Is everyone lying about having sleep paralysis? - Because I think they are

[Akashic Retard]

See title

 

[Apochrypha]

Kids and millennials on the internet fake it for attention, just like they do with any other mental illness or disability. There's no way that many people actually have it. Its not unlike people claiming they have trypophobia - which isn't fucking real.

 

[SandyCat]

Sleep paralysis is real but some people do ham it up for sure

 

[anionfarflung]

I've been having it regularly since the age of about 6 or 7.

I think it's more prevalent than people think; it's just that our culture doesn't have a folklore about it, aside from stuff like alien abductions.

If you look at Newfoundland, for example, they do have a folklore around the phenomenon - the Old Hag. The Japanese have Kanashibari. I suppose most of western Europe had incubus / succubus in the past, but there really isn't a widespread recognition of the phenomenon under one name in the current West so that people recognize just how common it is. Many individual experiences will chalk it up to demon possession, or a haunting, or a nightmare, or what have you.

See The Terror That Comes in the Night by David Hufford for more info.

 

[PaleTay]

Yes, it's actually real, I see it too.

 

[Usb2200a]

I’ve had it on and off since a child. It’s like a invisible demonic force and it’s terrifying. My younger brother has it too but it manifests in his mind as an alien abudtion. I don’t talk about it i.r.l. because it seems like I’m seeking attention or to be special. I just wish it would stop.

 

[Testacles Maximus]

I lie about having it when I’m not in the mood.

 

[Jason Wynn]

Agreed. It absolutely is real, but it’s incredibly rare. I’ve talked to more people than I can remember count of who claim to have it and they all have that “leik I totes see demons and ghosts every night I’m so tortured yo!” mentality

Shut the fuck up. You don’t have sleep paralysis, you’re just another millennial/zoomer faggot with no personality of your own aping what you see online because you want to be the specialist snowflake of all

 

[sasazuka]

What's the lie, that people can still dream/hallucinate in a semi-aware hypnagogic state?

 

[Dr. Ricearoni]

I experienced it once, when I was very young. I dreamt there was a witch raising the dead and realized I was dreaming but couldn't wake up. In my head I rationalized it as it being some magic she was using to torment me. I remember forcing my eyes open a few times and being unable to move during before slipping back under. I have never experienced this since.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Is it possible to only have it once? Because I had something happen one time that I THINK was sleep paralysis, and never before or since.

 

[Make Anime Illegal]

I get it pretty regularly but only when my sleep has been shit, like after an all nighter. I don't see demons or shit, though. I just wake up and can't move for like a minute. At this point I'm used to it, but the first time I had it I didn't know what was happening and that was terrifying.

 

[Dysnomia]

Nope. I suffered with it for years and had absence seizures and severe migraines. I actually had my brain scanned because the doctor thought I might have a tumor. I didn't. The seizures eventually stopped. But I still get the occasional migraine or sleep paralysis. I'm missing a small piece of my cervical spine, which was discovered when they did the scan. It's called a winking owl sign. Which is kind of cool sounding. It explains why my neck always felt a bit stiff and I got burning pains in the back of my head when I was a kid.

Agreed. It absolutely is real, but it’s incredibly rare. I’ve talked to more people than I can remember count of who claim to have it and they all have that “leik I totes see demons and ghosts every night I’m so tortured yo!” mentality

Shut the fuck up. You don’t have sleep paralysis, you’re just another millennial/zoomer faggot with no personality of your own aping what you see online because you want to be the specialist snowflake of all

The funny thing is that I never saw any demons until I heard it called "old hag syndrome" and people called into Coast To Coast claiming some evil old witch was hovering above them. What I usually experienced was weird stuff like guys playing cards at the foot of my bed asking if I wanted to join them and some cowboy who thought I was dying. I think we were married or something.

Then it started to be dragons and werewolves trying to eat my head and a grim reaper hovering over me. Since I was mostly aware I'd just try to talk to them. "Hey how's it going? What to be friends?" and then stuff would stop being scary. Dreams are very open to suggestion. It's why you can have a nightmare about Jason if you marathon Friday the 13th movies.

The sensation however could be very painful. It was like some force of energy ripping through my body and sometimes bad head pain. No idea why. But the head pain is probably related to migraines and the migraines might have to do with my weird ass cervical spine. There's a dislocation in there to make up for the missing pedicle. I take a low dose of Baclofen before bed and it really helps with the morning neck pain. It's like 95% gone. I'm wondering if the Baclofen made the sleep paralysis subside a lot on frequency.

People say it's more common if you sleep on your back, which I can't do because I find it uncomfortable. It only happened when I was on my stomach. You end up in a semi-aware state where your body is paralyzed but your mind isn't fully asleep yet. There are no demons and ghosts hovering around you. It's just your mind playing tricks on you.

 

[Psychotron]

TFW noone to sleep paralysis with me

 

[Shig O'nella]

Is it possible to only have it once? Because I had something happen one time that I THINK was sleep paralysis, and never before or since.

Yes.

 

[Daym Drops]

as real as chronic illness

 

[The Southwest Strangla]

I use to get it sometimes when I was younger/young adult and don’t know why people find it interesting. Yes, it’s not fun, but it’s not like some kind of weird phenomenon. I think they are trying to morph it into some kind of “dark” personality

 

[AMERICA]

You're more likely to experience sleep paralysis if you sleep on your back. If you want to try to induce it to see what it feels like for some crazy reason, I've found that I experience sleep paralysis the most when I lie on my back and resist the urge to move. You know those little jolts when you're just seconds away from falling asleep, sometimes you get the urge to move? Don't. Stay completely still and if you're "lucky" you'll experience sleep paralysis.

 

[anionfarflung]

Is it possible to only have it once? Because I had something happen one time that I THINK was sleep paralysis, and never before or since.

Yes, it's possible to have it only once, or to remember having it only once while forgetting other episodes.

The only people more ridiculous than those who pretend to have popular conditions because they see them on the Internet are the failures who pretend to be experts on something they're idiots about.

It's a risible claim that it's "incredibly rare."

Recognition of the fact that it's not "incredibly rare" is, in fact, a way to debunk a bunch of the nonsense in this world.

"I was abducted by aliens!" - nope you just had an episode of the not incredibly rare (awareness during) sleep paralysis.

"I was attacked by a demon!" - nope you just had an episode of the not incredibly rare (awareness during) sleep paralysis.

"I had an out-of-the-body experience!" - nope you just had an episode of the not incredibly rare (awareness during) sleep paralysis.

And so on.

Because there is not a name given in our culture for an uncommon-yet-not-incredibly-rare phenomenon (until -perhaps recently - "sleep paralysis" ), an experience that lends itself to interpretation colored by a subject's beliefs, there are all sorts of descriptions of bizarre parasomnia events that sleep paralysis is a good candidate to explain.

If you know the salient characteristics of the phenomenon you can see it's a possible explanation for a lot of the flaky supernatural bs people claim out there.

You're more likely to experience sleep paralysis if you sleep on your back. If you want to try to induce it to see what it feels like for some crazy reason, I've found that I experience sleep paralysis the most when I lie on my back and resist the urge to move. You know those little jolts when you're just seconds away from falling asleep, sometimes you get the urge to move? Don't. Stay completely still and if you're "lucky" you'll experience sleep paralysis.

The supine sleeping position does seem to be a possible trigger for some people, along with a sleep debt. The most common explanation for it is that the experiencer falls into REM too fast, and the cataplexy that accompanies REM is initiated before you fully lose consciousness.

I'm Gen X btw, and talked about this as an experiencer on listservs (e.g. Trionica's ASP-L ) before there was a WWW.

One more thing: a lot of medical professionals consider it a symptom of narcolepsy, or at least commonly occurring along with narcolepsy. I haven't been diagnosed to rule it out, but I don't believe that I am narcoleptic.

 

[sasazuka]

I get the hypnagogic sleep paralysis hallucination phenomenon occasionally but, for me, it's never been anything interesting in terms of mythical or supernatural creatures, it's just been moving patterns that last maybe a minute at most, which is about as bland as it gets.

When I was a kid, I used to sometimes see flowers and plants on the ceiling or, on one occasion, the colourful rectangle pattern on the inside of the comforter which impossibly started scrolling like movie credits, but, as an adult, it's taken the form of plain text files that I almost feel like I could read but it's just barely out of focus. I think that's just my half-asleep brain interpreting the popcorn texture ceiling as computer text.