Scariest sleep paralysis experience

So until today I've only had sleep paralysis one other time and it didn't last that long. A lot of people talk about how scary it can be but the first time wasn't so bad. After today now, I'm a little messed up by this and I'm not really sure what to think right now. I'm writing this mostly as a coping mechanism and a way to calm myself down, I guess. I really want to tell someone about this.

I was woken up early this morning by my dogs and couldn't get back to sleep, so I decided to watch a couple lengthy videos on YouTube, one being a wind waker speed run. I remember when the video ended I had started to doze off a couple of times. I looked over at my clock and it was exactly 10am. I'm not sure at what point I actually fell asleep, but I decided the speed run made wind waker look like so much fun that I would play it for myself on my laptop. But then as I was laying in bed playing the game, I remembered that I needed to keep my laptop plugged in at all times, but then I looked over at my desk and my laptop was still there. At that point I realized that I was using a second, new laptop and I kept trying to figure out how it got there. At some point I realized I had fallen asleep at some point and I was dreaming. I started to wake up but my whole body was numb, tingling in the way a limb would when it falls asleep, I felt like I had this heavy weight on me and I was struggling to even breathe. I tried to calm myself down, realising what was happening, and told myself it would pass soon. I decided to keep my eyes closed though because I didn't want to see any creepy hallucinations and I felt like there was someone's face just inches away from mine.

It passed and when I got up, I found an old cassette player on my bed that I hadn't seen in years. It had some old music discs stored in it (yes, discs in a cassette player. There were a few tapes too.) All for game OSTs that wouldn't come out for years after cassettes presumably stopped being made. I remember not wanting to listen to any of the discs or tapes because I was worried something creepy would be recorded on them. But then at some point I finally realized had never owned a cassette player and I woke up, paralyzed, again.

I talked myself through the paralysis again, thinking about how weird having two dreams like that was, before getting up and going into the kitchen. My mom and sister had just gotten back from the store. They picked up some root beer, some muffins and other things and I was disappointed I had already finished the pizza from last night because the root beer would have gone well with it. I don't remember what made me realize this time, probably that my sister hasn't lived with us since I was in middle school, but I ended up waking up AGAIN, this time starting to panic slightly.

I talked myself through the paralysis again, still determined not to open my eyes to avoid seeing something scary, but I could hear rain and thunder which I was pretty sure weren't really there. I finally got up and tried to turn my lamp on, but the bulb wasn't working, so I went into the bathroom to try that one and it wasn't working either. As I was walking down the hall, I realized the numb tingling sensation was still there and knew I was still asleep. I wondered briefly if I was in a coma or something, which was the wrong thing to think about before willing myself to wake up again.

This time I was in a hospital bed and I couldn't really move at all, but I heard people talking and someone asked me to try to move my fingers if I could hear them. I did, and they asked a few more times. I remember the doctor was amazed and said they had never seen a coma like this one. I was in a full on lucid dream by this point though and thought it was weird that I had known in my dream that I was in a coma. I tried willing myself to wake up again, and sure enough I was still asleep.

This time I got up after the paralysis ended and I felt this weird burning sensation on my left wrist. There were what looked like a bunch of scratches and cuts all over it. I tried to turn my light on and again it wasn't working. When I woke up again, this time I noticed that there were a couple of freckles on my leg that weren't there before. When I ran my hand over my leg, I felt the same scratches that had been there on my wrist in the last dream. I woke up again and my mom was there, saying I hadn't woken up all day and that I had been tossing and thrashing around the whole time. I woke up again and by this point I was making a check list of things I knew. The names of my pets, how the floor felt under my feet, the light levels in my house, and still I could feel that paralyzed feeling.

I woke myself up again and again, each time convinced for a moment that, "Okay, now this feels real. I must be awake now," but I never was. There were so many inconsistencies at first, but they kept getting just more and more real. I was starting to lose hope, but refused to give up. Each time I would have the feeling that there was something menacing following me and I would have more scratches on me.

Finally I managed to wake up for real. I was still paralyzed but I opened my eyes and waited for it to pass. I took off the covers and knew, well was about 80% sure, that I was awake because of the temperature difference, and I got up. I looked at the clock and the time was 10:05. The experience that felt like it had lasted about 2 days had only been about five minutes.

I was so confused at first when I woke up. I tried turning on my bedroom light, as had become ritual at this point, and only then realised I had been turning the switch the wrong way in my dreams when it didn't click. There were tiny inconsistencies everywhere and gradually I managed to convince myself that I was finally awake for real.

I kept my eyes closed when I woke up paralyzed because I was scared I would see something terrifying. I think, though I'm not sure, that by doing that I managed to fall back to sleep while still paralyzed. That, or I had been hallucinating with my eyes closed the whole time. And of course I experienced something terrifying anyway. So I guess the lesson is, if you wake up paralyzed, open your eyes.

I did look this up online before writing the post and yeah apparently this is something that some people experience when paralyzed. The longest I found was someone going through about 15 iterations, but I think mine might have been over 20. It took me like an hour to write all of this out on mobile and I'm still a little shaken up.

 

It's actually completely natural and not really physically harmful. Essentially it's something that happens when you dream so when you do something in your dream, you don't do it in real life and end up hurting yourself. All of the major muscles in your body become paralyzed so you can't move around too much while asleep, and when you wake up, the paralysis usually ends. Sometimes though, you can wake up and be completely conscious of your surroundings, but still be in the dream state, which means your muscles are still paralyzed and you can have hallucinations that are essentially just dreams that you experience while fully awake. I'm guessing the initial panic of waking up and not being able to move is what often causes the hallucinations to be something terrifying, but then the hallucinations themselves just make it worse. Hallucinations don't always happen though and they're not always something scary.

I didn't know about the dream inception thing until today though. It's good to know at least that it's normal for something like that to happen and that other people experience the same thing.

 

I'm actually kind of scared to go to sleep tonight, but I'm also really tired. A friend of mine suggested a trick for reality checking by focusing on your fingers and trying to count them. For whatever reason, people's brains just can't do it in dreams. So I guess for now on I'll be staring at my fingers and counting them a few times each night before I go to bed so I can get into the habit of it.