Sleep Disorders: What Does Sleep Paralysis Feel Like?

One afternoon during my freshman year of college, I was lying in my dorm room bed trying to nap. I was on my back, with my left arm stretched out palm up. In her bed opposite mine, my roommate had already beaten me to sleep. I lay there, cursing my usual insomnia, when suddenly things didn’t seem right.

My body felt heavy, stiff, in a word: paralyzed. I tried to pull my arm back, and found I couldn’t move it. My face was aimed at my roommate’s bed and I could not turn my head any other way. I heard the rushing of white noise in my ears. My eyes were closed, and then above the noise I could hear what I assumed to be my roommate talking. The words seemed incoherent and somehowâÂ?¦creepy. I opened my eyes with tremendous effort – they felt cemented shut. Once I forced them open, I could see my roommate peacefully slumbering away. The talking had stopped.

Unable to keep my eyelids open any longer, I let them close. The voice began again. I couldn’t speak or sit up, so I forced myself to look once more. Again, my roommate was fast asleep in silence. For a few minutes this went on; I grew more and more upset with each cycle.

While looking confusedly at the only view my locked muscles allowed, the door to my room opened a bit – I saw it in my peripheral vision. Unable to turn and look, I strained to follow the movement with my eyes. To my horror, something slinked into the room. It was dark-colored and creeping facedown across the floor.

My heart was racing wildly. My rational mind screamed that I must have been dreaming, but it felt very real. I couldn’t see what the creature was or where it had gone. Immobilized in my supine position, I was powerless to defend myself. Without warning, it leapt from the floor and sat on my chest, suffocating me. I couldn’t even call out for help.

Then suddenly my muscles were free. I was in bed, heart racing. Everything seemed as it had been when I laid down. My roommate was still asleep, and I was�awake.

This is not fiction. Although not “real,” it is true. Was I asleep? Was I awake? Turns out it was something in the middle. This is my clearest and most vivid experience with sleep paralysis. Just writing the words brought a chilll down my spine – the memory is still frightening. This isn’t my first or last episode, just the one that hit so strongly that I started to do some reading to root out an explanation.

All my life I’ve had very vivid dreams. I can always clearly remember them, and I can tell when I’m about to get sick because I’ll get what I call my “fever dreams” – crazy, delusional dreams (crazier than usual, anyway) that are my first sign that illness is on its way. And as a child, I was able to talk myself out of nightmares – I could dream-run into a corner, crunch down, and say, “It’s just a nightmare. Wake up,” over and over until I awoke.

I remember many vague dreams from childhood involving paralysis – no matter how hard I tried, I could neither move nor open my eyes. But most of those were during nightmares – dreams of other environments, of other activities. The above is the first time I can recall experiencing paralysis while thinking I was awake. My dream environment matched perfectly to my real environment, down the last detail.

When I started to do some searching online, I discovered a condition called sleep paralysis. According to the information I’ve found, it has been traced back through all of history. The first image I saw on one website was a Renaissance-period sketch of a person lying in their back, arm outstretched with a demon sitting on their chest. When I saw that, I almost fell out of my chair. I wasn’t making this all up!

Thankfully, sleep paralysis is not dangerous. Episodes usually occur when you’re at the border between sleep and wake – when you’re just drifting off or just waking up. The exact cause is not known, but one theory claims that during sleep the body goes into a natural state of partial paralysis, to keep you from flailing about and injuring yourself during dreams. This theory postulates that someone suffering from sleep paralysis begins to consciously wake before the body has completely come out of the paralyzed state. In other words, your mind is beginning to awaken and become aware while your body is still in sleep mode.

The condition is often accompanied by hallucinations, such as voices – which would explain what happened to me. Feeling a heavy pressure on your chest is typical during an episode, and historically that sensation has been accompanied by the very common hallucination of a demon or being, sometimes referred to as a “hag” sitting on you.

Sleep paralysis can happen only once in your lifetime, be a persistent nightly problem, or, like me, happen to you just once a while. It tends to develop in adolescents, although it can occur at any age and rarely develops after thirty. Although the “dream” can feel like forever, the state only lasts a few minutes, and you will come out of it just fine. The condition can also be accompanied by strong feelings of terror either specific (scary hallucinations) or vague (you’re terrified and don’t know why), or it can be peaceful – you realize you can’t move, but are not afraid. I have experienced both types.

I noticed that my episodes – which aren’t often – tend to surface when I’m most worn out. During my first year of college when they were at their most frequent, my sleeping patterns were anything but commendable. I’ve struggled with insomnia my whole life so I’m used to going on less sleep than others, but by “most worn out,” I mean from prolonged exhaustion.

Bear in mind that I am not a doctor. I have not performed clinical studies on this topic, and if you have real concerns about any sleep condition, you should speak with a professional. This article is just to give my account of the disorder and any insight I have gathered as a result. Let it also be reassurance to anyone who has gone through this that you’re not crazy or sick.