Most of you won’t have heard the word “Sleep Paralysis” in your life and those who have heard must not have experienced it. Only those who have experienced it understand how terrible it is.
Sleep Paralysis is a rare phenomenon that happens with people for just a couple of minutes or so but those few minutes are epic shit and can leave you traumatised.
So what exactly is Sleep Paralysis? It is really important to understand for you even if you have never suffered it so that you can show a little empathy towards those who go through it quite often.
1. Those who go through Sleep Paralysis are convinced that some external force take them over during sleep. They feel a great pressure on their body due to which they can’t move it for a long time. Even after getting awake, the body takes time to come out of the trauma and pain.
2. Only 8% of world population feel Sleep Paralysis.
3. During Sleep Paralysis, a person loses control over its muscular movements but the ocular and respiratory movements are normal.
4. While experiencing Sleep Paralysis, a person is not able to even speak. This is the reason that you can’t call Sleep Paralysis as night terror because it’s a health condition where a person can’t even move slightly whereas during night terrors you can simply get up after feeling scared.
5. While experiencing Sleep Paralysis some people start imagining Incubus or Succubus. In simple words, they feel someone was having s*x with them during sleep and it’s depressing AF. The fact that makes it so scary is that you feel all this while your mind is alert and not in deep sleep.
An alert mind believes what it sees so the things get nasty for those who suffer from it.
6. The problem of Sleep Paralysis doesn’t cause any physical harm but it can leave you depressed. Also, it passes to future generations through genes.
7. Most people experience it during their teenage and it gets extended to an age of 30 also. You are most likely to experience it in the period of 20 to 30 years.
8. Stress and sleep deprivation are believed to be a couple of main reasons that cause this health condition. You can try to get rid of it through counselling and self-affirmation that after all, it’s just a dream. Once you affirm your mind that it’s not real then the condition will slowly start losing grip on you.
Also, try to take proper and uniform sleep to avoid sleep paralysis episodes.
9. Sleep paralysis is believed to occur in one of the two transitions i.e. while going to sleep or before waking up.
If you experience it while going to sleep than it’s called ‘hypnagogic’ sleep paralysis and if it happens while waking up, it’s called as ‘hypnopompic’ sleep paralysis.
10. It mostly lasts for a few seconds or a couple of minutes but the time period seems more when you experience it. If the condition is consistent then you should seek the medical help.
What are your thoughts on it?