gettin over the fear

[trulytray]

here it seems many want to get in to a sleep paralysis attack but i this just happens to me and it freaks me out that i cant sleep for about 4 day im that bad i darnt go into my bedroom ... i do get to the point tho that i do calm down and but i just freck out about what happened that i take my self downstairs on the sofa .... can some one please help me threw the stage to becoming lucid it really sounds intresting and i really want to see what happens if i aint already many thanx....xxx

[KushyBear]

I haven't been through SP yet, but you just have to accept it. Your body does it unconsciously every time you go to sleep. Other ways of becoming lucid are just doing RCs during the day and that will carry over to a dream eventually. Just keep a dream journal and ask yourself if you're dreaming, then test it with a RC and look at your surroundings. It'll come soon enough.

[trulytray]

what does rc mean im still new to all this ........... now im am wise to sleep paralysis i hope i can get control of it better ... what is bet to do just go bk to sleep will that be lucid ...???? ...... what do i need to do after this stage

[Arctavis]

I agree that sleep paralysis can be quite terrifying at times. I myself had an experience so frightful back in 2000 that I haven't been able to get over it entirely yet. Normally I just kind of lurk in forums, never posting. But this one hit close to home for some reason so I decided to get it off my back. I haven't really told anyone because I feared they would classify me as insane or having some other psychological problem. I will now give you a brief history of my experience with lucid dreaming and altered states and tell you what happened to me. I had my first lucid dream entirely by accident when I was about 10 years old. It was so vivid and realistic and strange that it sticks with me to this day almost 20 years later... My first lucid dream was both plain and extraordinary at the same time. I don't remember the details of falling asleep or anything like that but basically, knowing what I now know, I false awakened into the back seat of my parents’ car. For some unknown reason I had false awakened so realistically, that I honestly did believe that I had nodded off at some point that I can't remember and was in reality riding in the car. Everything was so vivid and accurately represented that I just assumed it was real and behaved how I normally would have. The strangest thing about the entire experience is that I was 100% fully conscious and aware/awake. Maybe even more so than really being awake. The experience was SO powerful that I know it was a lucid dream where I wasn't aware that it was a dream... if that even makes sense. I remember waking up groggy and confused in the car, sun pounding through the window on a hot July day. I was upset that I was soaked in sweat, my cloths sticking to the red leather in the back of the 75 ford granada that lacked any form of A/C. My mom looked back at me and said "Hey sleepyhead, we are almost to school" and I asked her if I could go home and change because I was uncomfortable in sweaty cloths and wanted to change into something cooler like shorts. She responded that we didn't have time and I agreed reluctantly and stared out the window as we drove. My dad announced that he was going to take the long way because he wanted to show my mother something that he spotted driving home from work the other day that he thinks she would enjoy, and it wasn't far from the school anyway. He turned down a side street that I've never been down and pointed at an old telephone pole in front of someone’s house. The entire thing had been painted dark green and had bright yellow sunflowers made of what appeared to be scrap metal all over it. On top of this a trumpet vine had grown up the entire length of the pole and there were quite a few hummingbirds enjoying the flowers. My dad pointed at it and my mom commented about how beautiful and unique it was as a work of art and suggested my dad build something similar someday. This is where things became strange, as I had already had this EXACT experience (in real life) approximately a month earlier, so the deja vu was incredible as this dream seemed to be composed completely of that days memories in excruciating detail. I took notice of this even as a child and it confused me. I told my dad that he had already showed it to us and he insisted that he had not. My mom said it was also the first time she had seen it and suggested that I probably had a precognitive dream about it because little kids had powerful imaginations and commonly exhibited psychic abilities that adults don't have access to anymore. I kept going over it in my mind and had a perfect memory of it already happening. It was a disturbing feeling so I pushed it aside and accepted my mom’s answer that maybe I did dream it at some point and continued looking out the window. Shortly afterwards we pulled up to school, I ran to get in line behind the playground and my friend Tim pulled something out of his backpack. It was a Sega game, he was very excited and said his dad had given it to him as a surprise for being good or something today on the way to school. He wanted me to come over after school so we could play it. Once again my poor little mind reeled, he had already shown that to me and we had already played it after school before! I obviously went pale in the face because Tim asked if I was feeling alright and if I wanted to come over and play it after school today or not. I kept recalling it in my mind; I knew this had happened before... Was I really psychic like my mom