Sleep "Running" (Never Walking)

by Amy
(Ohio)

When I was about 18, I started having my sleep "running" episodes. I have scared the daylights out of a number of people over the years; my parents, college roommate, my husband, our dogs and now my own children. I am usually dreaming that someone is in my home or room that should not be. So I scream (often so loud that the next morning my throat hurts) and I take off running.

My heart is always thudding out of my chest and I am absolutely petrified by whatever has me spooked. Someone always stops me (I have never lived alone). I wake up with a vague memory of what I was dreaming about, give my rescuer a sheepish apology when I view the terror on their face and go right back to bed and am asleep in seconds. I do remember having the episode the next morning and can always relate the events.

I have now been having episodes for 21 years. I can go years between events and then have 3 or 4 within a few months. STRESS seems to be the biggest factor to having an episode. The catalyst in the dream has only altered a few times in all of those years. For a few years, I would dream that there were spiders in my bed and not only would I get out of bed and run, I would first rip all of the blankets off the bed (great way to start a marriage by the way!).

Most of the episodes are harmless, just scary. But once and only once I scared not only myself but my husband as well. When my youngest child was still a baby, he cried during the night and I brought him to bed with me. At some point in the night I dreamt there was a fire in the house, I grabbed and ran down not 1 flight of stairs (which was my usual) but 2 flights, with him in my arms. My husband, who was still awake on the ground floor of our house stopped me and woke me when I sat down on the steps still clutching the baby.

Although I have serious allergies, I will not take any medication that makes me sleepy or feel sluggish when I am the only adult in the house, because I have always been afraid that what little control I have of myself during these attacks will be compromised by the meds and I will do something dangerous. My 16 year old now just gets annoyed. He follows me, yells "you're doing it again..go back to bed" and I do.

That same child had horrible night terrors as a toddler but outgrew them. My other son, 13 year old, did and still does wander the house at night, flipping on lights etc. and my great great grandmother was caught more than once running outside at night screaming...trying to get away from someone!!!

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Kevin: Hey Amy, thanks so much for sharing your story. Your perspective and humor on your episodes are really admirable, though I can imagine the frustration you must feel at not being in control during these instances and not knowing exactly when the next one is going to be triggered.

One thing I'm curious to know in terms of identifying what mechanisms exactly are involved in causing your sleep running episodes is whether they initiate during REM or NREM sleep. Sleep terrors and sleepwalking are both associated with NREM sleep, but there's another condition known as REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) that's associated with (yup, you guessed it :) REM sleep. The vividness with which you describe experiencing the dreams seems like it possibly could lend itself to either a sleep terror or RBD explanation (RBD is much, much more rare of an experience though, and is hardly ever remembered), so I just wanted to mention it so you could be aware of it if you aren't already. You can learn more about it using it's link earlier in this paragraph.

If you were interested in figuring out more about when exactly during your sleep cycles your sleep running episodes take place, I imagine you could use a Zeo to check that out. A Zeo is a cool new personal sleep data device that you wear around your forehead that gives you all sorts of information about your sleep throughout the night. The idea that just came to mind would simply be to wear the Zeo at night until you experience an episode. Then in the morning you could check out if your episode started while you were in REM sleep or NREM sleep, and use that information to explore its causes a little more. Just a thought, but if it intrigues you, you can look into getting a Zeo from their website here.

All the best,
Kevin