re: Anyone Else Occasionally Experience Sleep Paralysis/Lucid Dreams?

Yes
The cause of mine was sleep apnea
It is a common symptom of sleep apnea
Sometimes sleep studies help figure this out.

I have been on the edge of lucid dreaming lately. Happens about once a week now.

I close my eyes when I lay down and just concentrate on looking into the nothingness. When it happens, I start to see very vivid images. Not like lying there imagining something, I’m seeing it with my eyes as if it was real. People, cityscapes, all kinds of crazy stuff. Not like what you remember from a dream after you’ve woken up, that seems less real. This is vivid.

Then one of two things happens. I’m seeing this and thinking how cool it is and will either go on to sleep, or I’ll realize that maybe I am asleep and notice my breathing and REM and then my eyes will fly open and I’m awake.

With dreams, I’ll awaken and remember bits and pieces and eventually less and less, or nothing at all. With this, I still can remember and see the images.

It's happened a handful of times in my life and each time when I would finally say 'in Jesus name' it immediately stopped. That is how I know it's demonic.

it's not fun.

I get it maybe once every 6 months.

I will wake up and be unable to move. i try to just breathe through it and not freak out... that I will gain movement ability in a minute and it will be ok.

that first time though... it was scary AF

I haven't, and hope I never do. My mom has at least once, and it scared the hell out of her. With how she described it I want no part of it.

I've had it since college. Much less frequently now. And after a while you can learn to control it. You have to be calm (even when you don't believe that you can breathe) and think and concentrate your way out of it. Once you can move any part of your body, usually your fingers or toes, it goes away quickly.

The worst ones are double sleep paralysis. You think your way out of the first dream state, and then realize that you're in a second dream state. That takes a little more concentration to get out of.

Try that shite as a four year old. My childhood was hell.

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Else Occasionally Experience Sleep Paralysis

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Nope.

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Lucid Dreams

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Since age 12 or so, I pretty much only lucid dream.

A mirror is always the giveaway. My eye color naturally changes and the dream never gets it right. The dream is going along with me unaware, but I always end up looking in the mirror. I see my eyes, the mirror shatters, and then the entire thing goes haywire.

At that point, I'm either fully aware I'm dreaming and stuck in whatever scenario arises, or I'm aware with total control over everything. I'm not sure which is more terrifying. Whoop bracelet shows pulse going above 150 at times.

Sleep paralysis about 4-5 times in my life. Haven’t had an episode in 10+ years and attribute it to sleeping on my side. I slept on my back a lot when I had the episodes. I believe it was triggered by apnea. Mine always had a shadowy figure nearby and I would yell at the top of my lungs for help from family members I. the house. My daughter once heard me but said I was loud grunting and seemingly distressed. In my reality at the time, I was clearly yelling out her name over and over. I was very panicked and freaking out. Don’t know how I eventually escaped the paralysis but it always passed, leaving me a bit shaken at the experience.

I don’t like to revisit this memory but reading through this post has me compelled to talk about it for some reason.

In 2008, I was in my mid twenties and had moved back to my parents house to save some money after college. I was asleep one night when I woke up to see a shadowy figure in the corner of my room. It was still and unmoving. I don’t remember seeing any features other than its darkness.

Suddenly it was on my chest. It had slammed me to my bed so hard and it was eye to eye with me. Its face looked like the ‘screamer’ from the Van Gogh painting. I kept trying to cry out to my parents but I couldn’t breathe. I prayed to God and asked Jesus to save me. It was the single most frightening experience of my life and I don’t say that lightly. I felt helpless, hopeless, and like I was staring something worse than death in the face.

I don’t even like to recall it right now for fear that it would somehow come back to me. A poster above called the attack ‘demonic’ and I tend to agree. I find it so unsettling that so many people share the same story over and over: dark figure; heaviness on chest; hopelessness and fear.

I’ll never forget it and I pray it never happens again.