How I Beat My Terrifying Sleep Paralysis
After a lifetime of struggling with sleep paralysis, I stopped the episodes permanently.
Since I was a young child, sleep paralysis had been an unwanted nocturnal intruder into my bedroom.
It induced so much fear that I slept with a light on until I was well into my 30s.
Any unintentional disruption to my sleep schedule opened the door to nightmares and the accompanying frozen state. The relief of “it was all a dream” was instantly replaced by the terrifying realization that I was trapped in my body, desperate to get out, unable to move or scream.
Yet, there was another vague layer of anxiety when it was all over.
I didn’t understand what was happening. It was so frightening, I was too scared to tell anyone. I felt that if I did, it would be an unforgivable betrayal. It would be an invitation to something much worse.
Intuitively, I felt that I should not call attention to the problem. I later discovered that reading or talking about it would initiate a recurring cycle that could last months.
These episodes started long before the advent of the Internet, so the labels we have today weren’t in my vocabulary. I did not have the words like narcolepsy, parasomnia, hypnopompic or postdormital. These cold, rational scientific…