suggested? Had I dreamt all this in the past and it was finally coming to be true? I told him that I looked forward to playing it as well and the teacher arrived, gathered us up and sat us down in class. We were going over spelling words and the teacher had commented that it's alright to not spell perfectly at first. That even the vice president had messed up spelling just a few days ago. Once again... deja vu sent chills down my spine. I whispered to Tim "Didn't she already tell us this story?" and Tim said he didn't think so. The teacher overheard and asked what was so important and demanded we share it with the class. I, embarrassed and put on the spot told her that she already told us this story, that he spelt potato wrong. She said she hasn't told us and it happened a few days ago so I had probably seen it on the news or heard my parents talk about it and told me to quiet down. Now I'm just going to fast forward to the point so this post doesn't end up being a hundred pages long. The ENTIRE day was replayed that way, every detail, every event. I began to question reality. I was so upset by the end of the day that I honestly thought I was going crazy. When my mom tucked me in to go to sleep I could not sleep she could tell I was upset because I had tears in my eyes as I had been pleading to god or anyone to make it stop by the end of the day. I let it all out in a long crying speech that I was stuck in the same day again and I thought I might be dead or dreaming but I can't wake up. She said that was nonsense and that I probably just had a bad day and so sleepy I was remembering a vivid dream. She assured me that I was awake, this was the real world and I was not dead or dreaming. She even pinched me pretty hard and it hurt! She said I could watch TV to fall asleep and she would put a video in to calm me down. That made me a little happy as my mom would normally never let me watch TV while going to bed. She popped in the never-ending story which was one of my favorite movies at the time (kind of ironic now that I think about it) and I began to watch and she left the room. I watched the movie for awhile and then realized that I was not at all used to sleeping with the television on and grew very tired but the TV was keeping me awake. So I got out of bed and shut it off. But the TV did not turn off! The movie just kept on playing so I figured the knob had broke and unplugged the TV. This still did not turn it off, I looked at the television and it was showing strange random red and black fractal like patterns and making a horrible sound that I can't describe. It sounded like TV snow mixed with sirens mixed with the fabric of reality being torn apart. I was absolutely terrified and began to scream. The sound kept getting louder and louder. My mom burst into the room and started yelling what's wrong! What's wrong! I cried pointing at the TV, "It's off! It's not even plugged in Christopher!" she said, and I insisted that it was on and it was so loud I could barely hear her. She started freaking out and yelling for my dad. At this point she was shaking me slightly saying my name over and over then yelled "Don! (my dad) something is seriously wrong with Christopher!!". My dad came running into my room in his boxers and screamed "What's wrong!!" and was quite confused. At this moment I looked over and the television was off, everything was normal again. My big clock had the numbers 11:11 on it. The fact they were the same number stuck with me for some reason. I had only been asleep probably 2 hours tops (my normal bedtime was 9pm). I tried to remember what had happened, that day was a normal day up until I went to bed. Slowly memories of my waking life began to drift back to me, the entire day had in fact already happened about a month prior. I had relived that particular day, fully conscious and lucid, in a dream. However at some point I really did get out of my bed and fuss with the TV because here I was awake for real now and the TV was in fact unplugged and moved around. This part didn't surprise me so much because I was a known sleepwalker at the time. I slept walk something terrible from age 6-12 and then it just magically stopped one day, happening more and more infrequently the older I got. I didn't experience any weirdness whatsoever in any form again until I was 14. Little did I know that after only 2 years of lovely normal non-sleep walking nights I would experience a new type of sleep disorder… Night terrors. I vividly remember the first one I had, I woke up in the middle of the night to a loud sound. I was sleeping on my side, my bed was in the corner of my room so I could clearly see my closet across the room. I had one of those closets that doesn't have doors, just a large door frame you could walk through and into the closet. Anyway, I was going to just drift back to sleep when I saw someone standing in the shadows near my closet, or rather something... It was far too tall to be any sort of person; it was nearly 8 foot because its head couldn't have been more than a couple inches away from my eight foot ceiling. It was wearing a black robe and had very thin bone like hands and a hood with no face. I had been watching TV to help fall asleep because recently I had developed very bad insomnia. The soft glow from the television in the room gave just enough light to clearly see this figure/thing. If you picture the grim reaper, minus his scythe/sickle and MUCH taller that would about describe it perfectly. After a quick WTF moment I tried to jump up and turn the lights on. But I could not move... No matter how hard I struggled, I could not move, I couldn't even blink! And I realized something very disturbing in my panic stricken state. I could not hear anything, it was dead silent. Normally you hear some tinnitus or hissing or something even in a silent room, but there was NOTHING. I knew it was odd because I should be able to hear the TV, I could see the glow on the walls so I knew it was on but I was unable to turn my head to see it. