Do You Ever Wake Up and Can’t Move? This is Why!

Pay attention. We are about to tell you something that might seem super strange but actually happens to a lot of people around the world, maybe even you. Think about a situation where you go off to sleep at night as per your daily routine. However, some time in the night you wake up, opening your eyes. You are highly aware of your position and surroundings, can sense everything just like you could when you went to bed.

However, gradually your mind catches up with you and makes you aware of something quite weird and uncanny. You realize eventually that although your mind has woken up, you are unable to move your body. There is an unnatural feeling of pressure and burden crumpling your chest. When you understand what’s happening with you, that you can feel, smell, hear everything around you but cannot respond to anything, it gives rise to massive panic attacks. Your knee-jerk reaction is absolute terror since you finally get it that you are living through a real nightmarish situation.

On hearing such horrifying accounts, most people feel it is a product of pure imagination, the kind that we can find in the mindboggling works of Stephen King but it does affect many people. Victims term it as “waking up dead” or “being awake in a nightmare” which shows how traumatizing the experience is.

This phenomenon is called sleep paralysis. Strangely, this concern has baffled mankind for centuries. Although we have found a large number of accounts of such incidents from all across the world, yet people failed to find pertinent causes behind such occurrences. As most things unknown and mysterious to man, they resorted to spirituality and esoteric discussions to impose meaning, understanding and justification upon it. Now, scientific research has provided us with better knowledge about the entire situation, finally giving us answers about a crisis that is strange; plaguing the lives of thousands daily.

Science says that the problem of sleep paralysis is actually caused by REM sleep problems. When you’re having REM sleep, the brain stills and freezes the body to prevent us from physically expressing our dreams while sleeping.

This experience is quite normal and is named REM atonia. If the person ends up being awake while physically undergoing the REM atonia, then it’s strange and scary. It’s important to know the causes that lead to sleep paralysis. Basically things that disturb the REM sleep situation like sleep deprivation, jet lag, migraines and disturbed sleeping patterns, are the main causes behind sleep paralysis.

Moreover, there are several psychological issues that can also lead to sleep paralysis. The most common problems are anxiety disorders, extreme stress, traumatic experiences or addiction issues like alcoholism and drug consumption.

So if you have not been taking care of yourself physically as well as mentally, are enduring a lot of stress and pressure which you have not managed to channel out properly, then you might experience sleep paralysis. Therefore, take precautions so that it doesn’t happen to you.