I need help to figure out what's going on.
Hello. I need a little help from someone with knowledge about these kinds of stuff. I originally posted this on other site before someone told me about this forum. I don't know if I'm posting at the right place but just so you know I tried to do it.
I've been dealing with sleep paralysis. Nothing new, I've experienced it a couple of times before and despite being terrifying it's something I could deal with. But not like this. I've been having 2-3 episodes a week, one or two weeks may pass by and nothing happens, but then it happens again and I'm starting to be afraid of falling asleep because usually it happens before I wake up, along with some lucid dreaming where I know I might be late for work but cannot wake up or move and just want to get this over with because it's really scary.
These are the "normal ones". I don't experience what people say they feel during an episode. I don't feel a pressure in my chest. I don't see dark figures. I only relate to the fear and anxiety and the feeling of being trapped.
The first episodes started with visual patterns. I would visualize fractured parts of something I probably saw with my eyes opened but not consciously so. They would appear in patterns that even if I open my eyes I will see it and think I'm blind (not blind but only able to see that pattern forever), then enter a loop where I try to get out of it, see the pattern, try to ignore it and just repeat until it stops. Sounds confusing I know, but even I don't know how to explain this because the line between reality and a possible hallucination is very blurred.
Sometimes I'm aware and I know in my conscience it's a dream, sometimes I'm confused. It's all a mix, my body is frozen and my eyes as well but I'm aware. It's scary when these ones happen.
They are progressing into something different though. These ones I can remember quite well and sometimes I question what is really going on. I distinguish these occurences between physical/non physical because it they are not always the same and they are really hard to explain which is frustrating.
These are clear. No patterns, no brain glitches going on, just feel paralysed as if I'm dreaming but not totally aware of it. In this one I was a little child, in my aunts' house who lives across my grandmothers' house. It's a building and we live in appartments. My father was still alive in this one. I ran up to him and he picked me up. They were all happy and busy and I felt so warm and so at peace like I haven't been in ages even if I didn't interact much with the people who were in there. My mother wasn't so messed up. I talked to them but no one seemed to hear and only a dog that we had for years that already passed away played with me, we played with a ball. I would toss it around and we would chase it. But I would be around them and watch what they were doing. This seems like a dream only it didn't felt like a normal dream. I was aware that only my appearance was of a child but my conscience was of my age. I was aware enough that I was able to differentiate what was right and what was not right. And I felt like this is where I wanted to be, I felt so comfortable and so good in this place I almost did not want to leave. I played with the dog until I saw people I didn't know going into my grandmothers house and that's when the physical stuff happened. I ended up being trapped a bit in that world mentally and physically in this one. But it was easy to get out for once.
Sometimes I see myself lying down and the walls of my room. This one was one of those times. I felt stuck so I felt myself sliding (literally) a bit higher than one would be if walking, towards the kitchen where my grandmother was doing her usual chores. I asked her (more like yell) for help and think I maybe even nudged her a bit and she faced me, not looking at me but in my direction. I don't know how much time passed but I felt like a few seconds. Like a second right before she opened the door (she never knocks which usually pisses me off) I wake up fully alert just in time to answer her that no I wouldn't want help to make lunch. She was in the same clothes I saw her before.
The other day I had another one only this time I felt "rushed" like when you stretch an elastic band and let it go. I woke up in a jump and grasping for air.
This is becoming frequent and I don't know what's happening and don't know who to talk about this without them thinking I'm crazy or something because I feel sleep paralysis is not fully adequate to describe what's happening!
These do not happen willingly, I can't controle it and I want to know how and I'm sure there's a lot of information here but first I want to know what is this exactly.
Thanks in advance.
