Sleep paralysis is when your body is glued down from sleep chemicals and you are semi-conscious but can’t move or speak, and often these episodes come with hallucinations like a man in your room with a knife and intense fear. Sleep paralysis is a sleep disorder often brought on or made worse by stress. I’ve had sleep paralysis episodes on and off since I was 16. People over centuries of life on this planet think they’re visited by demons or spirits or aliens but it’s their own chemicals in their own brains, and it’s not real, and that’s how to cope with it, is to know that when you go to sleep and wake up with panic is to tell yourself it’s not real because if it was real, then how does anyone process a thing like that. READ MORE memoir at WOW! Women on Writing