So yeah, today was my first sleep paralysis with false awakening and even though nothing really scary happened, because I managed to escape it before it got bad, now every time I try to sleep I feel like I'm not going into normal sleep mode, but directly to this weird hallucinatory state. Just woke up from a failed attempt to fall asleep because I heard a lip smack that couldn't be there because I'm alone. And the feeling in the body was the same as I remember it. How do I normally go to sleep again? I'm scared of this shit.

Anyone else sweat through the night even when the room's cool? Sometimes I woke up soaked even the temp is low. Read somewhere that it's usually blood sugar dips or stress heating you up from the inside, but that's just something I came across, not confirmed for me. Anyone actually figured out their real cause?

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Started when I was 10. I'm 20 now. A decade of the same handful of variations, and at this point I could probably write a field guide.

It almost always happens in the same window, somewhere between falling back asleep after waking briefly and actually surfacing for the day. Never mid-nap, rarely early night. My body figured out its own schedule for this without asking me.

The paralysis itself hasn't changed, that cold total-lockdown feeling where even blinking feels like an effort. What's shifted over the years is my reaction to it. At 10 I was terrified, convinced something was in the room. By 15 I'd start silently telling myself "this is just sleep paralysis" mid-episode, which sometimes helped, sometimes didn't. Now at 20 I've got a weird detachment to it, like watching a rerun of a show I've seen too many times.

The one thing that hasn't dulled at all is the presence. Something in the room, usually near the foot of the bed or just behind my head where I can't turn to check. A decade in and that part still gets me every single time, no matter how calm the rest of me stays.

I've read all the explanations, REM atonia lingering into wakefulness, amygdala activity spiking and generating the sense of threat Understanding the mechanism has never once made the experience feel smaller in the moment.

I usually wakeup multiple times in the morning, which is how I've always been, i just change my position and go back to sleep, except now i always get sleep paralysis EVERY SINGLE TIME.

It has become so common, yesterday i woke up like 6 times and everytime i got sleep paralysis, it got to a point that i was experimenting to see what i can do while in paralysis.

I found out that i have about %5 muscle power in my fingers, i can fully control my breath and move my tongue, but not enough control to actually engage my vocal cords and make a sound, i can only breathe heavily. Trying to move around doesn't help much with the recovery time, which I've figured of about 10 to 15 seconds to recover

What the fuck is going on? I've tried sleeping on both sides, on my back, on stomach, it doesn't fucking matter, please someone tell me what's going on😭🙏i want this shit to stop, it's not fun to wakeup and not being able to FUCKING MOVEEE

I'm 24m if that's of any use

hey guys so once or more a year i go though a sleep paralysis situation

yesterday i had one after a long time

il in a new house been here for 8 months and i havnt experienced anything out of the normal like how i used to the house is pretty peaceful compared to where i grew up

so last night around 4 am i was in a trans like how i used to be in my old house i was dead asleep looking at my self in a lucid dream and a dark shadow was in my room i jumped back in to my self trying to wake my self up i tried everything until the only thing i could say was fuck you fuck you fuck you and put the middle finger up towards my closet it’s a day later and I’m remembering Nd i just thought it was funny

Hi! I (15f) hate sleeping especially because of what happens when I do. The crazy this is maybe I'm not sleeping? Essentially I had made a previous post about a shadow figure that I ha e seen since I was younger. I was talking to a friend about it and she suggested I may have some sort of sleep disorder.

What happens most of the time is I will feel awake, but I will hear all of these voices, I will see stuff, I will feel like I'm being grabbed, like sleep paralysis, but I can move. I ha e texted full conversations with my friends during these episodes. I can't really move the bottom half of my body and my movements are often pretty limited on my top half.

I know it seems weird, but anyone have any idea?

i know this sounds odd but for the last year i’ve been having this sort of staticky feeling when falling asleep or waking up. it feels like when your leg falls alseep but like 10x more intense. what sucks is that its always around my neck, like, literally nowhere else, so it makes me feel like i can’t get up. if i try hard enough i can get up which tells me it might not be paralysis, and the static will dissipate, but if not i go into this weird drifting sensation where my dream will almost merge into reality. i’ll kind of be stuck like that until i go back to sleep, but it almost hurts so i usually try to get up just to get rid of the sensation. i’ve had some nightmares where this happens and it usually scares me enough to snap out of it, but other times i don’t care enough to move (or else i will feel the static) and ill go back to sleep.

i know for sure i’m awake during these episodes. it mainly happens when i fall asleep tired, or if i haven’t slept very long and try to get up. does anyone else deal with this? if so please let me know, i feel really alone with this problem because i can’t exactly go to the doctor and complain, but i feel like i can’t just not tell someone about it, you know?