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it was going to explode, the thing slowly looked at me and I was freaking out. It then began to move towards me, but not in a normal manner, it kind of instantly teleported from shadow to shadow until it was lurking RIGHT beside my bed staring at me with its faceless hole in the hood. Still there was no sound, it was dead silence. I couldn't hear myself breath, I couldn't scream, I couldn't do anything. The thing lifted its skeletal hand and made a small motion, I was then forcibly turned onto my back. I caught a glimpse of the television and it was showing a similar red fractal pattern that I had seen when I was little, minus the horrible noise. I just totally lost it and fought with all my might to move or scream or do something, I kept yelling in my mind "this is a dream, it's just a dream, this isn't fucking possible!" over and over. The thing started to very slowly reach towards me and it put its hand right into my chest, I could feel my heart ice over. I can't even explain the feeling it was as if I could feel the outline and size of my heart covered in an icy shell. Then I began to think "Omg, the grim reaper is real... he's come for me I'm gonna fucking die, I don't want to… I'm not ready!" The entity pulled its hand out and it was holding onto a thin blue spider web like substance. While this grim reaper like entity was tugging on what I then believed to be my soul it felt almost like someone tugging on my entire skin like a sheet, trying to pull it off. Or maybe how I imagine those people that hang from hooks in their back might feel. I kept thinking "NO! I'm not fucking ready, I refuse I'm not going you bastard!" and I tried to will my soul back into my body. The creature was in a tug of war with my soul. I was screaming as loud as I could "Fuck you!!!!" in my mind and then as suddenly as it started, it stopped. The entity vanished into thin air, dematerializing like dust in the wind. The same time this occurred I instantly regained control of my body, I literally leapt out of bed while letting out a horrible low guttural scream, like a gorilla or something. The scream was so loud my mother came running down the stairs shortly afterwards (my bedroom was right below theirs) asking what the hell was going on. I told her I just had a very bad nightmare and didn't want to talk about it and she went back to bed. I couldn't sleep for three days after that event. I didn't want to tell anyone so I just tried to forget it. Once again, I'm going to fast forward and summarize big time as this post is getting so long I'm starting to have my doubts anyone will read my wall of text lol, but it feels good to let it out and if anyone is interested in details I will post more. Anyway I continued struggling with night terrors happening randomly for the next couple years, they seemed to randomly plague me for months at a time then subside and never happen again. I went through the usual teenage depression/weirdness/hormones and sometime around the invention of the internet I decided to research into what may have been happening. I eventually stumbled across the subject of night terrors as a sleep disorder and knew that HAD to be what was happening. I never had a grim reaper episode again but I have had a myriad of strange things happen to me. They always occur in the middle of the night, upon waking up unexpectedly. I now knew them to be night terrors and I shouldn't be afraid of them. However no matter how hard I seemed to try they always happened so randomly and without notice they caught me off guard and terrified the shit out of me. As a result of stumbling around the net reading about night terrors and sleep paralysis I happened across the concept of astral projection. This intrigued me quite a bit, I was never very religious but my supposed close call with death was still burnt into my memory and I wanted to know more about a possible astral body or spirit. I learned that astral projection could be achieved during a thing called SP (sleep paralysis) and having uncontrollably experienced sleep paralysis countless times with horrifying results I was determined to face my fear and find out once and for all if these were simply hallucinations or I was accidently astral projecting into a lower realm where demons and other dark beings may reside... One night, roughly around the year 2000, I was lying in bed meditating and trying to induce total sleep paralysis as I had been for the past four months to attempt an astral projection. I had already done my total body relaxation exercises and was getting quite good at "not thinking" as the internet instructed me to do. Just maintain silence and any time a thought comes to my head I just quietly pushed it away. I lay there trying to imagine the feeling of going down an elevator (not the actual visualization of an elevator just the feeling of vertigo) and I was going lower and lower and lower... The sound of my fan and other various house sounds vanished, my body was getting very heavy and very numb. I had got this far countless times before but never could stay in that state for very long at all before I would get excited that I was going to astral project and snap out of it. This night was different though, for some reason I