Angie wrote on Jan 26th, 2009 at 10:54am:I'm new here, but eager to participate
I was wondering what everyone's take on/experiences with sleep paralysis is? I've had one recent odd experience, and I'm curious if others have had anything similar happen...
A few months ago I woke up hearing an odd mechanical/buzzing noise and seeing a blue pulsating light above me on the ceiling. I was frightened and tried to move but couldn't. I started trying to call for my husband but couldn't get any sound out. This lasted for about 20 seconds before I was finally able to snap myself out of it. Now I'm wondering if I could have done something more with this experience if I hadn't fought myself out of it.
Thanks for any thoughts.
I've had a few of these episodes too. They are not fun! While it's happening I completely believe that what I'm experiencing is physically happening to me. Just the fact that I try to scream but can't is scary enough. But the feeling of being unable to move and feeling like I am having a heart attack is mind-blowing scary.
I don't know the cure for getting past the fear and altering the experience to something different. My thoughts are that this kind of episode is very similar to what a person stuck in the afterlife, in a fear, is experiencing.
It is definitely a type of OBE, but I much better prefer the ones where I just find myself out and about somewhere, rather than stuck. It's so much easier to have an OBE from the mind awake/body asleep state, than this sleep paralysis state. I don't believe they are the same thing. Maybe close, but not the same.
I've never had fear or experienced weird things in the mind awake/body asleep state.
I would think that the best way to handle these are to train yourself to recognize this state, and despite the fear and annoyances, try to project your conscious awareness elsewhere with your thoughts. But that can be hard to do. Ever wonder why people just stand still when something is about to hit them? There's that moment where they are frozen and all it would take is the thought to move, but they don't think it. They just stand there.
Same thing here. All it would take is the thought of wanting to be somewhere else or experiencing something else. But it takes the presence of mind to decide to do so.