Have you ever been asked about what your dreams entailed solely based on some interesting comments you uttered during the night?
Many people have had an experience with a sleep talker during their life, and if you’re the talker, you may worry about what you might say when you’re asleep and unable to control what comes out of your mouth.
In good news, the things we say while sleeping are often unintelligible, and when they can be understood, they may not make any sense. Still, looking closer at what is said during the night may help you to better understand yourself and any challenges or hopes that you’re suppressing during the day.
What Is Sleep Talking?
Sleep talking is a type of parasomnia, which are abnormal behaviors that occur during sleep. However, while most parasomnias occur strictly during the non-rapid eye movement (NREM) or REM stages of sleep, sleep talking is unique because it can happen during either stage.
Sleep talking is not the same as other vocalizations during sleep. For example, REM sleep behavior disorder causes someone to physically act out their dreams, while catathrenia is a breathing disorder that results in audible groaning. With sleep talking, also known as somniloquy, you can say words, sentences, and possibly conversations.
It’s not unusual to talk during the night, with studies finding that 66% of people sleep talk at some point during their lives, making it one of the most common parasomnias. However, it’s not something that occurs frequently, with only 17% of those in the study reporting an episode of sleep talking in the last three months.
It’s unclear what causes sleep talking, but sleeptalking that begins when you’re an adult—versus sleeptalking that starts in childhood and continues into adulthood—does appear to occur more often in those with mental health conditions.
There is also a suggested genetic link to sleeptalking, so if your parents or siblings talk in their sleep, you may as well.
Decoding Messages from the Subconscious
One of the greatest challenges with identifying those who sleep talk is that it can only be detected by someone other than the sleep talker. Being something that occurs while asleep, only those who share a bedroom can point out instances of sleep talking, along with what was said during the night.
Even more challenging is that more than half of all recorded sleep-talking episodes are incomprehensible—it’s often mumbling, muffled by blankets or pillows, or silent speech where someone moves their lips but puts out limited noise. This can then make detecting what was said—to then be interpreted—all the more challenging.
Still, when sleeptalking occurs and is intelligible, it may take one of the following forms:
Conflict-Driven Dialogue
A study into what sleeptalkers say during the night revealed that a majority of their comprehensible utterances are negative and profane and often resemble a familiar, tense conversation. This suggests that what is said while sleeptalking resembles conflicts.
Interestingly, the type of sleep talking varies based on the sleep stage. Swearing is the most common during NREM sleep, whereas sleep talking in REM primarily involves insulting or condemning someone.
A Form of Expression
Sleep talking is often considered a way to express what we’re trying to make sense of or what we cannot say in our waking hours. With many conflicts internalized, this may be why they come out during sleep talking—it reflects your mind’s desire to say the words that had been tamped down during the day in order to avoid unpleasant situations.
A Chance for Creativity
While sleep talking may sometimes be a way to work through the day’s challenges, it may simply be a result of our mind creating stories, which is where unusual sayings may come into play. Who knows, your sleeptalking may even spur up some creative ideas.
In some cases, your sleep-talking may express your desire to do something different, even if what you say isn’t entirely representative of what you want to do. Some interpretation may be necessary, and in many cases, it’s this interpretation that allows you to look internally and see the areas that you want to change.
Unpacking the Past
If you’re talking about your childhood or the past during the night, your brain may be trying to work through unresolved issues.
During the day, you may consider unpacking the trauma or emotional upsets using a journal or by talking with a therapist. If your past is creeping into your night, it is likely a sign that what happened is not something to be pushed aside—your mind is itching to face it head-on so that it may move on.
How To Analyze Your Sleep Talking
The greatest challenge with sleep talking and finding meaning in what was said is that it can be hard to tell when you’ve talked. In the past, the only way to know if you spoke in your sleep was to have someone sleep in the same room as you—if you slept alone, you would never know.
Even more, the individual in your room needs to wake from their sleep, be coherent enough to focus on what you’re saying, and then remember it come morning. In many cases, this results in a claim that you talked in your sleep during the night and perhaps a memory of a few things that were said, but not everything.
Pillow can help you better analyze your sleep talking, even when you’re sleeping by yourself.
Pillow records audio events during the night, including bruxism, snoring, and even sleep talking. With Pillow, you can easily access all sleep-talking events in the morning and work through them, trying to find those that are intelligible. As an added benefit, with Pillow recording the sleep-talking events, you can listen to them over and over again in order to deduce what has been said.
With a collection of your sleep talking, you can then work through what you said during the night to see if you can find meaning in the words and tones. Perhaps you were arguing with someone in your sleep, and you can pinpoint who the argument was with or the subject of the argument to better understand what frustrates you. Or, perhaps your sleep talking is about fantastical ideas, and it can prompt a dose of creativity for your current project.
Whatever you talk about during the night, with Pillow, it doesn’t get lost in the hours of darkness.
