they are there talking. I can hear them. They are talking about murder. I cannot move. I try to but I just can't. One of the men comes and stands directly above me ….. He spits, and his spit lands in the socket of my closed eye. I can feel the impact, the wetness, the trail of slime. I can feel everything but I feel so helpless"

This may sound like a scene from a horror movie or a novel, but it is actually a personal account of a real experience – told as part of a project on sleep paralysis.

"Maximum number of patients say the similar thing to interpret sleep paralysis: that it feels like you woke up dead. You know that your mind is awake and your body is not — so you're trapped, essentially," Michael Breus, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and fellow of the American Academy of sleep medicine.

● HALLUCINATIONS AND RISK FACTORS

Sleep paralysis episodes generally happen when someone is going to fall asleep, i.e, on the verge of going into deep sleep or when someone is waking up or coming out of that deep sleep state.

The hallucinations can be split into three categories :-

☆ Intruder hallucinations are hallucinations in which visual, auditory, and tactile sensations contribute to strong feelings of the presence of another being in the room, majority of times that other being is felt as an evil manifestation.

☆ Incubus hallucinations involve feelings of intense chest pressure, suffocation, and near death experiences. These experiences are often called "old hag attacks" because one may often see a demonic figure, such as a witch, sitting on one's chest. This hallucination usually co-occur with intruder hallucinations.

☆ Vestibular - motor hallucination experiences are much less frightening than intruder and incubus because they focus on one's body instead of the sensed presence of a devilish creature. Vestibular-motor hallucinations consist of illusory movement experiences and out of body experiences. It includes feelings of floating, flying, falling or moving a limb after which you suddenly realise that you are paralysed.

● LABORATORY STUDIES

Every night, we go through a number of different sleep stages (as illustrated in the figure below). After falling asleep, we pass through stages one to three, reflecting a deepening level of unconsciousness, which is collectively known as non-REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. After coming back to stage one sleep we enter a period of REM sleep, which is unique for a number of reasons.

REM sleep is a period of heightened brain activity, along with intense dreaming. During REM sleep, apart from our eyes and respiratory system, our muscles are completely paralysed. It is believed that this paralysis mechanism is the one which stops us from acting out our dreams physically , based on rare cases where the paralysis fails – and patients act out the contents of their dreams. Research also tells us that sleep paralysis is closely tied to REM sleep. Basically what happens is that when you wake up, you become consciously aware of your surroundings but you are still in REM sleep which means that your body is paralyzed. You will be able to sense things around you but you won't be able to move a muscle.

●SLEEP PARALYSIS IN OTHER CULTURES

This is certainly not a new condition. Sleep paralysis, under many different names, has existed in mythology of various cultures for centuries - perhaps millennia.

Sleep paralysis is quite common seeing that over 50 percent of the world population will undergo 1 or more episodes of sleep paralysis. Even then the experience is seemingly foreign and abnormal. For that reason, people often seek supernatural explanations and describe their hallucinatory incident as encounters with the devil, demons, and even aliens.

Different cultures have different explanations for hallucinations. For example, Africans interpreted the episodes as acts of voodoo magic from zombies while Europeans often believed the evil creatures were witches Supernatural beliefs about sleep paralysis date back to 1781 and further. In 1781, Henry Fuseli, a Swiss painter, painted "the Nightmare" which represents sleep paralysis itself. "The Nightmare" (shown above) illustrates incubus hallucinations as the portrait has a woman lying stationary and a demon can be seen sitting on her chest as though trying to suffocate her.

》 IS IT SAME AS A NIGHTMARE?

No, actually It is complete opposite. When you enter into deep REM sleep, your brain instructs the body's voluntary muscles to loosen up and enter into state very close to paralysis which is termed as atonia. Atonia actually helps to protect your body from getting an injury during your sleep by restricting you from acting out the physical movements in your dreams. In other parasomnias, for example in sleepwalking atonia doesn't function properly due to which voluntary muscles move even when the mind is still asleep so some people tend to do crazy things in their sleep and be completely ignorant of it. During sleep paralysis our body remains in a paralysed state due to REM atonia while our brain gains alertness and our eyes begin to open.

