Good thoughts. All things I have tried and considered.
For me, sleeping with the tv on helps me fall asleep within minutes, when naturally it can take me up to an hour (because it distracts me from my own endless uncontrolled thoughts, as was already mentioned). Yet though it helps me fall asleep more easily, it puts me there in a more coma-like trance, and it makes me more prone to nightmares and sudden disruption in the middle of my sleep.
I do have the best quality sleep when I shut off all electronic things around me for at least a half hour before sleep time. Now I read a book (though I used to say I didn't have time, I now recognize how this is an important part of my life - and I think we all would all benefit from taking a little time, just a few pages a day sometimes, to go off into fictional worlds). I have also benefitted greatly from do muscle relaxation meditation to get me to sleep. I am starting to have some of the best sleeps yet, but ...
I am someone who is plagued with severely traumatic sleep phenomena. I regularly have sleep paralyses in some form, like every other night it seems, and it may be every night but I don't always remember. Typically the compellingly real-seeming nightmare is of someone or some supernatural entity, that comes upon or into my body, when I'm just sitting or lying, trying to relax or get some sleep. The violating entity drifts over me and takes over my soul, even while I lie there protesting. I cannot move, I cannot breathe, and I am overcome with sheer horror. After a few minutes that feel like hours, the hallucination ends, and I can gradually calm my heart down and fall asleep for the next cycle or two until restless morning. The intensity and realness is overwhelming. Throughout my life, I have been visited by demons, alien creatures, and the devil himself, sometimes with the disturbing feeling of being raped by them. I have 'heard' (more like experienced in the pit of my being) their voices, and felt their deathly cold grips.
I have been having these sleep disturbances for longer than I can remember, so I have come to discover I am not alone, but it is still a total mystery as to what is happening. Thus I have come to 'get used' to it. But I still crave without hope to be able to sleep peacefully so I can be as energetic and productive as possible in my waking life. I am resigned to believing that the intensity with which I experience my waking life makes it necessary to have these equally intense dreams, and that all this must be for some reason, it must be my brain helping me somehow to face and to ultimately manage all these thoughts and feelings. I think these hallucinations come because I am becoming mindful of the deepest, darkest, weakest part of myself, and learning to overcome the king of all my fears, that there is someone or something that can simply find me and take away my entire existence, my entire soul from me, and I can't do anything about it. I feel like I am ever so slowly becoming stronger, even in the face of the paraylsis and feeling of terror. I feel like everything is starting to change, and maybe I am finally growing past these sleep disturbances. Maybe it's joining this forum, but it could also be a lot of coinciding factors in my life. I will keep on trying so that one day, I will be able to get away.
One thing I discovered early on is that falling asleep on sofa or with tv on would make the sleep paralyses come more frequently and with greater intensity. The most effective thing I found is a technique I have all but mastered over the last few years: I am now able to induce an out of body experience just as it starts to happen, in which my mind/body/soul kinda rolls out of me and flies off out of the way of danger, just in time. I feel free and safe afterward, but I am still angry that I have to go through this escapism. I want to be able to tackle, face on, whatever is trying to take my peace away from me, and stop it before the paralysis even begins, and stay with my 'true' body as long as I am alive.
Last night, I had some milder paralyses at the end of my first series of sleep cycles, which I got away from by flying away. Woo hoo! But then, toward my mid-to-late cycles, I had a really intense one, more intense than I've had in a long time, and I could not get away from this one no matter how hard I tried. For the first time I dreamt it was a big black rectangle (kinda like the Acme 'holes' in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", but as big as an empty doorway), that drifted over from the wall and possessed me, taking over my mind. When I first saw the rectangle in my bedroom, I knew it signified the presence of evil. It was a waking dream, because I was conscious in my bed, but I was paralyzed and helpless. I felt like maybe if I could be strong enough somehow I could save myself, like I always try to do, but this time it was as if I could not think positively enough to escape my body in time, before my worst fear came true. The evil rectangle drifted over and possessed me. It may sound almost funny, but it was really terrifying. As the black rectangle was possessing me, I was overcome with endless disturbing images of torture, assault and violation, my synapses all seemed to be firing at a maximum, my neural networks becoming chaotic; it felt like I was dying by electrocution, with tingling throughout my body. I was screaming. I usually start screaming toward the end cuz I can't help it, until it all suddenly stops. It was worse because I was alone in my home. This one was so bad, I was actually still screaming until right after the dream ended, and actually heard myself screaming for real once I was finally lying safely alone in my real room. I thought for sure i disturbed the neighbors. In fact, I thought I heard a thump right then, like maybe they were telling me to shut up.
I would love to hear if anyone has similar experiences.