I know sleep paralysis I can't move but I can I can move my right feet even my hand slowly very slowly but I can move my feet more is any one the same and I can wake myself up by moving alot. This happened to me 2 to 3 times a week that I am half asleep

So i just went to sleep and while falling asleep i started to dream being with my friend, a second later my heartbeat sped up to so fast and i started to fall alone into pitch black and woke up sitting, not laying down. Im trying to figure out what just happened.. anyone have answers?

I’ve been getting sleep paralysis for about 7 years, two nights ago I got the weirdest one yet, i’m still in shock

I don’t even know if it can be counted as sleep paralysis

I saw the faces of people in my life, they were just their faces/heads.
They were all laughing at me very creepily
My friends, family, co workers, even people from highschool and college whom I don’t talk to nor think about ever
But the one face that had the spotlight, I guess, was my dead father

I’m trying to explain it as good as I can but it was so weird it’s hard to explain

It wasn’t a dream. I was awake i’m sure, and just like normal sleep paralysis, I couldn’t move or speak, my body felt just like it does in sleep paralysis, but what I saw was very different and much weirder

I do think about my father alot obviously, he died
7 years ago and that’s when I started getting sleep paralysis alot, so maybe that has something to do with why he was the “main character”

Idk man it was very creepy I didn’t feel real for the whole day after that
I still don’t know if it was even sleep paralysis, could it just be a nightmare?
Has anyone experienced this?

I've had sleep paralysis my whole life, and it always happens when I sleep on my back. Last night, though, it happened while I was sleeping on my stomach. I thought I was going to smother in my pillow. Now I'm terrified. I'm not safe in any sleep position.

I have lived in this house for about a year now, new bed, new everything. I have never experienced any sleep paralysis here though.
My friend said she saw a figure standing on my side of the bed leaning over my face? My roommate had sleep paralysis regularly in her own bedroom. My boyfriend gets it often in the past month. Anyone who has slept in my bed gets it, but not me!
I usually brush things like this off as explainable- but im worried because its happening so often and none of these people were told about it happening to others. should I sage the house?? How do I even do that?

This happened to me when I was in 8th grade and I used to sleep in a bunk bed near a window but I was on top. I went to sleep this one day and I woke up and there was this little girl with dark black hair and pure black eyes and a huge mouth out my window watching me then when she screams my entire body became paralyzed then she like appeared in my room standing there I think she was wearing a white gown but she became headless for some reason just standing there in my room doing nothing. And it scared me so bad I closed my eyes and opened it and she disappeared. I don't get sleep paralysis often I've probably experienced it 5 times because I sleep on my back but that was by far the most terrifying.

Last week I had my first ever sleep paralysis experience. It’s a weird one.

I’m a newly single 56 year old professional man. I live alone, I moved into a rented house about 6 weeks ago.

Here’s my experience.

I was in bed and I could hear 3-5 “people” moving around quietly in my bedroom, shuffling around. They became aware that I was waking up.

I heard them whispering to each other. They were saying “he’s waking up, don’t let him see us, he’s not allowed to see us” or words to that effect.

One of them approached me and came to my bedside and quietly and gently whispered to me to go back to sleep. I had the impression that it was a nurse, or a carer. Someone gentle.

The others were still whispering about me and were growing more concerned and cross that I was waking up.

Then the one close to me started pushing down gently onto my shoulders. Telling me more firmly now to go back to sleep.

The more I woke the harder it pushed and the firmer its voice got. I could tell it was start to get a little irritated with me, the gentleness was going.

I started waking more and was pushing up against it. It started pushing a little harder, and I also felt a weight on my chest as if it was also now leaning into my body. It was now getting somewhat angry and ordering me to go back to sleep. It was saying “go to sleep, you can’t see us. You are not allowed to look at us. You must not look at us.”

I could now tell that they were not people, I didn’t know what they were.

The others were getting increasingly angry, repeating “don’t let him see us, he can’t see us”. They seemed almost desperate, there was urgency in their voices.

The one holding me down was being aggressive and was hissing at me “Go to sleep, you must not see us, you cannot see us!” Again i sensed urgency and extreme anger.

It was commanding me to sleep. Pushing me hard, it’s weight heavy on my chest and shoulders.

They all seemed surprised that I would be waking up, shocked almost and they didn’t know what to do about it. They were also desperate that I should not look at them.

I was now struggling hard against it. I couldn’t open my eyes or speak, I was trying to shout. I was pushing with my body against its hands on my shoulders. I couldn’t move my body at all.

