As background, sleep paralysis occurs to prevent body motions in the context of a dream: Having our legs churn while we're dreaming of running would be not so good.

In general, sleep paralysis can be 'cured' by wiggling an extremity. Trying to move the large muscles will almost never succeed, but wiggling toes, the nose, blinking an eye are all worth trying. Almost always, these small motions help trigger the body to realize it's no longer sleeping and should do the biochemistry to stop paralyzing the large muscles.

I suffer from sleep apnea as well and often when I wake up paralyzed I honestly feel like if I don't force myself to move that I am going to die from lack of getting enough air. It almost always feels like I'm barely breathing.

This doesn't work for me, at least not directly. However, I find that if I relax for a few moments and then make a full body effort to do a short-sharp shake of, well, everything, I can normally wake myself up. Trick then is to keep moving so I wake up fully and don't fall back into it :/

It's quite possible than I'm just twitching a finger or toe when I do that initial effort though :)

This is my trick too. I have to build up the mental energy and then absolutely lay into it. Like I'd be wildly flailing around if my body wasn't switched off. Then when I'm moving I have to try to stand, or I'm just going to get drawn back in. Most of the time I don't bother anymore and just allow myself to fall back asleep.

Interesting. I've never experienced sleep paralysis; my body tends to err in the other direction. I have woken myself up before because my muscles accidentally do still move while dreaming, most often because I will physically flinch when surprised by something.

I too sometimes experience sleep paralysis. The first time it is indeed terrifying -- in fact I thought I was dead, and was surprised to still be conscious.

But over time I learned to kind of enjoy it. It's a funny situation where you're totally aware and yet can't control anything in your body. It's like being a pure spirit!

I can now then stay in that state for some time, and then choose to either fall back asleep, or wake up entirely. But waking up demands a huge force of will, like "pushing" consciousness out of your mind and into your body. Usually I simply let go.

Do you not get the feeling of something being wrong? I've only just had this start happening in the last few months and twice now I've known there was someone just outside our door and in the house, and I need so badly to reach my wife to wake her up, but I can't move my hand.

In my experience it's horrible.

That's pretty much exactly my experience. "Waking up", feeling there's a stranger in the house (or an evil spirit/presence), and not being able to do anything about it, except panic with my eyes closed (can't open them), until somehow I fall back asleep. Then I always wonder whether it was a dream or not.

I get it every couple years and always have but I think it’s fun too. I even get the dark figure standing at the foot of my bed thing as well. It’s sort of like a being on a roller coaster. It’s a little scary at first but you can’t get off so might as well enjoy the ride.

For me, going to sleep can only be accomplished by holding my body as still as possible, for as long as possible. It happens over a period of an hour or more.

When I’m conscious of what is happening, I notice that I no longer have a physical sense of where my leg is. Or maybe it’s my arm. Or maybe just part of an extremity. It’s not tingling, but there is no conscious connection between that part of my body and my brain.

I can wiggle my fingers or toes or whatever, and then I will immediately be able to sense that it is still connected and where it is, but then I can stop wiggling my fingers or toes, and let that connection drop back away quickly.

I’m forcing the conditions where my body slowly paralyzes itself to sleep, and stops stimulating my brain, so that the brain can finally go to sleep.

Waking up from a deep sleep, I have to go through the reverse process. I cannot wake up quickly and easily. If it has to be quick (like I’m late for something), then it has to be pretty violent. If I want it to be easy, then it takes at least a half hour of slowly waking up different body parts until I can finally be awake enough to sit up in bed.

And if I have to wake up too quickly, it’s easier for me to lose my balance if I have to physically move quickly — like picking up a second cat that has managed to snuck into the bedroom, when I already have one cat in the other hand. The result is that I fall to the floor, and hopefully don’t squish either cat. Then I can lay there for a couple of minutes, get my bearings, figure out if I’m actually injured or just feeling minor pain from bruising, and then get back up and get on with the rest of the morning.

Our cats are really good at snucking into the bedroom when they’re not supposed to be there, but so far the falling part has only happened once.

So, where most fear sleep paralysis, I for one welcome it. It’s the only way I can regularly get to sleep at all.

Yep! Have had it happen twice.

The first time I somehow recognized it for what it was and closed my eyes and just went back to sleep.

The second time, it 100% felt like someone crawled on top of me and was suffocating me with a pillow. It was dark, I couldn't move, absolutely terrifying experience overall.

