- [Robert] Why is it that sleep paralysis always makes me feel like I've been molested by a demon?
Well, science has the answer.
Imagine waking to the crushing and malevolent presence of a dark entity
asquat atop your chest. You open your eyes and you glimpse glowing coals and
snarling teeth. Every impulse compels you to fight against this foul embrace and
flee the room, but you can't move. You can't even scream.
Turn to the world of myth,
and this experience can easily be attributed to any manner of unnatural interloper.
Perhaps an alien abduction encounter, complete with an anal probing.
Or you might draw your explanation and the flavoring of the hallucination
itself from the world of demonology, such as a medieval incubus or succubus intent on
harvesting one sinner's semen and using it to impregnate another with satanic offspring.
But at heart, we have a very real experience — sleep paralysis,
a real biological event that distorts the line between the world of unconscious
dreaming and our conscious experience of reality.
Our most vividly remembered dreams occur during the depths of rapid eye movement or REM sleep.
We're talking bland reenactments of our daily life, surreal fantasies, erotic encounters and
unspeakable horrors. It all goes down in this unconscious shadow realm.
And since dreaming is in essence a mental simulation, the brain puts the
physical body on a kind of lockdown, except for shallow breathing and eye movements.
The dreamers body exists in a state of safe paralysis.
That's the plan anyway.
But sometimes this safety feature of REM sleep malfunctions.
The brain wakes up, but the body remains paralyzed in safe mode.
Imagine waking up in such a state,
either shortly after falling asleep, hypnagogic sleep paralysis or in the
twilight stillness of the morning — hypnopompic sleep paralysis.
You can't move; you can't talk; you may feel the weight of some alien body pressing down
on your chest, or even kinesthetic sensations, such as the feeling of being
dragged from your bed or vibrating, flying or falling.
And then there are the hallucinations, because both the falling asleep and waking states are
highly susceptible to hallucination. In the former, the descending rational mind
tries to make sense of nonlinear dream images; in the latter, the emerging dream
mind tries to make sense of real-world sights and sounds in the surrounding environment.
The hypnopompic state is often accompanied by vivid lingering imagery,
and it's the stuff of dreams, so the dreamer's sexual fantasies, belief
system and pop culture are all likely to color the visions and sensations that
are ripped from the dream world. And that's where all the probing and demonic
intercourse comes into play. Finally, imagine all of this hallucination and
bodily sensation wrapped around a strong sense of presence — the unmistakable and
primitive sensation that a menacing being or entity has invaded your personal space.
Now you might wonder why such an encounter has to be malevolent.
Why don't those dreams of Jon Hamm or Scarlett Johansson's snuggle-fests
ever follow us into the experience of sleep paralysis?
Well, it's largely a combination of situational and individual factors.
I mean, the experience itself is typically one of paralysis, labored breathing and an
inability to speak — attributes that are rarely associated with a comforting embrace.
But then the person's cognitive style, the stress sensitivity and
supernatural beliefs may exasperate the experience's negative connotations.
To be sure, not everyone's sleep paralysis experience is traumatizing.
People with a more analytical worldview tend to experience less post-episode distress.
And those who repeatedly experience sleep paralysis sometimes come to roll
with the experience, or transcend it into a more lucid positive encounter.
Depending on who's serving the stats, between a third and a full half of the
general population has experienced sleep paralysis. The exact cause and
psychological process remains elusive, but studies confirm that attacks are
particularly likely if the sleeper enters REM sleep quickly after hitting the pillow.
Stress and sleep pattern disruption can also affect your chances.
now I know some of you have your own sleep paralysis experiences to share so
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moon just isn't responsible for increases in crime pregnant women going
into labor or any other number of superstitions but when it comes to
slumber cuz the celestial body be messin with us in this Lee Bala sex is in one
corner we have women who may or may not need something called buv sleep and a
man who may or may not want to admit that they also want something called but
you be sleep oh hey I'm having a great time hanging out with you alien
civilization but pardon me I have to go be unconscious for eight hours and have
vivid hallucinations shut down many of my body systems in order to completely
lose track of time and space yeah