My Dream Memory is Deteriorating D:

[mikeac]

I'm still recording my dreams, but they almost immediately slip my mind when I wake up. I even run through a list of words and repeating symbols in my dreams and still can't find a method to remember my dream long enough to pick up a phone and type up a quick note. Any help?

[Linkzelda]

When I find myself seeing I have a horrible recall streak, I usually go back and read my other entries, and try to remember how I felt in those dreams rather than just recalling them. I used to pay attention to dreams signs and all, but I think if you focus too much about them, it might lead you to forget other elements that occurred in your dream. If you know your dream signs from repeating a list of them, I think you should focus more on key moments in a dream, or snippets of it. It might take a while to get used to, but when you wake up, try to categorize the dreams you had with a few words. Like if you saw someone stabbing a person with a Rose, just think of the word "Rose," and try to imagine what happened when you saw the "Rose," everything that you possibly recall. When you try to link from that piece, you usually will find yourself linking to other experiences in your dreams, and taking those links and snippets and collecting them can help with dream recall. This is what I personally do in my dreams, sometimes if I can't remember an image or an environment, if I focus on dream senses and feelings instead, I can find how the environment looks like based on my feelings in the dream, and the feelings of other DCs or even actual people when I find myself in a shared dream with them. Maybe you should stay still for a while, and try categorizing the dreams you remember when you're still in the half-awake half-asleep state. That way, when you think you recalled a few dreams just from your head and not typing anything, then you can practice associating the dreams from that certain snippet, and then you can try putting them down as notes. You could do more WBTBs to help with recall, since you'll find yourself waking up before/after a NON-REM or REM cycle or possibly interrupting it, which is usually the ideal time to remember your dreams since they're still in the back of your mind. (This helps me a lot to the point where I can remember most of my dreams in detail without trying to link them together, since the experiences, the emotions I felt are still lingering). I think if you try to remember how you feel in your dreams, it can help as a back up, in my opinion.