Sleep Paralysis - Uncontrolled Dreams

It's difficult to talk about dreaming and sleep paralysis without talking about psychology, or making speculations about how the mind works when it's sleep or awake. The truth is that none of us fully understand dreaming or hallucinations, nor do we fully understand how it operates. We can only speculate, theorize, and continuously research it in an attempt to find a treatment for sleep paralysis.

Although we can accept that each dream we produce during sleep occurs from the mind - we can not control how frightening dreams are and we certainly can't control their contents. We can however, explore the experience that people have during this sleeping disorder and research ways to control the number of episodes and their effects on the body - even when its victim is awake.

Paralysis during sleep usually occurs during REM sleep, and it's characterized by a physical body unable to move or wake during a frightening dream. Common in sleep terror disorder, these frightening dreams are distinguished by dimensions far worse than a typical nightmare. When a person is dreaming under this disorder, he is unable to wake himself up, place his mind in a state of awake, and associate his body with his current (real) surroundings. He is instead, literally stuck in a different dimension for a short period of time.

Although this is a common disorder, it's a terrifying one none-the-less and occurs in many otherwise healthy individuals. Fortunately, treatment is available and ranges from medication to therapy to even nutritional adjustments. Other forms of treatment may involve sleep analysis, participating in dream journal therapy, and introducing multiple opportunities to relax into a current lifestyle.