Trick for Sleep Paralysis/Fucked Up Dreams
I thought I'd share this trick that works for me in case there is anyone this could help. A medication I take has a sedative effect. Most of the time I'm glad for it because I have trouble falling asleep. However I also occasionally find myself falling into this state of half sleep where I'm too aware of my body. I alternate between different states of this inbetween. Sometimes its just sleep paralysis, sometimes I'm dreaming but I'm aware I can't move my body. The dreams are most often me laying in my bed and trying to move or call out with little success and very hard to distinguish from reality other times they are fucked up and I keep trying to wake up during them. I sometimes do briefly wake before falling back again or I think I do. A lot of time I have a weird feeling right before I fall asleep and this happens thats hard to explain, like I'm being dragged down but with this restless anxiety. It also tends to happen more if I start to fall asleep at a time when I'm not normally alseep.
I have learned though a way to prevent this from happening when I'm scared it might happen. It has worked everytime I have used it. The trick is getting your brian in the right mindset before you sleep and reminding your brain your safe in your bed. You got to trigger the right part of your subconscious.
There are two things I do the second one is the trick the first is more of a safety net. I remind myself before I fall asleep that if I'm aware that I'm asleep I should be able to control the dream around me, I have lucid dreamed before and its awesome. The thing that is scary is the lack of control so I like to remind myself I'm master of my own mind. This comforts me.
The trick I use is I play music really low, hardly even audible, that are songs from when I was a kid and fell asleep in the car. The first time I did this or got the idea to do this, thank the Lord for answered prayers, I was trying to pretend for a moment that I was falling asleep in the car on a road trip. Mom is playing the radio like she always did in the front seat driving and I'm in the backseat, like when I was a little girl. I go back to that memory. I go to the safe place where I'm happy and the doze is that good state of inbetween sleep where you feel the movement of the car on the road and you're listening to the radio. I often had a hard time falling asleep with music on but, I'd take dramamine for my car sickness and it make me drowsy and I'd fall asleep or I'd only fall half asleep on shorter rides with nothing in my system listening to the radio when I was little because of the motion and being a kid I would just get tuckered out from the day.
I don't pretend every time, to be falling half asleep in the memories of my childhood but it certainly helped that first time. I have a playlist and I sometimes set a sleep timer for and hour sometimes I don't I just let it play. I want it to play while I'm asleep so my brain remembers. So that is the mindset I'm in. Not the scary quiet isolation of paralysis but, in the happy melodies of my childhood. For me that is mostly 90s to early 2000s country music with some from the 80s thrown in there. They aren't all songs I'd put on a normal playlist or listen to on the regular. Its all songs that would have been on the radio when my mom was driving. I also throwed in some songs that my other mother would listen to when I was young. The point is they are songs that are comforting in their familiarity and memories.
Truthfully being half asleep shouldn't be scary. It shouldn't freak you out to the point it turns into disturbing dreams. Sleep is awesome. Dreaming is awesome. The lack of control is scary but, it shouldn't be you're asleep, you don't need to be moving around and its very temporary. You are curled up in your warm comfy bed with nothing else to do than enjoy your imagination. Once you get out of that scared mindset you can actually enjoy sleep as you should. Sometimes you forget how un scared you should be in the fogginess of sleep. So If you fear what might be awaiting you when you close your eyes maybe try playing songs from a comforting time in your life. Go to those good memories there is more to your subconscious than the bad. Open those brighter doors instead.
p.s. for any that aren't currently in a place where they feel safe when they go to bed that this doesn't help as much with right now because of your current circumstances. It will get better, I have known many people who have been in bad situations and tried to get out multiple times and were punished and/or discredited. They got out though because they kept trying. Don't give up hope, keep yourself safe and keep your eyes out for opportunities, your day will come where you'll be able to get out and turn whats going on now into nothing but a bad memory. You won't believe how much better your life can be with one change of circumstance.
