Sleep Paralysis for over twenty years.

Signs and symptoms
1

I've had sleep paralysis for over twenty years. I used to think I was crazy because I would have these continual dreams, almost every night, where I was frozen and I could see my bedroom, but I'd hear these noises and feel as though something was coming upon me. With the rise of internet use (I lived in a very rural town!), I eventually realized it was sleep paralysis about 7-8 years ago. I remember first seeing the paintings of people with demons on their chest and thinking, "YES, THAT'S IT!" and being excited that others had the same problem. 

For the last five years, it's gotten much worse. It used to be something that occured a few times a month, but now it is something that happens a few times a week. This has been for the last few years. My husband calls it my "night terrors" because even if he tries to wake me, (and I'm aware of him trying to wake me, while i'm "sleeping"wink I just start screaming, murmuring, shaking, and won't wake up until I"m completely still. Even when I'm aware of him trying to wake me, or I'm aware that I'm in a state of paraylsis, I can't get out of it until I force myself to calm down and breathe regularly. Often, I will see a shadow coming at me and I will have to focus on this shadow (which is terrifying) until I come out of it. It's like the focus helps me. I know that I regularly have to try to force myself to breathe deeply to get out of it. My husband says he will see me trying to gasp for air and my eyes will be rolled into the back of my head while I"m sleeping and tring to come out of it. 

Either way, it's terrible and has made it so I only get about three hours of sleep every night. If I don't have an incident, I wake up when I normally would and find myself watching reruns of friends to fully wake myself up before going back to sleep because if I go to sleep in a halfasleep manner, I know I'll go through an incident. 

Lately, I've noticed a pattern. I don't regularly have the visions that I used to have where I could see my actual room as it was. Instead, I'll have dreams that are very vivid and routine (almost like watching a TV show over a long period of time), that contain people I know or have known, but the entire time, I have the same feeling I had when I was in my normal state of paralysis. It's almost like I know I'm dreaming, know I can have full control over what I do, and yet--I don't have control. I can get myself out of the "dream" in the same manner as normal (by focusing), but it has become almost impossible as the dream (which is familiar) has become more terrifying over the past few months. It actually has become a night terror, to the point where I don't want to sleep. 

I've gone to a few doctors and have had tests done, but--of course--this never occurs when I'm being tested. 

Over the last few months, something odd has happened. I've started having these vivid dreams where there are people in them who i don't know in real life, but I feel like I know. Like I wake up wondering how they are and it stresses me out all day wondering how they are doing. 

Last night, I had a particularly vivid incident where I was in bed with a woman and we were discussing what to do next (like we had something we were planning to do.) She disappeared, and another person came through a door and grabbed me by the shoulders and started yelling. I remember them in my face, holding my shoulders to the point that they hurt when I woke up, and then this WOOSH was heard and they evaporated into a wall. And I walk almost immediately and my husbad was freaked out because apparently, my entire body had jerked off the bed. Not like a supernatural thing, but like I'd pushed myself up to jump, full body, up in the air. And then I woke up, breathing heavily. 

Anyways. I don't know what I'm looking for. I'm just wondering if anyone has had similar experiences. I'm getting freaked out and my sleep has become hilarious because I don't do it all because these dreams and this paralyis has made me terrified of doing so. 

Anyone have any input or similarties? 

2

First of all, don't panic. You're not crazy and you're not alone! I've had sleep paralysis with all its attendant hallucinations and "special effects" for 50 years.

Since you refer to your husband, I'm assuming you're a woman - though fortunately in this enlightened age men are allowed to have husbands too. On that assumption, and given that you mention having SP for over 20 years: do you think you might be approaching the menopause? It's common for SP to peak around this time, and even start in women who didn't have it before. I had a relatively early menopause at age 45, and my SP started getting markedly worse in the couple of years before that. It continued to escalate, reaching its peak in the the 18-month period when I was having hot flushes, then declined rapidly to the point where I only have about one episode a month now (at age 72). It's usual for SP to decline with age in both sexes, especially in post-menopausal women.

Vivid dreams are also common in people with SP. When I was young I used to have lucid dreams too. That's the kind where you actually realise you're in a dream and can do anything you want. Sadly, I never experience that heart-piercing moment of awareness of being in a dream these days but many of my dreams are still semi-lucid, in that I'm vaguely aware of directing the action at some level.

