Do You Sleepwalk?

[Alexandoy]

My younger sister is a somnambulist or sleepwalker. When she was a teenager, we regularly see her rising at around midnight to walk in the living room. Her walking was not like a zombie but she looked natural as if she was awake although she walked slower than usual. Most of the time, my mother would waken her while she is standing in the living room so it is clear to us that she was sleepwalking. But her sleeping habit was curtailed by a traditional remedy for sleepwalking - hitting the patient with a broomstick. One night when my sister sleep walked again, my mother hit her  with a broomstick, not so hard but no really soft that my sister let out a short scream of pain. That did it. She never sleepwalked again.

 

[tomorrow]

I never sleepwalked, but one of my kids has this tendency once in a while.  It was like he is out of any control and being controlled by somebody.  What I guide him back to his bed and suddenly he started crying and then went back to sleeping mode. I am a little bit puzzled on seeing this. 


When I go though some articles on net I found that we should not take this casually because during a sleep walk the person is out of his/her senses.  It is better to lock all doors windows, protect stairways with gates and keep your car keys inside, things like knife, guns, needles etc. should be out of reach.  If he walks in the same fashion everyday do not change his sleeping position. 

 

[AngelaMc]

I have never sleep walked, but one of my sisters did. She would wonder around the house until she went back to bed. I remember it used to creep me out, I would wake up my mom to keep an eye on her.

 

[janemariesayed]

Wow! what a way to stop someone sleepwalking, to touch them with a broomstick. I always thought it would be dangerous for the sleepwalker if they got touched while in the process of their walking dreams. I had an ex-boyfriend who used to sleepwalk and all I used to do was say his name quietly. He would slowly wake up and realise that he was sleepwalking. I think saying someones' name quietly would wake them up gently and be safer.

 

[misszerable]

To my knowledge, I've never sleepwalked, nor have I lived with anyone who did. Your @misszerableuncle's case sounds as if it was probably stressful on the family. Do y'all still wonder if he's out there somewhere? There are stories of people going off in fugue states, and maybe he dissociated and is living a completely different life somewhere. I would probably always be wondering. It does sound as if he was unable to handle a lot of stress. It's a shame that he didn't get the treatment he obviously needed. I think it would be scary to wake up somewhere else and not know how I had gotten there. I've seen this type of event portrayed a lot on television shows and in movies, but have never seen or experienced it.

It was a heartbreaking situation for the family, specially to my grandmother who died a few years ago without seeing him again. My grandmother would have retired in the US where all her other children are based but she opted to come back to our country to search for this one son. We took turns walking around the city to try to find him to no avail. I'm losing hope that he could still be found alive at this point. He was a kind and sweet individual and he might have run into a cruel neighborhood. That is not to say that I've stopped searching the internet for leads.

I have an older cousin from the same side of the family who also sleepwalked a lot regularly when he was young. He'd do the same thing - watch TV with glazed eyes and laugh at the blank screen. He, too, suffered from the trauma of having a broken family. He was the youngest of three siblings and his parents split when he was three. Though he did not suffer from mental breakdown, he refused to have a child of his own. His first wife divorced him for that reason. Thankfully, he found a second wife who have no problem accepting the situation and was content with having dogs around instead of children. He's a kind person, too, and I hope that he will always have a strong support system to back him up.