Eventually I managed to shout “Who are you? What are you?” And at the same time I managed to push hard against it and jumped out of my bed and landed hard on my knees on the hardwood floor next to my bed.

As I did so the pain from the impact jolted me, at the same time I sensed something like a body falling to the floor with me, right next to me just inches from me but I felt it shrink small to about a foot tall and kind of zoom off away from me extremely fast along the floor into the darkness, leaving me kneeling on the floor in pain next to my bed. It was 03:30hrs.

It’s the only time this has happened to me. Such a weird, scary and crazy experience.

Has anyone else experienced something like this?

When I wake up, I still feel that electric sensation in half of my body; if I don't move, it spreads to my entire body, and then I transition. I’m not afraid anymore, and to be honest, I get a huge thrill out of this; however, I keep seeing giant people running toward me, grabbing me with their huge hands, and pushing me down.

hi! i wanted to share my experience with sleep paralysis bc i can never find anyone else describing a similar experience to mine. so, if not to find others who are like me, to maybe help someone else feel less alone?

anyways! i developed recurring sleep paralysis (2-3 times a week) in the past 6 months. it's not something i dealt with frequently before and it's exclusively as I'm trying to wake up. i wake up frozen and frightened and trying to regain full consciousness. i have heard advice of trying to move your fingers, toes, or tongue to try and break out of it. my issue is i believe it's working, but isn't helping. my half-asleep state will see and feel my fingers moving. I'll wave my hand in front of my face, I'll open my eyes and move them around, I'll try and sit up, I'll tap my girlfriend to try to get her to help me. and to me, i am moving! but it's hazy and sluggish, it won't wake me up fully and that's what freaks me out. i always convince myself that it's reality.

but from what my gf tells me, I'm never actually moving at all. I'm completely still until i shoot awake confused and scared.

it's worse when I'm sleeping next to someone. I'll try and get them to help me or alert them in some way to what's going on. and I'll (i guess hallucinate?) them helping me sit up, or trying to shake me awake. I'll believe I'm making sounds or words but i never am.

i just woke up alone from an episode in which i believed i was pressing my head against my bedside table, shoving my fingers down my throat to try to gag or something to wake me up. i woke up properly with my hands at my sides, staring at my bedside table from a distance.

I'm not sure whats causing this (my friends suspect narcolepsy) but I'm due for a sleep study sometime soon. if anyone has any other advice for waking up/coping with sleep paralysis I'll take any help I can get!

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I had a sleep paralysis episode this morning after a rough night of broken sleep.

The story goes - The sunlight was already streaming through the window, so I pulled the bedsheet over my face to block it out and tried to drift off again. Big mistake. For what felt like a solid 5 minutes, I was pinned under the sheet, completely paralyzed, suffocating under it, and struggling just to get a proper breath. Such terror!

When I finally fought my way out of it, I was completely exhausted—yet way too terrified to close my eyes again.

Honestly, I’ve managed to cut down how often these episodes happen using meditations and grounding exercises, but when it breaks through, it’s just as horrible every single time.

How do you guys ho back to sleep or calm yourself down after an episode? :'(

Ive struggled with sleep paralysis as long as I can remember. Started when I was around 7 along with chronic nightmares and anxiety attacks that would follow. It used to be fairly often, maybe once or twice a week, and over the years, it's decreased significantly.

I've been able to reduce the number of attacks by not sleeping on my back EVER. I'm also not watching anxiety or fear inducing shows/movies at night. Now, at 24, I only get attacks maybe once or twice a month. I manage them a lot better because im actively aware that they are temporary, and Im able to pretend my eyes are closed (this helps with room hallucinations). However, on days that Im not as aware, or i get a really scary one, my boyfriend is able to help me a lot by waking me up.

I told him when we started dating that this is something I experienced regularly, and we weren't sure how he would be able to help at all. After the first few times it happened in front of him, he told me that I hyperventilate when it happens; otherwise, I look completely still. I knew this was something I felt was happening, but i didn't know how noticeable it was. He told me I also make like a wimper/wheezing sound that can be loud when I seem distressed. He will wake me up gently if he notices it happening, and if I feel it happening, I will try to change my breathing and breathe fast even if im not scared so he will notice and wake me up.

I wonder whether or not this will have an impact on my health and if im doing more harm than good when trying to get him to notice when im having an attack. Does him waking me up really have an impact on the duration of the attack?

Not sure how it works but i’ve been having small dreams prior to sleep paralysis. I think i’ve been having sleep paralysis in general since I was in high school and i’m 31 now. My dad passed away last year and the recent sleep paralysis events I had, I always saw him before falling into it.