I too dream complex scenarios about people I've never met, that stay with me all day. I still remember some of them many years later. About 30 years ago I dreamed that I was a man accused of raping a child. I was in the dock while the mother gave evidence. She broke down in the witness box while describing how she'd found her little girl. I still remember to this day the white-hot anger I felt with her because I knew this would turn the jury completely against me.

These "normal" dreams are actually becoming more frequent and vivid as I age. By "normal", I mean the kind of dreams one has while asleep and not awake and struggling in SP. However, like you, I used to have all kinds of weird lucid dreams in the SP state, involving people coming into my bedroom etc.

I've also had the odd special effect like you. It's amazing what our bodies are capable of. I don't think I've ever thrown myself into the air, but I occasionally used to feel myself vibrating violently while paralysed. This always terrified me as it made me feel as if my body was actually going to disintegrate. I used to get all kinds of tactile and proprioceptive hallucinations - coming under violent (and painful) physical attack from unseen aggressors, feeling I was hanging upside-down or flying (or being thrown) around the room etc. I therefore dismissed the perceived vibrations as another kind of hallucination - till the night 40 years ago when I broke out of one of these attacks to find my boyfriend in a state of terror beside me. It seems I'd really been vibrating at an impossible frequency!

You don't mention your triggers. Presumably you've discovered them after more than 20 years of this? My main trigger is getting too warm in bed. That will guarantee an attack, even in these much calmer days. Another one is sleeping too much, though some people find not getting enough sleep will trigger them. Hormonal influences will do it, as already mentioned, and so will stress and anxiety - especially anxiety about having another attack. Some people find that eating certain foods or drinking alcohol too late in the evening will bring it on. There's also some evidence to suggest the temporal lobes of SP sufferers are more sensitive to electromagnetic or geomagnetic influences. Did anything change in your immediate environment around the time the attacks started getting worse? Did you move your bed? A new electrical or radio installation in the house or the neighbourhood? My attacks were always much worse when sleeping in my mother's house, where overhead high-tension cables ran just 20 yards away and we were about 100 yards from an electrical substation that hummed all night. Identifying and avoiding your triggers can go a long way towards reducing the frequency and severity of attacks.

If you want to go the medication route, the older tricyclic antidepressants (like amitriptyline for example) will completely suppress REM or dream sleep, which is the phase from which SP arises. Doctors seem very ready to prescribe these drugs for SP these days. However, they don't cure the condition, they only suppress it while you're taking the medication, and the medications themselves have a lot of side-effects and are difficult to withdraw from. Personally I've never been tempted to take them.

Did you know the condition is strongly hereditary, by the way? Though it always has to start somewhere, of course. My father, at least one of his siblings and my grandmother all had it too. My father's hallucinations were even worse than mine, if anything. I mainly get tactile hallucinations, with occasional auditory inputs (running footsteps, doors banging) but he had vivid hallucinations affecting most of his senses. He even used to have the much rarer olfactory hallucinations - he'd see disgusting things and smell them too! I didn't find any of this out till 20 years after my own SP started. It seems my mother forbade him to tell me about it as she feared it was a sign of insanity in the family!

Try to stay calm about all this. The more scared you are of sleeping, the worse the episodes will be. Sometimes, during bad periods, I'd take a very small dose of the older antihistamines - the type that make you sleepy - an hour or so before going to bed. This would calm me down sufficiently to help me sleep, and this class of antihistamines also has a mild REM suppressing tendency. But you shouldn't take them for more than two or three nights in a row, as it's easy to develop tolerance to them and they stop working.

Don't hesitate to post again, or send me a private message if you want to. Click on the envelope icon under my avatar. PMs via this site don't contain viruses or expose the ID of either party. And don't despair - this will eventually improve.

3

What can I add to that, eh?

Nuthin' useful. I think has covered it all.

I used to get SP a lot but it's stopped now.

It DID peak at the menopause, now I think about it.

So some similarities but not as many. But I do know that loads of people have this and it isn't harmful, as far as I know.

love Tess xx

4

Agreeing with Tess, think lily has basically covered it all. I've had sleep paralysis for years too although I'm only 21. Although SP is always associated with scary visions mine aren't always scary. I noticed they're more scary when I'm stressed and when panic as you've learned makes it worse. I usually just pretend it's not happening and when it's scary I just remind myself I'm just having an episode and coke right out of it.

