Hey guys, been lurking this forum for about a week or two now and I've been trying different techniques that people have posted and I've been doing reality checks and so far my dream recall has had great improvements with the tutorials posted here! Glad this forum exists, you guys seem like a really vibrant and helpful community that I'm glad to be a part of

While I do frequent reality checks throughout my day I still anticipate it will take some time before it becomes second nature to me and then longer until I will do it in my dreams, I've been trying to WILD every other or night or so now that I've graduated from school and will be free for several months until I go off to college, so I figured it might be a good few months to really practice WILDing and reality checks where I can safely experiment without inhibiting my ability to progress through the educational process!

Anyways, on to my question. I feel as though I've only gotten to the "transition" phase when I try to WILD twice, but I've only had about 5 REAL attempts in, and 1 of them was interrupted by my cat jumping on my legs and kneading in to my skin so I feel I am making progress. However in both of these "transition" phases I am almost completely unable to control my eyes. So far every time I begin to feel sleep paralysis kick in, I experience intense full-body vibrations (I'm glad for this, it lets me know I'm beginning to transition), my eyes began blinking at a very fast rate and it felt like they were having little eye seizures and my breathing begins to get VERY rapid and I feel like I'm going to suffocate. The first time this startled me and I was unable to concentrate completely and opened my eyes, however after some research I found this was normal. The 2nd time (just about an hour ago, actually...) I began to experience the same sensations, and I told myself the breathing was normal and I was able to calm myself down as much as I was going to be able to, however my eyes....my eyes continued to blink (or at least feel like they are) rapidly and I was struggling just to keep my eyes shut while my breathing accelerated continuously and my body vibrations continued, and I could vaguely make out the small light on my TV receiver through my blinking eyes, as this progressed the vibrations slowed down and came to a halt and my breathing returned to normal, I tried to envision a dreamscape but I was too distracted by my eyes. I continued to try and keep them shut to no avail and eventually opened my eyes for some much-needed relief to my eyelids and hoped I had entered the dreamstate but I hadn't. Afterwards I tried to re-induce sleep paralysis and it took about 20 minutes or so for my eyelids to "calm down" enough to where I could keep my eyes closed.

Does anyone else experience this and/or have any tips for me? I usually take a sock out of my sock drawer and put it over my eyes to help keep them closed but I forgot to this time, would this help or is there something else I can do to help alleviate this problem?