Living with Hallucinatory Sleep Paralysis

When I was a kid, I used to suffer from what my pediatrician called "sleep paralysis." It always happened during that twilight period of falling asleep or waking up, both at night and during afternoon naps. The experience was quite frightening; not only was my body completely paralyzed, but there was the sensation of being slowly suffocated to death with a pillow. To make matters worse, the sleep paralysis was often accompanied by voices, voices belonging to members of my family who should have been saving me from suffocation instead of yakking away about nothing.

When I finally manage to break away and wake myself up, it was usually to an empty house with no one around. And the conversations in the next room? Some of them would eventually take place, but at some point in the future. It wasn't until adulthood, that I discovered it wasn't merely sleep paralysis dogging me at night, but something called "Hypnogogia."

What is Hypnogogia?

Hypnogogia is described as a dream like experience, accompanied by full body paralysis and hallucinations that can be either by touch, sight, or sound. Hypnogogia is also characterized by a crushing pressure on the chest and difficulty in breathing. It's such a peculiar form of sleep disorder that people generally don't discuss it with their physicians. And can you blame us? Sleeping paralysis is one thing, but trying to explain visions of ghosts, aliens, and family conversations that hadn't happened yet is a whole other thing entirely.

And yet, hypnogogia isn't that terribly uncommon. Experts estimate that 30-40% of the population experiences some level of hypnogogia, with 5% having intense experiences such as the ones I've had to live with.