A Recent Experience with Sleep Paralysis
This morning I drifted into awareness and tried to rise to a sitting position. My muscles refused to obey the command my brain was issuing. It took two more tries before I was able to rise. What I was experiencing was sleep paralysis. Sometimes when we are transitioning into or out of sleep, our minds can be awake and aware, but we feel paralyzed and unable to move our bodies as if our muscles haven’t yet gotten the message that we’re awake.
Today’s episode was the third time in my life this has happened to me. It’s an unsettling feeling to feel a complete lack of control of one’s own body. However, what I was surprised to notice on this occasion compared to the previous two is that I felt calm and matter of fact when previously I’ve gone straight to terror and panic in 0.2 seconds flat. Today, my mind progressed through roughly this sequence: “Hmm, that didn’t work. Let me try again. Still not ready to move, body? Well, this is totally normal. We’ll just give you a second to join me in wakefulness. Ah, yes, there you are. Good morning!” Before, my thought process was more like, “I can’t move! I CAN’T MOVE!! WHY AREN’T YOU MOVING, BODY!? WILL I BE PARALYZED FOREVER!? AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!”
While most of the time I expect to be able to wake up and jump to my feet, experience has taught me that on rare occasions my body takes some time to catch up with my brain. Wanting to understand this and other weird anomalies, like sleepwalking and hypnic jerks, I’ve also done a lot of sleep research (growth needs for the win!) to give me context and help me temper my expectations.
A lot of happiness studies show that we tend to get happier as we get older (especially here in the U.S.), and though a number of variables are certainly at play, I suspect a large reason for that is that our experiences and the knowledge we gain over time combine to help us to lower expectations, giving us more happy moments overall.
Have you experienced sleep paralysis or other sleep anomalies? How do you handle them? Where have you recently learned to lower your expectations?
Notes:
A few studies showing older people are happier: