Experience:Sleep Paralysis - Stress and REM Cycle Disruption

Experience index — Sleep Paralysis

Substance(s): None

Dose: N/A

Route of Administration: N/A

• Age: 18
• Sex: Male
• Height: 174 cm
• Weight: 57 kg
• Date: January 17, 2025

Background

• Experience level: Medium.
• Medications/Health Conditions: Possibly heart conditions.
• Other Substances Taken: Caffeine.
• Suspected Triggers: Stress, anxiety, sleep deprivation, and coffee.
• Set and Setting: My bedroom, while taking a nap.

Experience report

Timeline

• T+ 0:00 (09:58) - Fell asleep.
• T+ 10:10-10:30 - Approximately between 10:10 and 10:30 the HRV increased a little bit to moderated stress.
• T+ 10:30-11:00 - The HRV levels decreased to relaxed from 10:30 and increased slightly after 10:50.
• T+ 11:00-11:13 - Started REM cycle, followed by a nightmare before waking up.
• T+ 11:13-11:14 - Woke up from nightmare, paralyzed, hallucinations began.
• T+ 11:14-11:15 - Regained the ability to fully move and wake up.

Submitted by Bocembb

Effects analysis

• Physical Effects: By the time I woke up, I felt an immense pressure on all parts of my body. The way I can describe it is as an extreme gravity force pulling me into the ground, making my body incapable to move or stand up. Also, my vision was kind of messed up. When I woke up from the nightmare, I felt like something pulled me off my dream. Then I saw all black and I regained vision a moment after. My interpretation of this was that I opened my eyes when I was still sleeping, putting myself into the paralysis state. Also, it is very important to add that I've experienced this three times in a year, all of them were during naps.
• Emotional Effects: At first, the feeling of getting dragged out of my dream felt like I was dying. The sensation was like watching the dream getting distorted as I was getting pulled away from it, finally opening my eyes and mixing elements from the nightmare and real life when I woke up. The dream was about me checking my routine application app, in which I follow my stress levels, my feelings, and workouts. In the nightmare, I was checking the feeling list, then I saw how all of the graphs went down, turning red, as well as the faces (feeling indicator symbols; Example: Smiling face) were expressionless and also red. I noticed a big red text which said, "God covers suicides like this." My interpretation of this is that lately I was having a few questioning thoughts about life, not necessarily suicidal thoughts, but questioning it. I feel like the dream was expressing that thought and the fear of dying or taking one's own life.
• Mental Effects: By the time I woke up, my vision was blurry, and I couldn't move my head. The only thing I could see was a third of the bedroom door, which was in front of my bed, as well as a black figure with a humanoid body standing there. It was slightly bigger than the door, approximately 210 cm. Also, there was this robotic voice repeating the phrase "God covers suicides like this" again and again. It happened about seven times.
• Additional Stuff: I want to add that I wasn't really scared like the first time this happened to me, since all of my sleep paralysis experiences felt the same and all of them had me grabbed out of my dreams. I was able to somehow break the paralysis effect, or at least this is how it felt. I remember thinking about one scene of the anime My Hero Academia, in which the protagonist gets brainwashed. After that, he's induced into a brainwashed state where he can't do anything but follow the other person's instructions. He manages to escape the brainwash by snapping his fingers (I know it sounds like I'm a total weaboo, but believe me, this helped me). After remembering that scene, I tried to move just my fingers, which surprisingly I could. So, I just started moving them right to left and left to right until I felt how the pressure disappeared, and the robotic voice just faded.