...easily distracted by small, shiny objects
So it's an hour later and I haven't done anything but make myself some lunch (important -- hard to do physical stuff like cleaning w/o fuel) and accidentally stumble across an article on sleep paralysis on Wikipedia. I've had episodes of this over the years, but was unaware that it's a documented and fairly common phenomenon. Nice to know.
I frequently have hypnagogic sensations, but the sleep paralysis is usually hypnopompic. The hypnagogia is most often voices, either saying my name or unintelligible. Sometimes it's visuals -- like I'm seeing the room around me through my eyelids, and it's kind of... Not glowing, exactly, but more like it's outlined in TV snow.
The sleep paralysis has usually involved dreams where it feels like some Evil Spirit (tm) or Evil Disembodied Force (tm) is trying to sort of enter my body via skin osmosis (if that makes sense), and it's somehow paralyzed me (once it was a spell cast on me). It's always a battle of wills between me & it. One therapist, when I told her about those dreams, suggested that next time I had that dream I just give in and let it happen, and I looked at her like she was nuts. It's hard to explain just how Eeeeeee-ville the Evil Force (tm) feels during those dreams, but it feels like something Very, Very Bad would happen if I let it in, and I'm not inclined to ignore my instincts on that one. Who knows -- maybe it's my body setting off the Big Red Warning Bell to let me know that I'll DIE if I let it in, or something else bad. *snort*
Which leads me to the topic of lucid dreaming. I've never exactly been a lucid dreamer -- I can't think of a single time that I've ever realized, "Hey, this is a DREAM!" -- but over the years I've been more able to affect my dream environment while in it, and my actions have jibed more with what I would do in waking life. I've had plenty of dreams where I've encountered stuff that should have alerted me that it was a dream, like trying to read a book and never being able to find the same page twice, or trying to figure out what time it is, or getting endlessly lost while trying to drive somewhere. Stuff like that. And still, it never registers that anything's out of the ordinary -- things just seem more frustrating, is all.
I need to start keeping a dream journal again. I haven't yet decided whether I want to try the handheld recorder or stick with a paper journal, but I miss my dreams. (No, not a Rozerem commercial.) I haven't been remembering much about them lately, and I miss that. They were always such a good tool to help me gauge what was going on beneath the surface of my mind & emotions, and they were usually pretty damn cool. And it'd be fun to experiment w/ lucid dreaming.
Oh yeah, and according to Wiki, there's a band who recorded an entire album about sleep paralysis and other sleep disturbances. I was listening to clips on amazon... It's interesting stuff. I might hafta check it out.
Okay, now I really DO need to get to my list. Really! I do! And I will!
I frequently have hypnagogic sensations, but the sleep paralysis is usually hypnopompic. The hypnagogia is most often voices, either saying my name or unintelligible. Sometimes it's visuals -- like I'm seeing the room around me through my eyelids, and it's kind of... Not glowing, exactly, but more like it's outlined in TV snow.
The sleep paralysis has usually involved dreams where it feels like some Evil Spirit (tm) or Evil Disembodied Force (tm) is trying to sort of enter my body via skin osmosis (if that makes sense), and it's somehow paralyzed me (once it was a spell cast on me). It's always a battle of wills between me & it. One therapist, when I told her about those dreams, suggested that next time I had that dream I just give in and let it happen, and I looked at her like she was nuts. It's hard to explain just how Eeeeeee-ville the Evil Force (tm) feels during those dreams, but it feels like something Very, Very Bad would happen if I let it in, and I'm not inclined to ignore my instincts on that one. Who knows -- maybe it's my body setting off the Big Red Warning Bell to let me know that I'll DIE if I let it in, or something else bad. *snort*
Which leads me to the topic of lucid dreaming. I've never exactly been a lucid dreamer -- I can't think of a single time that I've ever realized, "Hey, this is a DREAM!" -- but over the years I've been more able to affect my dream environment while in it, and my actions have jibed more with what I would do in waking life. I've had plenty of dreams where I've encountered stuff that should have alerted me that it was a dream, like trying to read a book and never being able to find the same page twice, or trying to figure out what time it is, or getting endlessly lost while trying to drive somewhere. Stuff like that. And still, it never registers that anything's out of the ordinary -- things just seem more frustrating, is all.
I need to start keeping a dream journal again. I haven't yet decided whether I want to try the handheld recorder or stick with a paper journal, but I miss my dreams. (No, not a Rozerem commercial.) I haven't been remembering much about them lately, and I miss that. They were always such a good tool to help me gauge what was going on beneath the surface of my mind & emotions, and they were usually pretty damn cool. And it'd be fun to experiment w/ lucid dreaming.
Oh yeah, and according to Wiki, there's a band who recorded an entire album about sleep paralysis and other sleep disturbances. I was listening to clips on amazon... It's interesting stuff. I might hafta check it out.
Okay, now I really DO need to get to my list. Really! I do! And I will!