You wake up in the morning and your boyfriend looks at you with a scowl like you just had an argument. That attitude surprises you because you just got up and you haven’t had time to provoke any conflict, so you have no idea what’s going on. Surely you’ve spent half the night talking in your sleep and, apart from the fact that your talk hasn’t let him wink, who knows what inconveniences you’ve let loose in your nocturnal conversations.
why do we talk in dreams?
- Although most of the time we don’t realize it, the truth is that talking while we sleep is more frequent than we think. It is known as somniloquy and it is a behavior disorder during sleep that affects 80% of children and adolescents, slightly reducing the number of adults who suffer from it.
- In reality, it is not a medical problem or health complications unless it is accompanied by other symptoms during the day such as stress or anxiety, or by some other sleep disorder such as sleepwalking.
- Generally, when we sleep, the vocal cords remain inactive, but if they are activated at any time, it is when somniloquy appears and we begin to speak unconsciously. Often it is only unrecognizable sounds that last a few seconds, but other times we can have authentic conversations or monologues, depending on the case. Because what we talk about asleep is usually related to the dream we are having at that moment.
- Although somniloquy has not been widely studied because it is not a health problem, experts say that what we say in dreams is of no importance and in no case is it about exposing our subconscious to our bed partner, which is what that many people think and that leads to many relationship problems.
What do we say when we sleep talk?
- And it is that somniloquy has generated more than one misunderstanding in couples. Not only because of what one can say when asleep, but because it is an annoying situation that can prevent the rest of those who are next to us as much as snoring. As if it were not enough that someone else’s nocturnal verbiage does not let you sleep, sometimes the inconveniences that we say while asleep cause embarrassing situations.
- Pronouncing another person’s name while we sleep is the number one reason for discussion the next morning. No matter how hard we try to explain that we are not responsible for what we dream or what we say in our dreams, our partner cannot avoid building a wall of suspicion and jealousy makes its appearance.
- However, it must be made very clear that the content of our nocturnal speeches does not reflect our most hidden desires. Because saying that somniloquy is an unconscious act leads many people to the mistake of considering it as the expression of what we do not dare to say consciously. Not much less.