For as long as I can remember I've experienced occasional sleep paralysis. Not too often, they usually happen every few months. I've noticed I will have a couple episodes one right after the other, especially if I try to sleep again after waking up from it. It wasn't until watching a Netflix documentary that I learned people will also hallucinate during sleep paralysis? I only have the sensation of being paralyzed, which then makes me feel I can't breathe. I have such a fear of paralysis or my movement and breath being impeded that it's the chicken and the egg question - did the fear start as a result of my episodes of sleep paralysis, or do I have nightmares of paralysis because of my fear?
I get hallucinations when sleep paralysis happens, I experience whole conversations and bc i'm in that state they are kinda terrifyingly real
I don't hallucinate during sleep paralysis episodes, but I do start to worry "what if I stop being able to breathe?" and then start hyperventilating. I figured out that they only happen when I sleep on my back so I try to avoid that. Haven't had an episode in a couple years now, fortunately.
I hallucinate during sleep paralysis. It also tends to happen together with night terrors for me, because one of those three things isn't bad enough. I also tend to slip into it again if I don't wake up completely before going back to sleep after an episode. Budgie is correct! For whatever reason, people tend to report they have episodes more often if they sleep on their back.
I hallucinate that I'm actually able to get up and move, but my body is completely numb and my vision is "stuck" on the image of whatever my sleep paralysis has me staring at. In other words: I hallucinate that I'm up and moving but my actual senses don't sync up with it. I feel like a videogame glitch when that happens!
I tend to hallucinate during the rare times I have it. Usually I'll see ghosts or shadowy figures moving in towards me ominously. They never touch me. Just always kind of linger uncomfortably close. When I can move at last I cry and can't sleep for hours. I don't entirely trust that it's not ghosts either all the time because Oh God What If It Is At Least Sometimes.
I hallucinate when I have it. One of the worse episodes was when I rolled or something so my head was dangling off the bed and it wouldn't stop shaking and my eyes kept rolling back into my head as painfully as possible. But when I woke up I was actually on the bed all the way, so I may have hallucinated that. That said, I tend to have multiple episodes at once. Like, for me, it's 'wake up, paralyzed, hallucinate, fall back asleep, wake up, paralyzed, hallucinate, fall back asleep' etc. So I might have pulled my head back up on the bed in my sleep. I hallucinate that I'm up and moving, but usually it's in a place other than my room. I also lose the ability to tell where I am and am aware that I lost it. I stop being able to visualize the layout of my house. My brain mashes every place I've ever lived together. I actively hallucinate that the room around me is changing, but I'm aware that if I can force myself to remember what it actually looks like, the hallucinations will stop. Sleep paralysis terrifies me because even when I'm 'up and moving' I can tell I'm not. If I see people I ask them 'is this real?' and they tell me 'yes' but then I 'wake up' again, usually see the same person, ask the same question, they say yes. I ask them to touch me so I can feel if they're real sometimes, but for whatever reason it doesn't work - I can't tell the difference. Interestingly enough I have another kind of sleep episode, but I don't know what to call it and I think it's unrelated.
I think what I experienced was sleep paralysis, and I definitely hallucinated. The problem is also that I half-lucid dream, so I don't have a good metric for what was dream vs hallucination. The first time it happened, I got the dark shadowy figures coming towards me that people talk about, but that was the only time (it was a face coming out of the darkness in the corner of my room). Many times, if I noticed I was in sleep paralysis and I tried to take a deep breath, I'd start to hyperventilate. If I could not panic and keep my breathing even, I was usually okay. Most of the time I would hallucinate that I was moving. Sometimes, it was that I rolled out of bed. A lot of was that I started flying around my room uncontrollably at high speeds, but when i bumped into the walls, I slowed down so it didn't hurt. After I figured out what it was, it changed. I also got to a point where I could induce it if I tried. I would close my eyes and imagine the feeling of falling, backwards usually. Then my entire body would start tingling and it would hurt, like somewhere between the feeling when you foot wakes up from sleep and a muscle spasm. The feeling was worse if I tried to move. Sometimes, I could move (but not really). Then I would try to turn on my bedside lamp. At some point I figured out that if I tried to turn on my lamp and the light wouldn't come on, then I was hallucinating and not actually moving. That helped me wake up faster, usually. I frequently dreamt that someone would come in my room and save me wake me up. No one ever did xP There were a couple more that were more dream-like, but they were dreams in which I knew I was hallucinating. It was distressing. This was a bad side effect of the meds I was on. It never happened to me before I started them, and it stopped soon after I switched meds. The episodes were much more tolerable once I knew what they were and was able to access that knowledge during them. At that point, it just because a weird phenomenon to study
Sometimes sleep paralysis comes with hallucinations, sometimes it does not. Sometimes sleep paralysis comes with vivid dreams. I have managed to talk in my sleep during sleep paralysis. A few rare times I was successful enough to get someone to wake me up.
I don't get sleep paralysis much, but the main incident I remember I definitely hallucinated. I've also had what I called 'sickness nightmares' that were probably sleep paralysis of the falling-asleep variety. I'd think I was still awake, nightmare shit would happen and I'd jolt awake for real. It'd be all of 5 minutes. I was always told you can't hit REM in 5 minutes and the nightmare shit was always disturbingly real, hallucination-level, and happened where I was sleeping without transition, sleep paralysis is the more likely option. I haven't had one since I've been on my meds so I think my generally fucked up sleep, made more fucked up by being sick, were main triggers for it.
