Sunday 1 November 2015

#BEDN | Something New About Yourself

Hey everyone :)

Apologies on the lateness of the post - I unexpectedly had to work today so I had no time to prepare anything. It's currently 20:54 and I'm pretty tired. But (there is a but) I am on holiday for the next 5 days so I have time to recover and relax.

Today's topic is 'something new about yourself'

I've had a long hard think about this and even a sneak peak at what other people posted and I was still stuck for ideas ... so I thought I'd talk about something briefly that I've not mentioned on my blog before - sleep paralysis.


I won't bore you with all the details as these posts are supposed to be light and fluffy. 

Since I can remember I've always had nightmares - I was a very susceptible (shall we say) child and anything I watched or saw on television ended up in my nightmares that evening - take for example - the face-hugger from the Alien film franchise - I put my parents through 6 months of screaming in the middle of the night because I thought the face-hugger was going to get me. Or the lovely Playstation game 'Rayman' - there was an area with slippy ice slopes and jaggy musical notes that killed you - again ... nightmares ... my mum still teases me to this day that a stupid kids game gave me nightmares.

I blame this party for what lead me into sleep paralysis - maybe a doctor or scientist will say that they are not connected but I believe I progressed from horrible nightmares into a even worse hell - sleep paralysis.

The definition from the NHS website on 'sleep paralysis' is as follows:

- is a temporary inability to move or speak that happens when you're waking up, or less commonly falling asleep.

It goes on to say that it can last from a few seconds up to a few minutes. It doesn't cause you harm but it can be very frightening and a few seconds or minutes feels like a lifetime. 

They say that causes of sleep paralysis can include: sleep deprivation, irregular sleeping patterns or age (it's more common in teenagers and young adults). 

Trying to describe the experience is hard - if you can imagine being in bed and waking up - you can see everything around you (obviously it's dark) but you can make out shadows and you can make out light from the street lights. But you can't move any part of your body, or speak to anyone - you panic and try to move and try to shout, speak and scream but nothing happens which makes you panic even more but there is nothing you can do ... 

When this is happening to me ... I think my imagination must kick in to calm me down because I imagine moving all my strength into my arm to reach for the light switch and turn it on - hoping that it will help ... then I put all the strength into my spine/back to make me sit up and get out of bed. Eventually after  this ... I snap out of it and I'm still laying down and the light is off. So I obviously either dream this or my imagination is just crazy - who knows.

It's a very difficult thing to deal with ... but I've learnt to deal with it and so has Dave after one night it happened and I sat straight up shouting and scared the crap out of him.

Let me know if its ever happened to you in the comments below.



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