[payporanymn]

there is insomnia and then there are all other sleep problems we don't hear about everyday.

a couple of years back i watched a show about the "other" sleep disorders. it was mostly about the disorder where people fall asleep all the time and sleep paralysis.

at first i felt like i can somewhat relate to sleep paralysis, but due to the subjective experience of the girl that was interviewed in this documentary, i thought that this isn't the case for me.

yesterday, out of the blue, i decided to look up sleeping disorders. i ended up on the wiki page for sleep paralysis (plz look it up if you'd like). the objective description of the disorder fully fits my profile.

it started around the time of my parents’ divorce (almost 5 years ago). i might have had earlier episodes, but i don't remember them.

here are some of the thought causes of the paralysis
sleeping in a face upwards or supine position
increased stress
sudden environmental/lifestyle changes
a lucid dream that immediately precedes the episode.
excessive consumption of alcohol coupled with lack of adequate sleep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sleep_paralysis

when the paralysis occurs with me i am always in a face upwards position. stress obviously relates because i see horrible things. lifestyle changes, maybe. i did have a couple of really bad episodes when i was pregnant. and lucid dreaming... i can't really remember the dreams i have before the episode because of the intensity of the episode itself. i do though sometimes able to overpower myself and come out of my body via astral projection. the last cause is surely not my style

anyways the episodes occur like this: i wake up, see the room as it is. everything so real, i think i am just having a super realistic dream. i can't move, not even my eyes (sometimes barely). this causes panic right away. due to my neuralgia situation this is very dangerous. usually i see a family member coming into the room. and then something really scary happens. like one time, my mother set down on the bed and then tried to eat me. i can’t speak, i try to scream but it is impossible. my mother reported the same ‘dreams’ where she can’t move, nor speak.

why is it important for me to know i have sleep paralysis? well, because using this i can categorize what was an episode and what was real. on the wiki page, it says that these episodes might explain alien or ghost visitation. the last time i saw a ghost in my room i was able to rub my eyes, so i know i wasn’t sleeping. when a ufo landed outside of a house i was in, i was able to spring up in bed. also now i know when i am actually astral traveling in a dream. if i can move around my room and nothing scary jumps out, then i am astral projecting. if on the other hand, i can move but there is still some sort of story line going on (still in my room but events are occurring) i know that it is a lucid dream or if i am not in control of my movement then it is a normal dream. btw, i often have ‘rubber legs’ in dreams, as in i can barely move my legs. or sometimes i can’t look up and have to walk around in my dream staring at the floor.

anyone with similar experience? did anyone ever see something in their bedroom that should be there yet you could not move a muscle? this can surely explain a lot of demonic visitation. people usually say that they could not move when they saw a demon in the corner of their room or something like that. for my mom the story is usually the same. someone comes floating through the window and then tries to chock her. one thing is to disregard this as sleep paralysis. the other way, the force that was there paralysed her. one time, i awoke to find a huge imprint of a hand on my stomach. kind of scared the s*** out of me.
reality is sure hard to define.

love and light and love,
et