I guess I'm not much help since I've always been able to get out of them for some reason. Just focusing, guess I'm lucky haha.

5

Sleep paralysis sucks, and any of us who experience it often can totally relate. I'm 23 and first experienced this at 16. Mainly the worst thing is that it keeps me up on work nights. I occasionally take Tylenol pm, Advil pm, etc and I less likely had incidents in that case, but it still doesn't always work and I DO NOT like relying on or taking that crap. I find it best when I go to bed with an exhausted/relaxed mind (almost impossible I know) and to try to let go and forget (block out) anxiety. When that all fails I try to just let the Sleep Paralysis take me under. Fighting it and rejecting it is my natural reaction. But it also causes serious anxiety. I've learned how to "snap out" of It and I've also learned when I know it's about to occur. Sounds become constant and flat I guess and it sounds like I'm in a wind tunnel, with the volume slowly increasing. I can slowly slowly, which is hard as hell, close my hand in a fist and sort of jump out of it. I can control my breathing somewhat in my paralysis state and I can make my self hyperventilate to wake myself up. Weird but it works. My girlfriend doesn't know what to think. I've had nights with as much as 7 or 8 episodes back to back. I've seen myself from above, this, that, and the other. Best way to prevent; avoid stress and anxiety. No guarantees, but it helps.

6

Unfortunately, I am not even close (hopefully, fingers crossed) to menopause. Also, I think I didn't explain enough when I said I threw myself off the bed. It wasn't some insane toss! It was just a jerk that was forceful enough to move my entire body off the body. Nothing insane. 

It's been worse this week. I don't want to say worse than ever because I know I've had days that are miserable. I have a Withings watch that tracks my sleep and my average for the week is three hours a night. I keep having these awful dreams that seem real. Last year, I recall having dreams that were so vivd that I would get mad at my husband for not remembering things that happened...in my dream which didn't actuall happen. 

Does anyone have anything that helps them sleep through the night? 

7

Hi. I used to suffer from these regularly. If I nodded off in the evening I knew for certain I would have an episode that night. Sometimes I’d nod off accidentally then I’d dread heading to bed knowing what was to come.
Interestingly, they mostly stopped when I was prescribed Seroxat which was later changed to Citalopram. Although these are antidepressants they were prescribed for a physical issue linked to an accidental overdose when a GP prescribed the wrong strength of medication to me. Within days of starting the medication the literally disappeared.
Last night I had my first episode on over a year despite having taken my meds so I have no idea what caused it or whether they’re now back again regularly. Tonight may give a clue.
They often (but not always) start with what now seem to be called “Brain Zaps” as I’m falling asleep. Then the paralysis almost washes over me like a wave leaving me unable to move and struggling to breathe or make a sound. It seems the more I fight it the longer it goes on for and when I used to get them regularly I became quite good at relaxing until they passed. Of course each time one seemed to be going on longer than usual I’d start to panic that this might be the one I didn’t come out of.
My mother once mentioned to my GP about the episodes and his response was that I “sounded a bit mad” which was incredibly helpful.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone or anything during an episode but there is certainly a real sense of impending doom and I have “sensed” that something or someone is around me. The one I had last night was slightly different as it started with me dreaming I was going down stairs when I “sensed” something swoop down behind me and put me in a bear hug around my chest. I felt pain and a vibrating sensation along with odd visuals and made the rooky mistake of trying to move before it had completely finished which seemed to set it off again for another “however long it was”, I would guess about 30 seconds.
Over the many times I’ve had these I’ve had many different things happen including loud whistling, hearing my own breathing at incredible volume, pulsing pain in my teeth, a sense of vibrating, a sense of falling and lots of other weird and wonderful things. I did consider these were dreams or nightmares but on several occasions they happened and I was able to see my clock radio and I was rational enough to make a note of the time so I could check it when it wore off. It always matched.
So, sorry to waffle but I thought it might help anyone having them for the first time. Mine went on for years before the antidepressants stopped them (until last night) and if it’s any reassurance they haven’t killed me yet. They are however really rather disconcerting and can leave you feeling incredibly shook up once they’ve gone. Interestingly I have never had two in a single night. Once I’ve had one I know the rest of my night will be undisturbed.