Thread: Waking and dream recall.

My recall is pretty good whether i'm woken or wake naturally, although i do tend to find it easier if i've woken naturally. I ticked just about equal.
I also find i recall more if i'm woken naturally in the night, which usually happens when my boyfriend stays over, as i'm not that used to having someone in the bed with me!!!
As for recalling dreams, i usually have an image in my mind when i wake up, and i try to hold onto that, and work from that, kinda like a brainstorm, everything comes out from that. I then begin writing it down in my journal, just points at first, and then i write a more full version in my journal on here...
This a good and interesting post!
I'll be interested to see what other people say.

Like irish, I think that it's about the same. I'm used to waking up to an alarm clock, so I think that I've become accustomed to being awakened, and thus recalling my dreams right after hitting the snooze button.

I actually haven't thought of this and I don't think I have enough dreams recorded to make an accurate guess. This would be a good experiment, though.

My recall is better if I wake up naturally.

The alarm clock startles me so much that I usually jump out of bed to turn it off, and by that time the memory of the dream is *poof* gone.

So I love it on days that I can sleep in because my recall is soooo much better.

I tend to be more likely to recall after being woken up by my alarm or something similar, but they're always fragmented recalls. When I wake naturally I tend to forget until later in the day when something reminds me of what I dreamed.

I always recall dreams upon waking up naturally. I really don't use any forced awakening techniques for the purpose of recalling dreams, so it's hard to say how that would affect my dream recall. However, when I'm woken up by an alarm or something, I rarely remember dreams, probably because I wasn't in a REM period. So, statistically speaking, the vast majority of my dreams were remembered upon natural awakenings.

I found the description of this poll confusing, because it appears to assume that if one wakes up multiple times in the middle of the night, it is forced. This is not true for me. I naturally wake up several times in the middle of the night usually, often remembering dreams, as well as remembering them when I wake up naturally for the final time in the morning and get up.

Edit: I read it again, and it appears that waking up in the middle of the night should simply be ignored when voting. Since I very rarely am woken up in the morning, it's still true that most of my dreams were recalled on natural awakening.

Not at all what I meant.

Originally posted by Merlock
not taking into attention the somewhat often practiced technique of waking up many times throughout the night to recall dreams

By wanting to only ask this of morning awakenings strictly I didn't imply that awakenings during the night are forced, I just didn't want input on that because I'm looking for statistics on morning awakenings only.

Thanks to all for the input, by the way.

Originally posted by Merlock
Not at all what I meant.

By wanting to only ask this of morning awakenings strictly I didn't imply that awakenings during the night are forced, I just didn't want input on that because I'm looking for statistics on morning awakenings only.

Thanks to all for the input, by the way.

I realized that and began editing my post appropriately just before you replied.