Thread: Fear

Originally Posted by SolvedSnake

These days, I'm less, and less able to control my fear. Since I am studying Sleep Paralysis, and stuff, I fear more and more of it. And I start to see daytime hallucinations too. I feel like going crazy. I can't sleep. And I just can't control my fear. I need somebody to help me conquer my fear somehow. I need some techniques or something. And you cannot calm me down with "you cannot die of sleep paralysis" because the intense terror can cause death. I need some advice from you guys. The more days pass, the worse my SP and fear becomes.
And I know, I'm completely causing this, still I don't feel I have any control over it... dang... I'm so stupid, but I can't help it. I feel like I fear "FEAR" more, than the actual SP. Do you think opening an SP diary on the forums, and telling my SP experiences would help? Anyways thanks in advance.

Well about diary if you think it will help then do it why not.
Anyway i cant give you any advice since Im not experienced with it but if you are that much frightened of it .. try some techniques that dont include being conscious during SP.
But again if you say that you are studying it ,it would be necessary to overcome it and Im sure there must be a way to do it -> that what ill leave to experienced ones.

If you want advice, don't tell people what to tell you. You really cannot die from sleep paralysis; you just need to calm the eff down. The fact that your fears are increasing in strength is only due to your allowing them. In the end, you have control. You decide what scares you and what you don't LET scare you. And if worse comes to worst, just stop studying it.

Welcome to DV.

I completely understand where you are coming from. when I first started having SP attacks I was completely frightened to the point that I could not sleep.

Think about it this way, SP is a gateway to Lucid dreaming. You should view it as the holy grail rather than something horrible.
I promise, once you successfully go into a lucid dream from SP you will feel enlightened and you will look at SP in a complete different way.

The fact that you're so incredibly terrified and actually hallucinating and losing sleep makes me think you ought to see a professional about this...

If it's a consolation, WILD w/ SP is the only technique that uses SP. There is also HIT, VILD, DEILD, unnamed 'techniques' that don't involve paralysis, then there are DILD techniques like RCing, MILD, autosuggestion, whatever. Learning to lucid dream does not have to involve SP.

I highly suspect that the scary parts of SP (mainly the sensed presence or incubus) are rarer than you'd think. Most people on DV who talk about sleep paralysis are merely referring to some hypnagogic hallucinations, like the buzzing feeling. This isn't scary. At the worst you just feel like you've squeezed down on one of those trick shocking pens or something.

Bottom line: You don't need SP to lucid dream, I think you're overreacting, in general SP itself is not as scary as you think, letting yourself be afraid will actually make things worse, so take a deep breath, read more on the forums, and relax.
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Scratch that, I just saw that you suffer from ISP, you're not just interested in getting it to lucid dream.

You say you've been 'studying' SP, but in my experience that leads people to not fear it at all, not to become utterly terrified. What exactly have you been studying? What are your SP 'symptoms'? Which hallucinations do you get?
As deano said, yea, people who suffer from SP can learn to use it to lucid dream, which can completely change the way you think about it and eliminate your fear of it. Like I said above, keep reading, if you want more material I can send it to you, but I think you're overreacting, one thing that can definitely make your hallucinations worse, but the good news is that if you get it this frequently, it shouldn't be very hard at all for you to have that paradigm shift and learn to LD and look forward to sleep paralysis.

Thank you all, for your help, but I don't get sleep paralysis when trying to WILD, I get it almost every night without trying to go LD/OBE. It started 6 months ago, and it got worse and worse up to this point. Its easy to say for me, that I try to get over my fears tonight, but when it happens, I loose my mind, and i can only panic. Its so loud, and all those scary demons. And if I let it happen more, the more intense it becomes...

Originally Posted by SolvedSnake

Thank you all, for your help, but I don't get sleep paralysis when trying to WILD, I get it almost every night without trying to go LD/OBE. It started 6 months ago, and it got worse and worse up to this point. Its easy to say for me, that I try to get over my fears tonight, but when it happens, I loose my mind, and i can only panic. Its so loud, and all those scary demons. And if I let it happen more, the more intense it becomes...

Next time you enter SP close your eyes, I always found that a easy way to deal with the hallucinations.
I assume you already know how to get out of SP, but just in case. Try to move your fingers, once you have moved them your whole body will then be released.

