Time to get a look into what makes me tick. Or not tick. Whatever.
How many people out in the blogosphere suffer from a sleep disorder? Show of hands? Probably many. Insomnia,sleep apnea, sleep walking, night terrors, all sorts of fun things to drive us mad.
I know I suffer from one such disorder. The disorder I have is actually quite common, almost everyone has been through it at least once. There is no treatment, it's not really known what causes it, and it's horrific.
Sleep Paralysis.
What's that? Long story short, when you go into a REM state of sleep your body paralysis itself to keep you from acting out your dreams and hurting yourself. Makes a whole lot of sense, THANK YOU BODY FOR BEING SO AWESOME AND FUNCTIONING LIKE THIS! Human body= amazing. I'm getting sidetracked...ANYWAYS! When a person experiences SP their body goes into REM state and paralysis itself, but your mind wakes up.
If you haven't been through this at least once let me detail what this is like.
You open your eyes, it takes an immense amount of effort, your body is not responding to your minds commands to move, a finger, a toe, your mouth to scream but nothing comes out and your lips stay shut. All the while sleep is pulling you back, your eyelids are trying to shut and drag you back to, what is surely, a sleep so deep and dark you'll never wake up. You realize that not only are you unable to move, you are unable to breath. That's when you wrench your eyes back open and see horrific demons. Everywhere, shadowy, dark, menacing demons. Perched on your chest, sharp bony fingers around your throat, standing in the doorway, crawling along the ceiling, holding your limbs down! These creatures are the cause of your unmoving body and the sheer terror is enough to make you jerk and pull yourself from the demons grasp only to find that-
You're sitting in your bed, the tv is still on, there are no demons and you can move and breath just fine? You're bf rolls over to ask what's wrong and you say
"Just SP again. Did I scream this time?"
Welcome to the last week of my life. Actually welcome to most of my nights from my entire life. My first SP attack was at the age of five. I thought I was being possessed by demons. It has never been constant or on a schedule but I get it in clusters for weeks or months at a time and then it's gone for a while. Repeat process. It wasn't until I was sixteen that I learned what Sleep Paralysis, or Old Hag Syndrome, was what plagued me and not some vengeful tortuous spirits.
The long and short of it is, my body hits REM, I wake up, because I am still somewhat asleep, I am breathing slowly and deeply and it seems to me like I am not breathing at all. So, I'm unable to move or breath, this send me into panic mode and since I am still asleep, I am still dreaming. Begin nightmare hallucinations.
It's not always the psychotic, choking demons, sometimes it's a little girl holding a leather bound book out to me. Sometimes it's a creature with no arms or legs, a slit for a mouth that is sewn shut and terrifying black holes for eyes. Sometimes it's nothing because I realize what is happening before I fully panic and can wake myself up. The only way to actually wake up from SP is to force yourself to move, once that happens you're good to go.
Most people have had at least one experience with SP and either don't remember it or just ignore it. For some people, like myself, it's chronic.
I hate it. I sleep very lightly because I am afraid of REM sleep, any noise wakes me up. When I do go into a deep sleep I have to fight off nightmares by staying awake for days after. This causes me to become exhausted and then start the cycle all over again. Exhausted sleep means having less of a chance of waking myself up. But I'm terrified to sleep.
It's Saturday, my day to sleep in, I've been awake since five thirty. I fell asleep at two.
2 comments:
Oh my gosh Beth! Ok, I'm not sure I had exactly what you have, but there was a time when I went through this thing where my mind and consciousness would wake before my body and it would scare the hell out of me. Being locked in a body that was utterly unresponsive, limp and dead. But on the inside was a completely conscious me screaming at my body to wake up. I'd often wake up gasping for breath and at times crying, but whenever I tried to explain it to people they thought I was crazy. This happened weeks on end, and sleep became a grudgingly accommodated necessity. I can't imaging seeing demons on top of that feeling of complete helplessness. thanks for this post! It's good to know you're not the only one and that you're not crazy and that it really is something called SP. Geez, I hope there is some way to help this! I mean, I don't have it anymore so there has to be a way to fix it right? Love you beth! Hope this works out, :D I'll keep you in my prayers. Nightmares are so not just for children. Sometimes they can be the reality we wake up to.
Yikes! That's rough. And it also explains a lot :) just kidding. I've never had anything like that (to my knowledge), but I DID have chronic insomnia for six years....
oh and we had to study that painting in my art history class. pretttty strange one.
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