I’ve had this too, and only when on my back. I had a pounding sensation in my head (heart beat), an ominous presence, and the feeling that I’d die if I didn’t force myself awake. I’m convinced this is related to sleep apnea. I try to avoid sleeping on my back now.

Just mentioned this too. Do you feel like you're not getting enough air essentially?

Yes, it feels like I’ve stopped breathing for a minute or longer (which might actually be the case). On a few occasions I hear screaming, which I believe is my brain trying to wake me up due to low oxygen.

Something similar happened to me a couple of times. Now I already get used to it but the first experience was quite terrifying. I woke up in the middle of the night from a lack of air and just felt that there was someone outside. It didn't move, it made no sound, it did nothing. It just was there - a black creature behind the door watching my weak attempts to break free and begin breath. And this feeling of helplessness was perhaps the worst.

Did you have the sense that someone was in the room? Reports of an ominous presence often go along with sleep paralysis.

I’ve experienced sleep paralysis so many times that I’ve almost gotten used to it. Usually it happens when I have been staying awake for too long before going to sleep, or if I have been getting too few hours of sleep many days in a row.

Several times it has felt like someone was present. One of the first time I can remember the feeling of someone or something being present was maybe a decade ago or two or something. It felt like a dark shadow person standing in the corner of my room, by the door just looking at me while I was unable to move. Very creepy feeling.

Recently, I thought someone was sitting on top of me and pushing me very hard down into my bed. And I was like wtf, why is someone trying to murder me and I was very scared. And then I realized that lol it’s just sleep paralysis yet again. Still felt shaken for a while afterwards.

Sleep paralysis sucks, so I try to avoid it. Sometimes I get into a bad rhythm though and then it is increasingly probable that it will happen.

I've had a whole range of hallucinations from it, visual, physical and auditory, eventually I tended to get the paralysis part less and less but still have the hallucinations.

Things like the feeling of someone on your back grasping you and talking into your ear while trying to fall asleep. Sitting up awake in the morning and seeing fully formed objects floating in the room like a floating filing cabinet, fully formed person in the room not a "Shadowperson". Auditory ones usually happen as you're falling asleep and its all voices you know sorta talking gibberish sentences.

Around the same period of time it started I also began having lucid dreams too, generally always had a bit of trouble sleeping.

Ah crap, I only had it once and that Shadowperson was too close to my ear, whispering gibberish. I felt warmth of its breath, I think it was literally the fear which woke me up..

I've had paralysis twice. And both times I had the sense someone was in the room. The presence felt way more than ominous though, it felt TERRIFYING.

When I got it when I was younger, I used to see Ghosts. Terrifying. When I learned what sleep paralysis is, funny enough, the hallucinations changed. Now they are much more realistic things like someone in the room who really could be, more auditory hallucinations, etc. I was getting it a few times a week for a while, now ~1-2x a month. If it wasn't also associated with difficulty breathing (I think the root cause) I think I could enjoy it now, its a bit like a lucid dream.

No, I know it's common to hallucinate or something similar during an episode but I felt completely lucid. It was just as if the motor cortex was disconnected temporarily from the other parts of my body (which I believe aligns with the research that the brain stem "filters" or simply doesn't propagate the signals from the brain to the rest of the body).

Can confirm, I’ve been hit with it a few times when I messed up my sleep schedule bad enough. The first time I tried to just chill until it passed, and that was the longest 3 minutes of semiconscious ever.

Since then I’ve had decent luck forcing myself awake by using what little control I have to mess with my own breathing until I “wake up” but the whole process sucks, and usually makes me feel like I’m dying.

I either go back to sleep (relatively easy because I'm still sleepy) or struggle until I wake (harder because struggling makes you panic more).

Once I managed to wiggle my pinky against my wife and she realized what was happening and woke me up fully.

Whenever I experience sleep paralysis and want to wake up, I start wiggling my toes. Somehow this triggers my body to wake up. YMMV

Happens to me, on average, probably once per month. It tends to happen in spurts though— I might go 3 or 4 months without an episode but then once a week for a while. If it happens enough to quickly realize what's happening, you tend to be able to move past the feeling of imminent danger and focus on controlled breathing (I can always control my breath.) Then again, I've had a few jobs where I had to deal with physically threatening situations regularly, so maybe I've just worn that nerve ending smooth.

