The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli, 1781.
I have done a presentation on Sleep Paralysis sometime back in school for my public sleeping class, inspired by own my occasional episodes of this sleeping disorder. However, my previous experience and knowledge of it still couldn’t prevent me from panicking and being paralyzed with fear last night.
Last night, I was having trouble sleeping. I was really tired but my mind seemed to be awake and I couldn’t relax. My pillow and bed was uncomfortable, both having lost their firmness to support my sleeping posture properly. To top it off, it was a hot, noisy, humid night with people walking about, burning joss paper, and praying to the Sky God as well as a continuous string of noisy vehicles going “Vroooom! Vroooom!” one after another. I tried to clear my mind and count sheep. After a while, I just decided to count numbers, because I didn’t like my visualizations of sheep and somehow felt that I was starting to drift off to sleep.
It was then, as I was drifting off to sleep that I felt a tingling in my limbs.
I thought to myself ,”That’s odd…why the tingling? Pins and needles?”
And then I realised it was Sleep Paralysis kicking in.
I immediately tried to turn to my side to counter it, but it was TOO LATE.
My whole body started tingling and vibrating all over and suddenly, there was this huge pressure on my chest and stomach.
SOMETHING WAS CRUSHING ME.
I started to panic a little and started shaking more. The pressure got worse.
“Calm down, calm down. Deep breaths…This is just another irritating sleep paralysis episode,” I told myself. My body started relaxing a bit and the shaking ease slightly, although the pressure was still there, crushing my chest and stomach.
“It’s just another sleep paralysis episode, not like it’s some sleep demon sitting down on you,” I joked to myself.
Bad move.
Upon thinking “sleep demon”, my mind called out a visual of a ugly goblin-like creature and fear kicked in. I The tingling, vibrating and shaking all intensified and the pressure got worst.
Then I lost it. I went into full-mode panicking and felt terrified.
My mind just went “SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!” but somehow I managed to blocked out the full visual of the ugly goblin- like creature. It was just an outline or an imprint of it, in the dark (my eyes were closed).
“WHAT DO I DO? WHAT DO I DO?! THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE! THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE” I screamed to myself as fear filled my body.
Then a thought popped into my mind – Albert.
Yes, I’ll think of Albert. Albert kicks around in his sleep so much and I shall do the same, I thought.
Muttering Albert’s name to distract myself from the intense fear, I started fighting the sleep paralysis. I try to move but I was shaking too much and the awful pressure pinned me down. I tried to kick and fling about, but I was frozen to where I was.
And then, I remembered what I learnt about getting out of the paralysis. Start by wriggling your fingers and toes.
Yes. WRIGGLE!!!
Somehow after that, I managed to jerk myself awake. The tingling still continued on a bit and I was still freaked out.
Wow. What a Sleep Paralysis episode. Freaky is the only word to describe it.
I then went downstairs to get some water to drink and calm myself down. Oddly enough, my lower abdominal started to hurt. My stomach also started to hurt a little, like I had gastric.
Is that why I felt that horrible pressure on me?
Now that I’m wide awake and less freaked out, I’m going to examine the factors that cause the sleep paralysis.
Factors I think contributed to sleep paralysis
1) Noisy background – It was hard to sleep with all that noise!
2) Insomnia, disrupted sleep schedule – I was having a hard time getting to sleep.
3) Stomachache and gastric – I ate some bread and drank some milk after that. And puked all of it out together with the meat buns I had for dinner. I guess I’m having some heartburn/acid reflux again. Need to eat smaller, more frequent meals and stock up on my anti-acids 
4) Warm, humid and feeling dry – I felt so hot, dry and dehydrated last night.
5) Uncomfortable in bed – I need to change my pillow and mattress soon.
6) Stress – Unable to relax maybe a factor
7) PMS – Hormones imbalance? Maybe I need more vitamins.
Going back to sleep
It was hard getting back to sleep again. A few other times when I was drifting off to sleep, even on my side, I felt the tingling feeling and had to jerk myself awake before the whole thing started again. Later on, I did have another episode of sleep paralysis. There was something choking my neck! Help! And then I wake up, and everyone is awake. I went downstairs and started to tell my mom about it. We went back up to my room, to find my dad flopped on my bed, relaxing and my brother sitting in my chair. My brother? No wait, isn’t he supposed to be back only on Friday?? Why is he-No wait. It was a dream.
I dreamed of sleep paralysis in my dream and waking up. Gosh. My neck muscles hurt. Bad pillow causing bad sleep posture. That explains the choking in the dream, I suppose.
Eventually, I managed to drift off to sleep (slightly half-awake), and dreamed about other things like trying to sleep and something happening with my friends.
This is one of the worst, perhaps the worst bout of sleep paralysis so far. I never had the crushing feeling previously and neither was I so freaked out with fear. I’m so freaked out that I can’t stop thinking about it when I’m awake, in the day.
Hopefully, it won’t happen again tonight.
I miss my good quality SLEEP that I haven’t really had the past week.
Note to self:
- Stock up on vitamins to counter PMS and insomina
- Get better mattress and pillow
- Try to exercise more
- And get a night light so it will be easier to sleep after another $%^#! freaking sleep paralysis