Try and get enthusiastic about Lucid dreaming, hopefully the excitement of having a Lucid dream with drown out the fear of the SP.

but yeah, I ALWAYS close my eyes when in a SP. It helps wonders.

(When I say eyes, I obviously mean your dream eyes. Your real eyes are not actually open.)

Actually during SP your eyes are able to be opened and closed, and the person is able to look around and see their true environment. It's only if you manage to WILD that you have dream eyes.

Originally Posted by Shift

What exactly have you been studying? What are your SP 'symptoms'? Which hallucinations do you get?

Well, actually the only way I can get out of SP is to try to open my eyes. It always helps. But I try what you said. But not "seeing" whats around me, and just guessing makes it even more scarier for me.

Originally Posted by Shift

Actually during SP your eyes are able to be opened and closed, and the person is able to look around and see their true environment. It's only if you manage to WILD that you have dream eyes.

Ooh I didn't know that

So when I am in SP and have my eyes open. My eyes in waking life are open?

If you're looking at your room, then most likely yes, unless you've entered a dream without realizing it and are laying in a dream bed. My guess is that once you've started dreaming, you've fallen asleep and your eyes have been closed or closed themselves, but then I've seen some people sleep with their eyes open so I won't say yes or no either way But yea, during SP eyes and lids can still move It seems like you're linking SP and WILDs together, but really they're two different things, and one can help you achieve the other.

Oh I would also like to add that changing the position of you body will stop the SP from occurring.
In my case, I always get SP on my back or belly.

Thank you for all the advice.
I summoned all my courage, but for my surprise, I haven't experienced SP
this night.

i have SP 5 to 8 times a month, its not bad for me really. i've lived with it my whole life. when i was younger i thought what i was experiencing was sleep apnea but as i got older i realized that it was really sp. when you wake up paralized you tend to panic which increases your heart rate, and your breathing wants to increase because of this. In this state your brain has already taken over your breathing which is at a lower rate at night. So when i would become scared i felt like i couldn't breath, now when i wake up in this state i am more annoyed than anything because i just want to change positions and go back to sleep. If you do find yourself in sp remember to try to wiggle a finger or toe to waken the rest of your body up so you can come out of sp. My problem is that most of the time i can't fight the urge to just sit through it and go into a lucid dream, instead i can't fight the urge to just come out of it and go back to sleep. Also i have never experienced the old hag syndrome while in sp. The only time i saw something strange was during a false awakening when i saw a shawdow being at the end of my bed, i had been practicing for months to have an out of body experience, it was so REAL, that i think i might of succeded but at the time did not realize what was happening. That created real fear for a long time for me, i'm over that now and ready to try again. I've only had two lucid dreams, but the false awakening was way more real. It made me feel as if i was going crazy, so i know how you feel. It's all mind over matter. theres a fine line between reality and dream and that line can become blurred. Try not to be scared and it will work out for you. hope that helped a little for u. Best of luck to You!!

Past week or 2 i have been getting these weird sort of SP attacks. But every time i get them, im pretty much garenteed a lucid. The reason being i have read about it being like the holy grail of LDs so much, that when i get it, if i can i close my eyes imediatlly, this way i know i wont see anything freaky.(because when my eyes are open, i see WEIRD shit like paddington bear heads, and once a goat head on my bed What i do is think of it as the beginings of an LD now. Just ride it out, and imagine a dream scene. It may take some tweaking on your part, but the first time i got this happening i managed to enter a dream with like no effort, and i didnt even know how to do it previously. Good luck ovecoming your fear, and like you said yourself, the thing you fear is FEAR and the fear is generated solely by you.

Well, when you're going through it, do you know it's SP, or do you think it's actually happening? If you know it's SP, you can control it. If you can talk, tell the demon to go away, or, who knows, maybe have some fun making the demons disappear and summoning... well, whatever, really. If you can't talk, imagine the words appearing on the wall. Also, depending on how spiritual/superstitious you are, some people have certain rituals. For example, before they go to sleep, they "draw" a pentagon around their bed using their minds. And they believe that pentagon/pentagram will emit a holy/purging/demon-killing/SP-stopping light that will stop bad things from happening to you during SP.