u/saycheeeeeze

My first AP (or what I perceive as AP) happened unintentionally about 10 years ago. It started happening again around 3 years ago, and since then, it has been happening more frequently, still completely unintentionally. I say unintentionally because I never asked for it, and I have a hard time living with these experiences.

Every time I feel the vibrations start—that strange sensation of my soul leaving my body—I panic and immediately try to stop it. Usually, I’m able to stop it for a while, until I become too exhausted to keep fighting it and eventually feel myself being pulled out of my body.

I’m a very spiritual person, very intuitive, and I’ve always had a strong relationship with my dreams. Over the years, I’ve learned to trust and listen to my dreams, and a lot of the time, they have seemed to predict things that later happened. However, my experiences with astral projection have always felt completely different. They have always felt forced, and I’ve never really felt ready for them, which is why my instinct is always to try to stop them.

I feel like if I’m not mentally prepared for the experience, something bad could happen. I also feel like I need to be in a clear state of mind and not be afraid, but that’s extremely difficult when it feels like the experience is being forced on me and I’m only trying to sleep.

Although this has been happening for a while, my experiences have always felt blurry and dream-like. I don’t experience anything like what I read about on here, which makes me question what is actually happening to me. People who have experienced AP seem to have clear, vivid experiences where they remain fully aware of their surroundings and everything that’s happening around them. They’re able to move to other dimensions or even different planets and interact with entities.

Maybe it’s because I don’t really allow myself to enjoy the experience or fully let go. I usually see and feel myself floating out of my body and stopping at the ceiling of my bedroom. Sometimes I feel incredibly light and can actually enjoy floating around my house. Other times, I feel heavy and still somehow attached to my body, almost as if I’m falling out of it without completely separating. It’s difficult to describe.

I used to be able to float without stopping. I would always move in the same direction I had left my body, continuing upward until it felt like I was as high as the clouds in the sky and could see the entire town below me.

The strange thing is that I never seem to see things clearly or exactly as they are in reality. I know I’m in my house. I know I’m looking at my bed. I know I’m looking at my town. Yet none of it actually looks the way it does in real life. The furniture is different, the lighting is different, and the town definitely doesn’t look like my actual town.

So this is where I start questioning myself: am I actually experiencing AP, or am I simply dreaming?

The reason I’m convinced that it’s not just a dream is because I’ve been extremely attentive to my dreams my entire life. I wake up and analyze what I just dreamed about, and I feel like I know the difference between a normal dream and these experiences. I’ve never experienced anything in a dream that felt this intense.

There is this incredible feeling of freedom—of being extremely light, but at the same time feeling powerful. Then there are the intense vibrations throughout my entire body, especially in my hands and feet, right before I leave my body. I experience those same vibrations again as soon as I return. The actual sensation of feeling like my soul is leaving my body is something I’ve never experienced in a normal dream.

My biggest AP experience happened about a year ago.

I was enjoying floating around my house and could see all the objects and furniture around me. Everything looked distorted or strange. Some things looked almost funny, while others looked WAY shinier than they normally do.

When I tried to return to my body, I was able to open my eyes a little bit and there was this huge black face with giant white eyes staring directly at me.

I could feel what seemed like the entity’s arms wrapped around my body, preventing me from moving. It stayed there, staring at me and holding me for what felt like hours. I felt like it was draining my energy.
I was trying to fight it, but I was absolutely terrified, and I’m sure it could sense my fear.
I’m still not sure whether it had been there watching me before I left my body or how it got there in the first place. Even though its presence felt extremely heavy and uncomfortable, it mostly seemed curious rather than aggressive.

After that experience, I became pregnant, and, strangely enough, everything stopped. Even my dreams became very light and meaningless.

Now that I’ve given birth four months ago, the experiences have started again. If anything, they feel more intense. I feel like every out-of-body experience is becoming more aggressive and forced.

Tonight it happened again.

I had been awake for nearly 24 hours and was finally able to put my baby to sleep. I was exhausted and trying to fall asleep when I immediately started dreaming about my husband and me.

I already had a strange feeling in the dream, so I told my husband " Do not to let them pull me out of my body". He was getting ready to push my soul back into my body when I suddenly started feeling the vibrations and snapped back to reality.

I was trying to wake up, but I could barely open my eyes or move. I fought as hard as I could to stop the vibrations and wake myself up, but I was so exhausted that eventually I gave up.

Almost instantly, I felt my soul being pulled out of my body, and I could see myself floating upward.

Again, I could see myself, but not exactly. It was almost like seeing a shadow or an outline of myself in the same position I was lying in bed. The light in the room was on, even though the room was actually completely dark, and once again, the room itself looked slightly different.

I felt extremely heavy as I tried to stop myself from floating and force myself back down. I don’t know how I managed to get back into my body, but when I did, I was shaking extremely hard. I think the shaking may have actually been my body’s way of waking me up. I could still feel the vibrations in my hands and feet afterward.

My husband has been very supportive throughout all of this. In the past, he has had to wake me up because I was screaming in my sleep or shaking the bed during episodes of sleep paralysis or what I perceive as AP. He has done a lot of research himself in an attempt to understand what I’m experiencing and figure out how he can help me.

This morning, he told me that I should educate myself about what is happening and learn how to live with it, since trying to stop it clearly hasn’t made it go away. That’s ultimately why I’m writing this post.

What I really want to understand is why my experiences seem so different from what other people describe. Why does everything feel so blurry or look different from reality? Is this something other people experience as well? If so, why does it happen, and how do you learn to deal with it?
And how do you deal with these experiences when you just want to sleep? I feel like I’m constantly fighting against something I never asked for and don’t fully understand.
I know this is probably a messy and unclear post, but I’m honestly starting to feel like I’m losing my mind..
I would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has experienced something similar, especially people with a lot of experience with AP, who might be able to help me understand what these experiences could be and how to deal with them.

I had a beautiful pregnancy for the most part. My partner has been amazing and always by my side, I had no major issues, and the baby is healthy. The beginning was tough because I was vomiting for the first 2–3 months and could barely eat anything except fruits, but once that passed, everything was fine.
My only real concern was the fact that my belly didn’t show until around 7 months. I kept wondering what was wrong and why I wasn’t like other women who show early. My midwife explained that it’s very common for first pregnancies and for my body type. Once my belly finally started showing, people still wouldn’t believe I was already 7–8 months pregnant because of how small I was. I actually felt quite stable emotionally. I didn’t really have mood swings, I felt strong and fine most of the time, and I didn’t have many food cravings. I wasn’t eating a lot and felt pretty in control of my routine.
But since passing the 36th week, everything changed. I started feeling bloated, gained a lot of weight very quickly, developed stretch marks that I had avoided my whole pregnancy, and also got the swollen feet I had heard so much about. I also became much more emotional and sensitive. I find myself eating more without really thinking about it or using food as comfort, and physically I feel much more limited.. even simple things like picking something up from the floor have become difficult. I’m now past 38 weeks and have gained a lot in the last month alone.
Midwives and doctors have started commenting on my weight gain, which has been hard emotionally.
These last weeks of pregnancy have been really difficult physically and mentally. I feel huge, I feel judged, I've become more sensitive and less patient, my whole body hurts, and I’m constantly out of breath, exhausted and uncomfortable.. I’m really excited to meet my baby and can't wait, but I can't help but feel overwhelmed by how fast everything has changed and how intense these last weeks feel.
I just want to know if I’m the only one going through this. I’m so close to giving birth, and I can feel my body preparing for it, but everything feels like it happened so suddenly and it’s been a lot to process emotionally.