was able to just calmly relax and float through the nothingness. Even the vision under my eyes changed, it became larger. I can't explain it; it was almost as if I had been teleported into a very very large empty room. At this point I barely barely thought, "Where are these hypnogogic hallucinations everyone talks about?" But there were none, only empty nothingness. So I pushed the thought aside and resolved to go deeper into my meditative state. I stopped thinking entirely, the feeling of falling became faster and the sensation of being in an empty room grew larger. I just kept going down, down, down... I began to feel like I went too far. I could barely muster a thought, everything was in slow motion and time had ceased to exist, so had my body. Suddenly a clear thought burst through "You've gone too far, go back! What if you end up in a coma or something" So I tried to sit up and snap myself out of it with all my might! Instead the fabric of reality tore apart; I heard another sound similar to the one the television was producing in my dream when I was a child. I had a sensation of being thrown end over end into nothing. I then saw a bright white light and heard hissing like TV snow, the sound was deafening. Slowly my vision faded back in. This all happened within a matter of seconds. I was floating next to my body, I could see myself sleeping. I looked dead. I tried to look at my body and I had none, I couldn't even feel anything. The feeling is just completely indescribable. It was as if I did have a body it was about the size of a tennis ball and gently floating in mid-air and this "astral body" had no nerves or physical sensations. I could see but it looked all wrong, I could almost see behind myself. My field of vision was totally screwed up and I hadn't remembered anyone describing it was going to be like that. I was still capable of thinking, but it was slower and difficult to logically tie things together. I moved forward a bit by kind of willing myself to go that direction but my vision was disorientating me badly and it looked like I was in a strobe light on a very fast setting. I turned around away from my body and saw some creatures. They couldn't have been more than 3 feet tall and the closest way to describe them is evil ewoks (from star wars universe) that had no clothing on. They were surrounding my physical body and making strange piglike sounds. I freaked out and ran (or rather floated) away from them. It was impossible to control my astral body. it was like trying to run on the slipperiest ice you can imagine, as if I was in a frictionless world without gravity. I floated right through my bedroom door, across the hall and into my brothers’ room. I could see him sleeping but he had a weird green glow around his body. This freaked me out more and I decided I had to get back to my body as quickly as possible. Upon thinking this I shot right back the way I came, back into my room with the ewok pigs semi circling my bed and overshot them and slid through the wall into the street outside. Everything looked black and white and so dead. It was dead silent and empty and lacking color except I noticed the trees were giving off an eerie blue glow similar to the one my brother emitted. I was still beyond terrified at this point and thought I had died and I had to get back to my body but I was still sliding out of control like I was on an infinitely slippery ice cube. I ran into a telephone pole and instead of going through it or stopping I went up it and was sliding along the wires. My little tennis ball of consciousness just wouldn't stop and I couldn't control it. I was in a complete mental panic attack when it just abruptly ended. I felt like someone just grabbed me and threw me back into my body and I awoke covered in sweat and once again couldn't sleep for days. I never tried to do it again after that, but years later I began having spontaneous lucid dreams (What you all would call a dream induced lucid dream) where I just realized I was dreaming and they never lasted more than a few seconds but the phenomena was so shocking I once again started searching the internet. The sheer amount of information that is available on the subjects now compared to what was available when the internet was still infantile and mostly text based is staggering and I've learned a lot. So here I am, after learning more about what has happened throughout my life I am interested in exploring it. Lucid dreaming is beyond awesome, one of the best experiences I have ever had and I want more of it. Reading around on dream views it seems like WILD is the most powerful technique and most appealing. It sounds like in general the dreams are more vivid, longer and I like the idea of being able to induce one without conscious lapses in-between at will (assuming I get good at them). Problem is due to my past every time I get close I start having a panic attack, so believe me trulytray, I feel your pain… I don't know how to beat this problem. I've searched these forums high and low and just don't understand how everyone ignores the insane hallucinations during sleep paralysis before making the transition! It's like learning to face your biggest fear and ignoring your house exploding around you at the same time for me... As soon as my hearing fades out and I am on the verge of entering sleep paralysis my heart starts racing and I snap out of it. I guess I'll just keep forcing myself to do it and eventually I'll stop being a wuss about it. Sorry for the wall of text, once I started writing it out I couldn't stop. I summarized as much as I could allow myself to… LOL Nice meeting you all! --Arctavis

