Happened to me three times last night, fucking viscerally terrifying even though I recognized that's what was happening after the first time and could kind of get a handle on the panic the subsequent times.

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[–] KobaCumTribute@hexbear.net 3 points 3 months ago

I've never gotten the trick of inducing lucid dreaming, though as I've gotten older I've gotten better at not letting it destabilize when I randomly become lucid and then managing to take some limited amount of control at times, often by sort of prompt-hijacking it with a spoken statement of what's going to happen and the forcing a change of scenery by walking through a door or something. Although sometimes I've gotten into a weird loop of realizing I'm asleep, false-awakening, realizing I'm still asleep, false-awakening again, and so on.

I remember the first time I had sleep paralysis was sometime in my early twenties too. Weirdly I didn't panic then: I recognized what was happening and at the time my old dog was still alive so there was a huge, hundred plus pound dog laying across the only door to the room so I felt entirely safe and secure; I distinctly remember fighting as hard as I could to lift one arm and flip off the shadow hallucinations (I probably didn't actually manage that, but it felt like I did) while laughing maniacally in my own head; I knew the figures were hallucinations and felt such complete contempt for them because of that lmao.

I don't get it often, and I don't usually feel the terror people typically describe, but this is the first time it's gone along with auditory hallucinations and merged seamlessly into dreaming that I got up to investigate them. I guess lately I've been on edge and becoming hyper alert at weird sounds that are usually just my fan clicking a bit or one of my cats hopping onto something in the hall by my bedroom.