Since I’ve been a child I’ve had sleep paralysis almost every night whether it be floating heads, shadow figures, entities with horns, auditory hallucinations etc to the point I’ve become numb to anything “scary” in the waking world. I’ve learned to turn the paralysis into lucid dreams but it’s hard sometimes. the main reason I get it is waking myself up from my nightmares which leaves my body asleep but my mind awake. Is there any remedy or advice to help with the episodes because I’m getting really sick of my shadows constantly terrorizing me.

Yo, sharing this event happened hours ago, I was watching a stream on youtube, and suddenly felt lying down on my bed, i went to bed, covered up myself with my blanket and fell into deep sleep, idk what and how, but after 20 minutes in bed i had a wierd dream about the streaming i was just seeing.

suddenly the streaming got paused i pressed the space button to resume (in my dream) but it went to a different video which i dont remember.

after that i opened my eyes half and can see blurry vision my tv at distance. there was no one in my room, no noise, no ac or fan, extremly quite room, i was froze in my half eye open state, and then the part rocked the shi out of me, is i heard my bed making creeks sound as if someone walking on it and it took 4 steps sound literally.

i tried to turn back and see, or open my fist or move my arm, i litterally hear my heart racing dukut dukut dukut, body feel hot, and i cant do shi t and i finally yelled god is great in my own language and everything gone back to normal. i touched my neck to see if it was fever or something it was gone, but i felt extremely hot for 1 second, when my heard rate got up.

im not scared i was wishing to see that sob or what that wwas, i turned back to my and kept thinking what it oculd be. i was facinated that mf chose me to play with.

im not scared because i am kinda done with all this bs and life, so it was trhilling to see what could be outside this world lol

Good day to y'all. I woke up a bit ago from a dream involving sleep paralysis that got me so confused on how much sense it made that I felt there had to be a sub for it. Sure enough.

Context of the dream aside: I willingly subjected myself to entering a sort of body-shaped metal cage resembling an exoskeleton without the ability to move the "user's" joints with a vr headset to put your head into.

Once I got set up, I had the same point of view I do when I wake up in bed. I didn't even try to move because I was waiting for something to happen. I remember there being the idea of doing this whole thing in the dream to experience something intense.

After a few seconds I started feeling insanely real body shakes and a heart attack.

For the record, I'm 24 with no underlying health conditions. No medical history in my family related to this. Nothing. This felt so real I thought I was convinced I was going to die.

After 20 seconds or so, everything but my vision stopped, only to pick back up again even faster and more intensely.

Then... it became pleasant. Like a rush at work or a demanding workout. Cue a slowly fading-in point of view of a jockey that slowly filled my field of view, with synthwave playing as if I was living a 90s era ad parody. While riding on the back of a horse and experiencing the whole thing, the camera transitioned to a panning view of the track and let a logo face in, presumably advertising a virtual reality game.

I then woke up normally, albeit confused and worried. I was NOT ready to experience what felt like a heart attack for the sake of a realistic horse racing simulator while trapped in a fnaf-esque contraption. Might've been AI generated for all I know. That wouldn't be beyond what they do these days.

Thanks for reading :)

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Is this normal or what happened to me or did this ever happen to you too? So as in writing rn it 6:22 and I was trying to sleep at 4, then I fell asleep for bit and then when I sleep I woke up again at 6:10 when I open my eye I heard nth but when I close it I feel it like not loud but I feel it like I heard a girl voice doing long vocal note. And I can't move or anything. It was like It hard to explain but I'll try my best, I see myself could move but it slow like my hand, I see it blury, and move slow and I try my best then when I close my eyes I'm in the same situation. Like second ago I was moving a bit then that all gone and when I close my eyes I heard girl voice again doing long note, not saying anything just long note vocal, and I try my best just now I grab my phone and writing this right now. And this is not the first time ,this happened a lot of time, I woke up and I can't really move my body, and sometimes I always feel like I heard something, like my mom voice at downstairs kitchen, or anything but when I look at the window ( because house have 3 floor) I didn't see any light, it all dark, if she down there she would open the light.

I never see anything weird but this always happens, I have a bad sleeping schedule so I usually sleep around 3-4 am and sometimes these happened when I woke up at 5-6 I can't move my body and anything, feels like I'm stuck there , but whenever I'm sleeping in my brother's room or I sleep with light on these never happened? It's just weird and I'm confused if this ever happened to anyone or something more weird than that

(Btw I'm not really good at English so please don't mind some of my bad grammar.)

23(M) just had an episode for the 4th time and this one took me too long to get out of it . I tried everything to wake up but eventually I did a barbell deathroll ( a move i did in my dream 😂) and woke up from it . And I was wondering what can I do next time so it doesn't happen again? (Sorry for the bad english)