Thread: Sleep paralysis survival: My story

This is a real story that happend to me when I was a kid. I wrote this in order to help other people who are suffering from sleep paralysis.



Everybody remember the first time they went to a movie theatre. Especialy when you're young and easyily impressed. Just to look around and see all those chairs and the birg white screen is verry impressive for a lil' child. I was 5 years old when I first when to the cinema, it was in 1981. That year has marqued cinema history and my life. This was the year when Steven Spielberg produced one of the greatest masterpiece of American movies. A movie that you can't forget, E. T. the extraterestrial. I remember as if it was yesterday. My mother and grand-mother where with me. I was really impressed by everything I saw that day... really impressed. Already my child instinct told me that this is going to be a unique moment. I've never seen soo many peoples and I think that I've never saw in my entire life such a hughe waiting line, and I've been through Star Wars episode 1, 2, 3, premiere. At last, we where sitting in the theatre, I was completely absorbed, completely. I was there, in the movie, I could feel E.T.'s fear at the begining and I could even smell the reeses pieces. This movie was made for kids but you have to admit that this movie was particularly scary. I wanted to see that creature though, even if I was already scared to death. When Eliot started searching in the field with his flashlight, the tension was verry high. When Eliot was geeting closer to the creature, E.T. jumped in front of him with a the scariest scream of all the movie monsters. This was the moment when my life changed forever. The entire audience jumped out of their seats. I still loved the movie and it was from that moment that I started to fall in love with the 7th art. But I wasn't aware at all that this experience has marqued verry deeply.

So I went to bed, fell asleep and then, a few hours later I woke up. First thing I notice, I am completely paralysed. And even stranger, I am not alone in my bedroom. I could felt a presence but I couldn't see it. There was some sort of a negative energy coming from my closet, then, the door open. I started to panic when I realised that I couldn't breathe and the only thing I could move where my eyes. Then, a pair of hands with horrible long fingers, one with a red light on it, came out from the darkness of the closet followed by a terrifying head with hughe eyes that could feel my fear. The look of that thing was soo piercing. That creature had no feelings, I could feel it through my skin, and was especialy created to make me suffer. Then it came closer to the bed putting his hands around my waste, it was horrible, I've never felt so vulnerable. I was having a panic attack and then I started to feel an excrutiating pain on each side of my body. I used all my strenght to scream but nothing came out. The only thing I could to, was to wait until it finished. This is probably what a rape feels like. After a moment, the creature disapeared, but not the pain. I was trying to move to rub myself to ease the pain but I still coudn't move. After a moment, everything came slowly back to normal. My entire body was covered with sweat. I wanted to call my parents but I was to scared that the creature might hear me. So I stayed in my bed looking at the darkness of my closet untill I fell asleep.

I'm an illustrator, so this is exactly what the creature looked like:



In the morning, I told my story to my parents. For them, this was only a single nightmare. But everything seemed so real and vivid, the pain was real so it must be real. During several weeks I couldn't sleep at all. The only thing my parents were able to do is to keep telling me thas this was in my head and that I should close the close before I go to bed. So I did, but closet monsters are much more intelligent than we think they are (Monster Inc). So I've learned to live with it. I even convinced myself that this was normal. After a couple of years I slowly realised that this was really a nightmare although the pain and the paralysis was still there. The lack of sleeping was destroying my life. I talked to no one and I was extremely introverted, I even had a test to be sure that I wasnt daft. I had no self confidence. This nightmare was controlling me. The only way to express myself was through drawing. It probably saved my life. I didn't had any friends at school and I've never been able to socialised. But luckily, I've managed to have some friends in my neighbourhood. My problems where all at school where people simply coudn't accept me for who I was. I started to loose my trust for others, which make me even more outcasted. All of this because I couldn't sleep properly. My parents never understood what was happening to me so they sent me to a psychiatrist. But for me, I wasn't the one who needed help, it was those who where having pleasure of hurting me who deserved to be treated, but school doesn't work this way. In spite that I was suffering from reject, drawing had kept me mentally mostly healthy. And I could feel that there was a strenght that was growing inside of me.

When I was 12 years old, I had a solid talent in drawing. And I decided that it was time to learn oil painting. This was a tru revelation for me because I didn't think I was able to do that, then I started to have some self confidence. It was then that I've decided to take things in charge. I had to do something to stop this nightmare that was still ruining my sleep. Throught the years, the frequency had slowly decreased, but enought is enought. For ten years that monsters was still hurting me for no reasons and it was time to make it go. I started to understand my dreams when I've learned to fly (Superman teached me LOL!). Then I've decided to take control of my dream starting with this one. One night I went to bed and then I started to repeat in my mind ''if you ever come back, I wont be paralysed and I will burst your eyes and cut off your head you hear me!!!''. Believe it or not, the monster never came back, I was free. From that moment my life started to get better. I was learning faster at school and I was much more healthy. It didn't solved all my problems but it was better than nothing. I'm still not out of the wood today but I've made hughe progress. I'm still a loner but now I have friends. The fact that I win over my own fear helped me forged my own personnality. Today I refuse to live in fear and my freedom is now my priority. I don't have a 100% control of my dreams but i'm still working on it. Now I analyse my dream and i'm trying to understand them. I've learned that if you control what's in your head, you're in control of your life.

Only a few years ago, I found the name of this mental problem. I would never imagine that this had a name. This trouble caused many story about alien abduction and ghost attack. It's a trauma called sleep paralysis, found it on tv. Then I realised that I wasn't alone. This problem is caused by a serious trauma. When you fall asleep, the brain send a signal to the muscle to block them so that you can't ''live your dream''. Sleep paralyisis is the oposite of sleepwalking, the brain doesn't unlock the muscle one you're awake and can cause vivid hallucination. Which make the experience extremely scary. I woke up so fast that I wasn't aware that I was waking up and my body didn't had the reflex to switch on the muscles. I was paralysed just like in my dream. That's why I though everything was real. After a few years I could felt the period of transition between sleep and the awakening but I the pain and the paralysis was still there. Everything was cause by panic. Generally, people who had suffered the same thing have the same breathing problem during the nightmare. People dream about little demons on their chest or an old woman trying to choke them. In my case, the pain was also on my waiste and it was unbareble.

So this is it, this was my story and it feel soo good to be able to write about it. Never underestimate to world of dream. I hope that my little story will help some others to talk about it. Peoples loves to talk about their dreams. It unite us in some level and it's as vital as breathing. The dreams are there to make us remember who we truly are. And nightmares are there to trigger our survival instinct. Without dreams, life has no colors, it's chaos. Today when I alk about this experience, it always make me smile to think about the time when I was tickle to death by E.T. the extraterestrial.