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Thank you for participating in our research on sleep paralysis (SP).
This note is to acknowledge your response and thank you for your
participation. I understand from personal experience that sleep paralysis can
be a puzzling, and often terrifying experience. I suffered from this for many
years myself and that was certainly my experience. In our research (now
involving over 7, 000 people participating locally and worldwide who have had
this experience) we have found intense fear to be a very common, though not
universal, reaction to sleep paralysis. A very small minority of people who
have this experience report that they actually enjoy it or learn to enjoy it.
I cannot say this was my experience, however, or that of the majority of SP
experients. In our research we have found that
between 25%-30% of the population report some degree of experience with SP.
About a fifth report that they have particularly intense, complex, and often
disturbing hallucinations during these episodes and that they have them with
some regularity. Most of the questions we asked you refer to typical
experiences that people have during SP. Many people initially think that
their experiences are unique and are surprised to find that others have the
same or very similar experiences. Different people have different
combinations of these experiences, and a few people have all of them. One of
the things we are focusing on in our research is the nature of the clusters
of experiences different people have. We have not found SP to be
especially associated with depression or anxiety although there is some
suggestion in the literature that it might be and some people, though not
all, have reported reduction in SP episodes when on certain anti-depressant
medications. We have recently found experimental evidence supporting
anecdotal and clinical reports that some people experiencing SP are also
experiencing high concurrent levels of stress. I suspect SP is triggered by a
rather specific quirk in individual sleep patterns exacerbated in some people
by stress and/or irregular sleeping habits (e.g., shift work). Occasionally,
it seems to be triggered by novel settings or certain locales. For others it
seems to come and go in a quite haphazard manner. Although SP is typically
regarded as a relatively benign disorder, the actual experience itself can be
quite distressing, particularly for those who have the experiences very
frequently. Beyond treatment with medication, avoiding stress (easier said
than done I realize) and regular sleeping habits may sometimes reduce or even
eliminate SP for those experiencing frequent episodes. A traditional method
for overcoming the paralysis when it does happen is attempting to move one's
fingers and toes. More recently, a number of people have been suggesting
rapidly moving one's eyes back and forth as a way of bringing a bout of SP to
an end. If you are having multiple or repeated experiences at one time it may
help to get up briefly and move around before trying to sleep again. Once again, thanks for your
assistance in our investigation. We are doing a number of related
investigations on this topic. A number of our findings are discussed at
various points in our web site. Recently we have begun to expand the web
project. The response so far has been good and we are beginning to see many
possibilities on the web. We will likely be doing some follow-up of our
respondents in the near future so you may be hearing from us again. In the
meantime, gets lots of sleep and keep a regular schedule if possible. Regards, Al Cheyne p.s.: In case you
missed our information site the URL is: http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P.html If you have any
questions or comments please do not hesitate to contact me. Dr. J. A. Cheyne Department of
Psychology University of
Waterloo Waterloo ON
N2L 3G1 Canada e-mail: acheyne@watarts.uwaterloo.ca URL: http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/index.html Telephone:
(519)-888-4567 (3054) FAX:
(519)-746-8631 |