After months without contact, Thielen’s ex-boyfriend reached out to her, but then abruptly ended their conversation. She sent one final message and tried to wait up for a response, but ended up falling asleep before he answered her. The next morning, she awoke to two new messages: One from him and one from her—asking him to meet up.

“I never wanted to see him, and still don't, but I think subconsciously, I still partially do, so my subconscious loved the idea,” Thielen explains. “I woke up and was embarrassed to tell my friends and mom because deep down, I knew it was a bad idea. I was upset with myself for making it known that I wanted to see him.”

Oftentimes, sleeptexts are jumbled or full of misspellings—not surprising given the authors’ state. This was the case for sleeptexter Geo Santistevan, 26, who sent a garbled message to a potential love interest.

“I left my phone near my bed before heading to bed. Then, when I woke up, I had sent a text that I don’t remember writing. The words were real words, just misspelled badly,” he explains.

Many sleeptexters report feelings of embarrassment the morning after. Thielen says she immediately retracted her sleep-induced invitation and Santistevan apologized for his message right away as well, even though in his case, the recipient laughed the message off.

Vandeventer was initially embarrassed by her sleeptext, which was in a different realm than inviting a past or present love interest to hang out. She reports texting the name of her dead father to a friend who also happened to be a professional therapist. Although she was initially embarrassed, she found a silver lining in her experience.

“I woke up with the phone in my hands, still in text position,” she recalls. “I felt a little embarrassed at first, wondering how I would explain this to my friend, but after that initial feeling, I felt extremely comfortable knowing that my subconscious will always remember the important things. It gave me a sense of comfort, somewhat. Not the texting in particular, but that feelings about my father, whom I missed very much, had transitioned over into the digital world, something he wasn't alive to see.”

While sleeptexting can certainly lead to some awkward or embarrassing conversations, there’s a deeper problem for sufferers. Typically, sleeptexting occurs in the two hours after a person falls asleep, putting it in a prime position to interrupt important REM sleep, and inhibiting the much-needed restorative sleep that replenishes the brain after a long day, Gelb says. Moreover, lack of sleep has been linked to a number of health issues, including obesity, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Gelb also says incidents of sleeptexting can increase for those taking some medications, ironically including sleep aids like Ambien.