I too had sleep paralysis, 3 times upon waking up and 2 while trying to fall asleep. Moreover 3 days ago I had my first hypnagogic auditory hallucination. Basically I have heard a guy talking something about two candidates for US presidency (even though I don't live in the USA and I am not an American) and then sound of shooting shotgun. At first I was scared that maybe I got schizophrenia, but after reading a bit I have found out that it is sort of like sleep paralysis, at least in too happens among people who experience sleep paralysis.

One possibility is maybe I am slowly developing narcolepsy, because both sleep paralysis and these hypnagogic hallucinations are symptoms of it. I sometimes feel sort of sleepy especially around 4 pm and I usually just take some coffeine. I don't know if I have cataplexy, certainly not the severe form, but I think that I get weakness in the knees under influence of strong emotions which according to internet is basically mild cataplexy. I know that my mother has this weakness too and she is always tired so there could be a genetic link.

As interesting trivia it seems like narcolepsy is an autoimmune illness that works by killing neurons producing hypocretin which is neuropeptide responsible for regulation of sleep and wakefulness, and for hunger management. There are only about 100k - 200k hypocretin producing neurons, while brain has orders of magnitude more neurons. That I find interesting, because it seems like this autoimmune process is very selective for these hypocretin producing neurons, cause so far it seems like people with narcolepsy don't have similar cognitive deficits as people with other autoimmune illnesses that kill neurons.

The first time it happened was very frightening for me. It felt like I was buried alive and was not able to move. it has gotten better, now after few seconds I realise it is happening and I just have to wait for some time.

My first time I spent a few minutes trying with all my might to move a muscle. Any muscle. I felt like I was trying to thrash around to wake myself up but there was just no way to get a signal to any part of my body.

When it happens to me, I try to roll my tongue. Once I do that it snaps me out of it.

For me its jaw or lip movement, that usually still works to wake me up fully.

To add another sleep paralysis anecdote, I used to get it and it was always coupled with an extremely loud pulsating ringing kind of noise in my head which would get progressively louder and faster until the moment I woke up, when it would disappear. It only happened in the late morning or if I had a nap at an odd time. I asked several sleep doctors about it at the time and always got puzzled responses. I discovered that if I wiggled my toes, which took an enormous effort, I could pull out of it and wake up. It stopped happening several years ago on its own.

I'm reminded of the curiously named exploding head syndrome, described as a condition in which a person experiences unreal noises that are loud and of short duration when falling asleep or waking up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome

Nah, that’s just my wife coughing again, at over 100db. I’ve measured it.

And yes, she does seem to do it right in my ear. My 32db NRR earplugs help bring that down to a tolerable level, but only when I’m wearing them. And I can’t wear them 24x7.

I used to get sleep paralysis in my teens; it was extremely scary the first few times but when I understood what it was it just became annoying. My mind would wake up almost immediately but it did take significant mental effort to regain feelings.

In my early twenties I experimented with lucid dreaming for a bit; since then I never had sleep paralysis episodes but I do not know if it is connected; it is entirely possible that getting older awareness is just suppressed more while sleeping (apparently you dream less as you get older).

It happens to me probably once a week or so. It is a good exercise in calming thoughts down and being rational about what is going on. I usually just focus on staying calm and trying to move one finger or one toe patiently until it does, and the second I can move one digit a bit my whole body snaps online. Sleep paralysis, being extremely stoned, and having my contacts fall out at inconvenient times (I am pretty blind) have all been great exercises in suppressing mounting panic haha.

I had some of this around the same time I was experiencing periodic vertigo. In my case, the inability to wake automatically was tied to nutritional / metabolic issues plus a general lack of sleep. My point being, at least in my case it was the body's warning signals. Once I got those issues under control, I've not experienced further issues with sleep paralysis.

When I was in my late teens/early 20s it happened to me a few times. It felt very similar to what you described except my thoughts were not as clear. Each time I closed my eyes I would be back in a dream. Finally I figured out I could turn on my TV if my remote was close and the noise snapped me out of it. It would take me forever to move my hand to the remote at my side.

I get sleep paralysis all the time, and have experienced everything described in this thread. One thing for me though is that as the paralysis starts to wane, I get a feeling of euphoria that permeates my muscles and lasts for several minutes.

I used to get this, along with some other anxiety stuff. A low dose of prozac taken 2x per week totally eliminated it (anecdata i know, but i thought it was interesting).

Wear a sleep mask and you'll never get sleep paralysis again.