Fionnuala Ward detailed her experiences with sleepwalking in an article for the Irish Times last week. She joined Ray D’Arcy to discuss.
Sleepwalking is not a very regular thing for Fionnuala, as she explained to Ray. “Years” could pass without sleepwalking. But when she does it, she does it at speed.
“For me, it’s not even sleepwalking, it’s like sleep-sprinting. Because I will wake up and I will have this sensation that I have to go somewhere or do something or meet someone. And this has to happen now. This has to happen right now because I’m already so late. And I will bolt out of bed. And I’m very disoriented of course but I know what I’m doing…it’s just that I’m convinced that this is what I have to do.“
While Fionnuala says she usually “comes to” and goes back to bed without much incident, there was one occasion that unsettled her.
“The worst one for me was recently when I opened the door of the apartment and I stepped outside because the key was in the door…really luckily, I did not close the door behind me.”
Fionnuala thinks that some people are a bit “unnerved” about discussing sleepwalking.
“For me, I find it kind of a little socially unsettling, almost, talking about sleepwalking. I think it’s all to do with the fact that we like to think of ourselves as these very coherent, level-headed creatures…It exposes us, I think, as I said in the piece, as kind of creatures of the night and susceptible to thoughts and sudden impulses. And that is unnerving.”
Listen back to the whole conversation about sleepwalking on The Ray D’Arcy Show here.