Do you suffer from insomnia, depression, or nightmares, have post-traumatic or other stress disorders, and sleep irregular hours? If you also happen to be a woman, congratulations, you have the maximum chance of experiencing sleep paralysis (SP) with vivid images and strong emotions. This conclusion was reached by German scientists Gerhard Mayer and Max Fuhrmann.
Their research consisted of simply collecting statistical data from 380 participants, each of whom had had at least one SP experience, but most of whom had had between ten and twenty such experiences. Sleep paralysis occurs when one is falling asleep or waking up: the person is conscious, but their body is paralyzed. Interestingly, sleep paralysis has often been linked with narcolepsy; yet only 2% of the subjects belonged to this category (0.3% if we take into account only confirmed diagnoses). By contrast, almost every second participant suffered from stress at work, and every third, from stressful circumstances in their personal life.
As mentioned, women reported more vivid images and experienced sleep paralysis more often with the presence of a stranger or incubus figure. They also experienced strong emotions more often than men, especially the fear of going crazy. At the same time, the increased frequency of SP, as the researchers add, contributes to habituation. Although fear and a sense of powerlessness remain the most common emotions, about one in five participants has felt happiness, and more than half of the volunteers have experienced curiosity at least once during SP.
The feeling of an invisible presence in the room was the most frequently reported experience (79% have experienced it at least once). Other common phenomena are visual and auditory hallucinations, sensations of tingling, numbness, and vibration. Cases of flight, falling, rotation and out-of-body experience were also mentioned. According to the inner feeling of most, an episode of sleep paralysis lasts on average from 1 to 5 minutes (although this figure varied from a few seconds to 20 minutes or more).
What would you say were chances of experiencing sleep paralysis?
The article was published in October 2021 in the Journal of Sleep Research.
