I just experienced sleep paralysis for the first time 🤯

this used to happen to me every night growing up! i have no idea why but it was terrifying as a child. it happens every so often now, mostly when i don’t get enough sleep or i’m stressed.

I don’t have this but sometimes it feels like I’m awake and dreaming at the same time so I can influence what happens in my dream. Not sure if that is the same switch error the other way round 😅

I noticed this happens to me when I’ve had very little sleep throughout the week. The less sleep I get the higher the chances of experience sleep paralysis. I don’t see dark shadows, instead my mind makes me believe that there is family in the same room, and can even hear them talking but when I wake up. No one is there.

Yes. It happens when I’m stressed out. My brain is half awake. I suddenly lose my ability to breathe. I keep commanding my body to breathe but I can’t. I can’t move. It goes on for what feels like forever. That’s until I finally grasp for air. NOW I know that I should sit up immediately & take deep breaths when this happens. Otherwise, it’ll happen again… & again…& again 🫠

So for those asking, it’s this feeling where you’re awake but you can’t move or speak, and sometimes you might feel a presence or see shadows. That’s what happened to me and it was weirdddd 🫠 After I looked it up, here’s how I understand sleep paralysis: Basically when we sleep, our brain has a kind of “switch” that keeps our muscles from moving so we don’t act out our dreams lol. Normally this resets when we wake up. Sleep paralysis happens when your mind wakes up but your body hasn’t caught up yet, so it feels like you’re trapped in a body that can’t move or speak. Because your brain is still partly dreaming while you’re waking up, it tries to make sense of what’s happening and kind of mixes dream stuff with your real environment. So you think you’re actually awake, but since you can’t move or speak your brain is like ¿???! and starts creating an explanation for why you can’t move, which can involve feeling a presence in the room 🙃 That’s also why people have connected this experience to supernatural things. In Mexico, people say “se me subió el muerto,” which could maybe be translates to “the dead one climbed on top of me”. If you have a different name for it I would love to hear it 😂

had that in my childhood, not my favourite experience, you are awake, but you cant move and cant say anything to ask for help