Sleeping has almost become a chore for me. When i fall asleep, i either wake up screaming, panicked, or with sleep paralysis and the friendly old hag upon my chest. i’ve tried meditation, dream journals, bwgen, but nothing seems to make them stop. has this happened to anyone here, and how do you make it stop!!!
first of alll, welcome to the forum 
second, I suggest you seek professional help, if it is so bad, please you should consult your doctor and get an appointment with a sleep center. good luck, Q
I would like to help, but can you elaborate a little? When you wake up screaming, is it because you just had a nightmare or do the problems start only when you see the old hag or do you wake up feeling terrified for no reason? If you asked yourself what the cause of your fear is, what would you say? How often and for how long have you been having these problems?
I wouldn’t expect these to help with fear much either, except if you feel like you’re having nightmares that you can’t remember, in which case the dream journal might help.
And of course, professional help is necessary if you dread sleeping- you have to sleep.
usually the screaming and the old hag have nothing to do with each other, unless i try and scream to get myself out of the sleep paralysis. the reason i thought meditation and bwgen might help, is because i’ve become so parrinoid of sleeping that i hardly can sleep anymore, and i thought if i could go to sleep with plesant thoughts, that i wouldn’t have these problems
but are there nightmares?
yeah, usually ones dealing with mothes. yes i know it seems strange, but ever since i was young i’ve been terrified of mothes
I have to agree with Q on this one. It sounds like your problems are beyond the help of a forum. See a doctor. I wish we could help but, without sitting down with you and getting an in-depth accounting of what you are going through. Any advice we give could do more harm than good.
I doubt you can just stop SP completly, but you should be able to learn not to be afraid of it.
There is really nothing to be afraid of, since it is all in your own mind… you should learn to use it for your advantage, like entering dreams while being conscious.
i went through this one year (and a half) ago…
you’re just going to have to accept/confront it, that doesn’t necessarily mean your fears will disappear (though they might) and it doesn’t mean to make them disappear, it means to understand what the dreams mean and why you are having them, and to fix that problem in your waking life, as well as to confront the things that are bothering you to try to understand WHY they are bothering you.
is this stress related? a doctor would probably be a good idea before you start hallucinating in real life, and whatnot, but they can’t really help you, you can go to a sleep center and stuff, and that might help, but the end result is either you spend the rest of your life on sleeping drugs to fix the problem, which is horrible for you, or you have to go about understanding and correcting it on your own (or with a therapist)
drugs are not going to be a long term solution here, they shouldn’t be, at least, so you need to keep that in mind when you do go see a doctor.
To me it seems very simple- the cause of all your sleep problems is a phobia of moths. Of course, I might be oversimplifying it but that at least seems to be the main problem- you’ve always been afraid of moths, and after you have nightmares about the moths you wake up screaming, and because of that you’re afraid to go to sleep. If you just get rid of your fear of moths, you might fix the rest of the problems. If you’re interested, I could give you some information on phobias (I had one and did a lot of research on phobias and fear).
Still, you should get professional help if this develops into more of a problem and you should immediately try to get diagnosed. (you said that sleeping seems like a chore- I don’t know how serious that is).
Yeah, get rid of your fear of mothes. Maybe find some and confront them. They wont hurt you. It’s your fear most likely that’s causing this to happen. I fear nothing in my dreams.
And about the hag, dont get scared, try to concentrate on something else perhaps, like exiting your body, or enjoy the hag.
turn the hag into a hot woman.
i do that sometimes.
I second what Holy Reality said. The old hag is in your mind, you can edit her just like a dream. When you feel the sleep paralysis, don’t think “Shit, the old hag is coming,” think “oh boy, here comes Sandra Bullock!” or whoever else you like, and if you say Paris Hilton, I will stab you.
If all else fails, just play some good music on your CD player for the night. Whenever you wake up or have an SP, you will hear music you enjoy. Good luck.
-Stanky
I think you’re problem might be depression. I suffer from chronic depression, it comes in waves, which is actually a good thing. The waves last about a month, I usually have alot of nightmares during this, as well as a strong, irrational feeling of fear while I’m trying to sleep, sometimes coupled with mild hallucinations. When I have the hallucinations, I have a panic attack that sounds like SP. I’ve never had it but it sounds similar. I’m so terrified that I can’t move, and so I actually feel paralyzed, I see some sort of demonic image in my room, doing something slow and scary, like pointing at me. It sucks. But that’s only on a particularly bad wave, one particularly bad wave to be exact. I never had another one that was bad enough to make me hallucinate before or since. I doubt there are many people here that DON’T suffer from depression, since depressed people seem to be quite a bit more into their dreams from what I’ve noticed, I guess since it’s like an escape from reality. Alot of people might say, “What!? Depression’s not like that!” But yes, in some cases it is. I would always be okay during the day, but I knew bedtime was like going to my sanity’s execution. If you believe in God, pray it away, that seems to work.
Dreammonger - when you have those horrifying images, what goes on in your mind? I know when it first happens it can scare the crap out of you, but after visiting this site, do you realize that it is not real? (This goes for anybody having this problem.)
If so, imagine yourself doing something random as hell. I once had an SP/Dream hybrid of this strange demonic thing lurking towards my bed, but I decided to do something random. In the dream state, I jumped up and starting peeing at the demon. It screamed like a little girl and ran out of the room, then another dream character appeared at told me I was mean because it was the demon’s birthday.
Next time you have a scary image, recall a funny story and generally the scary thing will get trounced by something hilarious. You seem to go into the dreaming expecting horrible things… and that will gaurantee you horrible things. Hope this helps.
-Stanky