Tag Archives: sleep paralysis

Clinical Interviewing, Personal Reflections, Research, Writing

The Delight of Scientific Discovery

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Art historians point to images like John Henry Fuseli’s 1754 painting “The Nightmare” as early depictions of sleep paralysis.

Consensus among my family and friends is that I’m weird. I’m good with that. Being weird may explain why, on the Saturday morning of Thanksgiving weekend, I was delighted to be searching PsycINFO for citations to fit into the revised Mental Status Examination chapter of our Clinical Interviewing textbook.

One thing: I found a fantastic article on Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS). If you’ve never heard of FAS, you’re certainly not alone. Here’s the excerpt from our chapter:   

Many other distinctive deviations from normal speech are possible, including a rare condition referred to as “foreign accent syndrome.” Individuals with this syndrome speak with a nonnative accent. Both neurological and psychogenic factors have been implicated in the development of foreign accent syndrome (Romö et al., 2021).

Romö’s article, cited above, described research indicating that some forms of FAS have clear neurological or brain-based etiologies, while others appear psychological in origin. Turns out they may be able to discriminate between the two based on “Schwa insertion and /r/ production.” How cool is that? To answer my own question: Very cool!.

Not to be outdone, a research team from Oxford (Isham et al., 2021) reported on qualitative interviews with 15 patients who had grandiose delusions. They wrote: “All patients described the grandiose belief as highly meaningful: it provided a sense of purpose, belonging, or self-identity, or it made sense of unusual or difficult events.” Ever since I worked about 1.5 years in a psychiatric hospital back in 1980-81, I’ve had affection for people with psychotic disorders, and felt their grandiose delusions held meaning. Wow.  

One last delight, and then I’ll get back to my obsessive PsycINFO search-aholism.

Having experienced sleep paralysis when I was a frosh/soph attending Mount Hood Community College in 1975-1976, I’ve always been super-delighted to discover old and new information about multi-sensory (and bizarre) experiences linked to sleep paralysis episodes. Today I found two articles stunningly relevant to my 1970s SP experiences. One looked at over 300 people and their sleep paralysis/out-of-body experiences. They found that having out-of-body experiences during sleep paralysis reduced the usual distress linked to sleep paralysis. The other study surveyed 185 people with sleep paralysis and found that most of them, as I did in the 1970s, experienced hallucinations of people in the room and many believed the “others” in the room to be supernatural. I find these results oddly confirming of my long-passed sleep insomnia experiences.

All this delight at scientific discovery leads me to conclude that (a) knowledge exists, (b) we should seek out that knowledge, and (c) gaining knowledge can help us better understand our own experiences, as well as the experiences of others.

And another conclusion: We should all offer a BIG THANKS to all the scientists out there grinding out research and contributing to society . . . one study at a time.

For more: Here’ a link to a cool NPR story on sleep paralysis: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/21/781724874/seeing-monsters-it-could-be-the-nightmare-of-sleep-paralysis

References

Isham, L., Griffith, L., Boylan, A., Hicks, A., Wilson, N., Byrne, R., . . . Freeman, D. (2021). Understanding, treating, and renaming grandiose delusions: A qualitative study. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 94(1), 119-140. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12260

Herrero, N. L., Gallo, F. T., Gasca‐Rolín, M., Gleiser, P. M., & Forcato, C. (2022). Spontaneous and induced out‐of‐body experiences during sleep paralysis: Emotions, “aura” recognition, and clinical implications. Journal of Sleep Research, 9. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.13703

Romö, N., Miller, N., & Cardoso, A. (2021). Segmental diagnostics of neurogenic and functional foreign accent syndrome. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 58, 15. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2020.100983

Sharpless, B. A., & Kliková, M. (2019). Clinical features of isolated sleep paralysis. Sleep Medicine, 58, 102-106. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2019.03.007

Therapy with Adolescents

Insomnia 2.0

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Not infrequently in my work at Trapper Creek Job Corps I have students come to me and tell me of their dreams and ghost sightings. One of the more common scenarios involves a description something like this:

“I wake up in the night and I’m sure there’s some kind of ghost or creepy guy standing at the end of my bed. It totally freaks me out. And I feel frozen . . .  it’s like I can’t even move. Sometimes I pray to myself and eventually when I can move again the ghost or the person is gone.”

Recently I had a student ask me if I’d heard about the ghosts in the dorms. I said, “Yes, but tell me about what you’re experiencing.” He described the usual scene with a creepy “ghost” at the end of the bed. He asked if I believed in ghosts and I said my typical, “I’m open to the possibility, but I don’t exactly believe in ghosts” and then asked if he was interested in hearing about an alternative explanation. He said “Sure” and so I pulled out the DSM and read and discussed with him a few parts from the section on Narcolepsy where it describes the sleep paralysis phenomenon pretty well. He was interested, but I didn’t push it (I tend to avoid trying to talk people out of their supernatural beliefs). He left more relaxed at having an alternative explanation for his experience.

One reason I like to share the science side of these experiences with students is because I recall having similar experiences back in college. Maybe it was related to sleep deprivation (like Kramer on Seinfeld, I had become enamored with the idea that I could survive on 20 minute cat naps). The problem was I became a little pseudo-narcoleptic and began having sleep paralysis experiences fairly often. What seems to happen in these situations is that consciousness returns while the body is still in the remnants of REM sleep. Of course, I interpreted my experiences as signs that I had become especially psychically attuned or that I was having spiritual visitations. It wasn’t until a few decades later (while reading the DSM) that I disappointingly discovered my amazing psychic and spiritual visitations were a product of sleep deprivation.

I haven’t had any sleep paralysis experiences for a very long time. The funny thing is I sort of miss them. I’m not exactly sure how I twisted an experience of feeling paralyzed with a creepy presence in the room into a positive experience . . . but then I am sort of a radical optimist.