How do you separate dreams?

Kind of trivial, but...

I hear people talk about having x dreams a night, but how do you count them? Is there a way to see which dreams came from different sleep cycles?

So how do you separate dreams?

Well that depends. I usually seperate them simply through my waking up at least once between most dreams. If I have potentially more than one dream during a sleep phase I'll see if there's any inconsistence in the plot, or any obvious breaks in the dream. Usually that toether with my memories and my feelings about the dreams tell me whether it was a long dream or a few short ones. This doesn't work always, so like today I'm not sure what's the case but it works most of the time.

I don't find it too difficult to count them, to be honest there is no correct method and there is nothing to prove, I prefer to separate them by story. This works well for me because I tend to have about 3 dreams per night which are all completely different, but then again my dreams are random. E.g. :
From last night....
Dream 1: Was in a hotel having a party, bad recall here.
Dream 2: Was in a bathroom, a young boy spilt some water and was sent out, I then went to a sink and splashed water everywhere. Bit mean ^^
Dream 3: Saw some traffic lights, the button had fire blasting out of it.

Gerrit? But don't take it too seriously. :P

Wake up, note time, write dream. I don't distinguish between sleep cycles, I just write whatever I can remember.

I, much like Arch, seperate my dreams by storyline. If they seem way too different and I can't recall any connection between them, I just call them seperate dreams. It doesn't really matter though, you can treat them all as one dream - but for me it's easier to sort them out like I do.

I'm like Arch and StaySharp; I remember dreams based on their (most often) distinctive plot or storyline differences. Sometimes I get a feeling that two seemingly unrelated dreams are connected, though, and these ones I consider one dream that's been "dropped" in the middle due to lack of recall or just a mental lapse. I often divide these dreams into seperate parts when recording them.

I also moved this to Dream Signs and Recall.

This is something i too have thought about recently. And all of these answers are right on, i think. Especially:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Arch

"don't take it too seriously."

---

Because remember, your perspective is what guides the dream in the first place...so in my opinion it makes sense to let that perspective reveal itself however it happens to at the time. :}

But since recalling patterns in dreams can be tricksy for me, when all else fails i just try to write down as much as i can remember happening sequentially up until waking...and sometimes note [just for reference] which parts of the chronology came across a little foggy.

I would just say to trust your instincts on it, perhaps...?

I have never cared much about counting dreams, but when some people say they had 7 dreams one night and 2 the next... Guess it's just our personal way to organize them.

But if anyone have noticed the timeskips between the dreams in the sleep cycles, it would be interesting to know.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FelicityPotter

Yeah, I agree with Puffin :) If they do seem like they could be connected I usually only notice after I write them down. Then I add a note at the end explaining the possible connection :D

---

oh man wrong forum... My computer, my fault... :/

Unless I wake up between two dreams, I don't believe that the fragments are distinct dreams and I write them down in my DJ with an ellipsis between them.

Storywise!

Dream are thoughts, try to count the thoughts you had this minute -> Impossible :)
What if I think most people mean when they said they had two dreams is that they dreamt about two different scenarios, so they separate it that way.
But sometimes you can have dreams that seem like it never changes context and then I would just write "I had a really long dream".

In the beggning when you might not have good dream recall it's ok to have a goal like: "Remember 3-4 dreams each night".
But as you become more and more aware of your dreams you will realise that you don't only remember them in the morning, you experience them when they happen!
You are not consciously aware of them, you are as aware as you are in reality now, but you just don't know that it's a dream.
Even if weird things happen you will not realise it's a dream, unless you are aware ENOUGH. For example this morning I woke up in my bed and did a WILD attempt, I saw a yellow frog on the floor then I closed my eyes and thought "Ok so now I am going to WILD, what method was it now? Oh right just a regular wild attempt" and I (failed) the attempt. When I woke up for real later I realised how stupid I had been.

So don't try to remember the dreams, try to be aware of them and then you will also remember them.
But to start to become aware of them, you FIRST need to remember them, but after that the main focus should be awareness and not the dream count.

..I know I answered more than what you asked, but I think some people need to be aware of this :)

It's a mixture with me, sometimes I'll wake up after the dream and write down notes on it, enough to remember it in full later. Sometimes I won't wake up at all, like last night, so I pretty much go with the storyline. My first dream I was in a gas station, held prisoner (like a real prisoner not a hostage), bunch of interesting things happened after that haha, but then I was in Egypt, underground one of the pyramids. So needless to say, I know which is which on that one.

But the other night, I dreamed I was three different characters from a TV show, and the dream changed with the plot. I would be one character, then I would run into another, and next thing I know, I'm that character, and so on. But this dream, while very long, was very easy for me to remember because of certain aspects of the dream. I was riding so fast on a motorcycle that I was flying almost, I wrecked the bike, was involved in a shootout, chased by the cops, saw a murder, etc. So I stuck to those points first, realized what character I was, and next thing I knew, the whole dream was laid out in front of me in one long entry.