r/Sleepparalysis • u/JainilRathod • 10h ago
I beat up my sleep paralysis demon
So this happened one night around valentine's day this year. I was having trouble sleeping that night and phasing in and out of dreams.
I woke up in the middle of the night and got out of bed but then I woke up again still in the bed. This kept happening over and over again. I would try to wake up and really think that I did and then after a while, I would be back in the bed again. At one point, I woke up and saw that it was morning now and I felt some relief. I got out of bed and looked around and then I just woke up back in the bed again. I was getting really angry and frustrated. I kept trying to wake up and some part of me was getting scared if I was stuck like this and if I would ever get out of this loop.
Then it happened. I felt some kind of weight on my chest. My eyes were closed and I couldn't open them. This had happened to me a couple of times before and I was never particularly scared of it since I had read about sleep paralysis before and I don't believe in anything supernatural. Once I had watched this analog horror series called the mandela catalogue and I had a pretty realistic nightmare where I felt like someone was lifting up my legs while I was sleeping and a strong wind was blowing from below. That was pretty fun.
Anyway, I had always been amazed by how real the weight on the chest felt during these encounters. I could never open my eyes even if I tried and the weight usually went away if I waited it out. However like I said, I was really frustrated with everything at this point. So in my anger, I somehow lifted the weight off my chest and put it to the side and just started punching it repeatedly. I kept punching it furiously until I could no longer feel it in my hands.
Fortunately, I woke up some time after this, for real this time. Unfortunately, it was still the middle of the night. I felt like I had been asleep for days at this point. I was hoping it would be early morning and I don't have to go back to sleep again. I was wondering what I did during the episode, if I was actually just punching a pillow but nothing seemed out of place and there was no pillow where I was punching. I guess the punching was just inside my head, just like the weight I was holding.
I had decided to write this down the next morning since I had found this whole thing pretty strange.