knowledge is power... sometimes

We may all deny it happens to us, but deep down inside when we don't understand something it scares the fuck out of us, even though we can--and will--ignore that fear. The ability to surmount our natural panic response is both good and bad. On the plus side, it allowed us to overcome a very elemental and universal fear within the animal kingdom: fire. Almost unique among the animal kingdom, humans aren't scared shitless of flames, which allowed us to harness its power and begin our climb to the top of the  food chain. On the other hand, this same ability is responsible for really stupid counterintuitive decisions, like splitting up or going into dark rooms in horror films--we're so good at ignoring fear that we don't treat it as the survival tactic that it is. Fear is an immensely important part of survival. Any animal that doesn't make a habit of running from unusual and unexplained shit doesn't live long--the reflexive aversion to whatever we can't immediately understand is what keeps us from ending up in the jaws of predators or the victims of rare but deadly natural phenomena.

So even though you like to pretend you have way bigger balls than you actually do, deep down you are a big pussy and evolution made you that way so you'd flee any potential danger. It's better to be afraid of shit that can't hurt you in the end than it is to be fearless in the face of new threats. A common fear--of snakes, for example--may be an evolutionary throwback to a time when our ancestors lived among deadly ones and learned to fear all snakes just to avoid the dangerous ones.

In the end, if we don't know what it is we're scared to fucking death of it.

The explanation for everything that scares us has a real-world answer, despite our inclination to believe in some kind of sixth sense that alerts us to otherworldly phenom.

But that doesn't stop us getting scared of it.

One thing that scares everybody who experiences it, long after they know what it actually is, is something called 'sleep paralysis'. If you know what this is, it's because you've experienced it before. If you don't, sleep paralysis is basically when your brain wakes up before it gets back in control of your body. When you sleep, your brain shuts your body down and stops it from moving. Or mostly stops it from moving anyway--most people twitch or flail in their sleep but for the most part have no muscle control, and your brain does this to stop you from getting up and physically acting out your dreams, which could hurt or kill you. (People in whom this mechanism doesn't work sleepwalk. Far from being genuinely funny, sleepwalking can often be deadly when people wander asleep and unaware into traffic or down stairs. At least one murder in Canada was successfully defended as a result of sleepwalking.)

So you can't move in your sleep. Once your REM cycle ends your brain puts everything back on again and most people don't wake up during a REM cycle. When you do, the connection is re-established instantly and you won't have any problems. But, every now and then you'll find yourself awake and mentally sharp before you get that control back and you'll become keenly aware that you can't move anything. This is fucking scary. Everything feels as heavy as lead and you find yourself desperately trying to achieve any kind of movement.

It never lasts more than a couple of seconds, but a couple of seconds is a really long fucking time to be completely without bodily control.

The  first time it happened to me I didn't know what it was--I guessed, ultimately correctly, that my body was still 'asleep'--and panic set in swiftly. I'm aware of what it is now but that doesn't make it any less difficult to cope.