Sufferers become alert in a transient conscious state, but they are unable to move their voluntary muscles or speak. Although involuntary muscle movement, like breathing, is not affected, there is often a sensation of chest pressure (feeling of someone sitting on your chest or even strangling you) which is why many people wake up from sleep paralysis gasping to take a deep breath. Episodes can last anywhere from twenty seconds to a few minutes.

》 WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO GO THROUGH IT?

Sleep paralysis is actually a very natural occurrence and it can happen to anyone.
Every time we go to sleep, there is some risk of waking up in sleep paralysis. But severity and degree of consciousness vary greatly from person to person— most people have at least one episode at some point in life but aren't even aware of it.

Up to as many as four out of every ten people may have sleep paralysis. This condition is often first noticed in the teen years. But men and women of any age can go through this scaring experience.

》 WHY DOES IT HAPPEN?

Factors that may be linked to sleep paralysis include:
•Lack of sleep or very less sleep
•Sleep schedule that frequently changes
•Mental conditions such as stress
•Sleeping on your back most of the times
•Other sleep problems such as narcolepsy
•Use of certain medications (eg.- medications for ADHD)

》WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU EXPERIENCE IT?

1. Do not try to fight it.
2.Just relax, surrender and go with the flow
3. Try to wiggle your toes
4. Clench and unclench your fists
5. Focus on your breaths

☆ The Ultimate Method - this is the single best way to wake up from sleep paralysis and works for most of the people. When you realize you are in sleep paralysis , scrunch up your face. In other words, make a face like you just smelled something really bad. Snarl and squint. Do this two or three times in a row and the paralysis will break IMMEDIATELY. Im not sure why it is so effective, this method works most of the time. But again it can be different for different people.
After you wake up, It's better to get out of bed immediately and turn on a light because if you go back to sleep at that moment then the chances of it happening again is very high.

》 IS IT A DANGEROUS PROBLEM?

As frightening as it to experience sleep paralysis, It isn't actually dangerous ,nor is it typically a sign of a serious condition. It is one symptom of narcolepsy, but in many instances, it is not an indication of narcolepsy or some other sleeping disorder.

Seconds of immobility might not be a reason to plead for death. However when an old hag sits peacefully on one's chest, wearing a twisted smile, even the toughest of the tough will cry their eyes out. They will scream, and find that they cannot even produce a raspy whisper. They will feel the urge to run, but find that their legs no longer belong to them. They suddenly become mere spirits trapped in a foreign, unresponsive body. However, there are treatments.

● TREATMENT

Most people need no treatment to recover from the impact of sleep paralysis. Treating any underlying conditions such as narcolepsy or other sleep disorders may help if you are anxious or unable to sleep well. These treatments may include the following methods :-
• Improving sleep habits -- such as making sure you get continuous six to eight hours of sleep each night
• Using antidepressant medication if it is prescribed to help regulate sleep cycles (only after consulting a professional)
• Treating any mental health problems that may be a reason behind sleep paralysis

● DISCUSSION

• Have you or anyone you know has experienced sleep paralysis?
• If you/they have, what was your experience with it (please avoid explicit details)?
• Is there anything you would like to say to a person dealing with sleep paralysis?

● REFERENCES

The Sleep Paralysis Project By Carla MacKinnon. Retrieved from - http://www.thesleepparalysisproject.org/

Sleep Education Resource provided by - aasm. Retrieved from - http://www.sleepeducation.org/sleep-disorders-by-category/parasomnias/sleep-paralysis/overview-facts

Terrifying accounts of sleep paralysis (15 Photos)By: Hendy;In: Creepy;Sep 1, 2016

Retrieved from - http://thechive.com/2016/09/01/terrifying-accounts-of-sleep-paralysis-15-photos/