[Fionaa.x]

I read it all was interesting. I think what's kinda keeping me back from LDing is the sleep paralysis anyway I'm gonna try it and see what my experience is

[Arctavis]

Thank you for reading it all and I have to say congratulations, because you are now the only other person on the planet that knows about it I agree but I will overcome this fear eventually. I'm pretty certain if I just keep playing with the fire and getting closer and closer to the edge that eventually I will convince myself it was all illusion. I still haven't totally made up my mind on whether or not I believe astral projection is real. The experience was so indescribably powerful that I want to say it was a true astral projection. But now that I've read so much on sleep disorders and lucid dreaming I'm really leaning more towards it was a lucid dream that turned into an astral projection like experience because that is what I was expecting and believing it to be. I've already had hit and miss success doing DILD (Dream Induced Lucid Dream) but I just REALLY need to work on my recall! Basically all I am doing at the moment is wearing a watch and I have it set to beep every hour on the hour. When it beeps I look down and do a series of reality checks. It has started to carry over in my dreams so I just randomly become lucid a few times a month. I am willing to bet that I become lucid far more than that and just don't recall it. Because even the short while I am lucid from the watch trick (usually 5-30sec) it's insanely vivid but memory fades very quickly once I wake up. I have a strong suspicion that the reason my recall is so poor compared to when I was younger (I used to remember several dreams a night, I can even remember quite a few from as young as 5-6 years old) is because I'm a habitual marijuana user. I figured out by accident exploring with the drug in my younger days recreationally that it had the wonderful side effect of stopping my night terrors. That's right, as long as I smoke before bed I NEVER have a night terror… haven't for YEARS. This also could be affecting my ability to try and WILD as well. However since a lot of my family has lost their jobs I am forced to quit for financial reasons to free up monies to help them, after my supply is gone. I'm done. It's going to be difficult and I already fear the night terrors return, but I'm also trying to remain optimistic that I will be much more successful in my attempts without outside sources altering my sleep cycles. I have tried to do WILDs using the WBTB (Wake Back to Bed) method but my stoned body is just far too incoherent and tired to even remember. The majority of the time I wake up not even remembering I have shut the alarms off all throughout the night. I can get pretty damn close on zero sleep beforehand as I lay down for the night though, if I can just get over the damn panic attacks. I’m sure the weed isn’t helping that either However it seems the general consensus is that WBTB WILD is much easier to achieve, and even if I do manage on zero sleep I would be lucky for the experience to last more than a few seconds. I wish you luck in your endeavors Fiona, maybe I’ll keep everyone posted on my progress. I really normally don’t ever post in forums, but that ended up being kind of therapeutic

[KushyBear]

Well welcome! I read the entire thing and that's just amazing. trulytray, a RC is a reality check. Arctavis, weed does make you have shorter REM periods and the short term memory doesn't help with recall. I suggest you keep a dream journal. I'm not sure about the night terrors, but that's all in your mind, I believe that if you firmly believe you won't have night terrors, you won't. Also becoming lucid would help with those since you'd know it is only a dream and can do whatever you want, as long as you understand that.

[Arctavis]

Thank you KushyBear. I agree that marijuana is probably doing me more harm than good towards lucid dreaming. I am just starting to keep a dream journal and hopefully recall will follow with practice. I thought about trying that. Every night before I go to sleep while I still have supply left I am going to tell myself over and over that my night terrors are cured and they will never come back. Maybe if I keep using positive self affirmation like that then they really will be gone. Even if they don't go away I should use them to my advantage. Night terrors happen during sleep paralysis and are basically just scary hypnogic hallucinations. So logic stands to reason that if I can learn to ignore them and not be scared I should be able to almost immediately jump into a WILD. Since I used to have them several times a month, that could equate to several potential WILDs a month without even trying right?