Lost My Clarity and I Can't Get it Back

I'm experiencing an issue with dream clarity, and it may have something to do with external factors. At this point, I'm pretty sure it's keeping me from learning to dream lucid. This might be a long post, but please bear with it and help if you can.

All of my life I had amazing dreams. Oh sure I had mundane ones too, but some of them had incredible sights and vistas, and amazing & massive architecture. I looked forward to sleeping because I never knew where I was going to go next. If only I had gotten into lucid dreaming back then...

About two years ago my wife and I found ourselves encountering a pretty rough patch of our lives. We moved to a new country and had to start our lives over again from scratch, and it was really very hard on us. I became depressed, and some of my issues (I have a very high-functioning case of Asperger's Syndrome) got out of hand, causing me to have panic attacks in social situations.

My doctor prescribed two medications for me: Wellbutrin for my depression, and Clonazepam for my social anxiety. Immediately after I started taking these meds, my dreams completely disappeared. Every night was the same: a long, dreamless, uninterrupted sleep. At first it was nice getting the good night's rest, but then I began to miss my dreams. It's not that I stopped remembering them, I really feel that there were no dreams to speak of at all. Like a switch had been turned off in my head.

After about a year of the medications - almost one year ago now - I had to stop taking them. The anti-depressant was having an adverse effect on me, and when I started contemplating suicide I knew I had to quit, ASAP. The anti-anxiety meds continued to rob me of my dreams and so I stopped taking those as well. Plus, we had managed to improve our situation, and I'm proud to say that I now live med-free and my issues are under control.

Except for one thing: I have dreams again, but they're never as clear as they once were. All my dreams are dark and murky, and they seem like they're not as well developed as the dreams I once had. I no longer find myself participating in dreams with gigantic buildings or astounding scenery and with grand plots anymore. Now, I have a lot of dreams that are half-baked, really short, and dark. It's like I'm trying to find my way through dark buildings with a flashlight now, and a lot of times I seem to forget 80-90% of the dream upon awakening.

I've been dream-journaling since I began attempting to become lucid - about a month and a half now - and supposedly keeping a dream journal is supposed to strengthen your dream recall (which is then supposed to help you recognize dream-signs, which is supposed to help you become lucid, etc). However, my dream recall is still awful, and my dream clarity is still murky and dark.

Does anyone have any suggestion about how I can improve my dream clarity? I'm going to start taking vitamin B6 soon as a supplement that's supposed to help it, but beyond that I'm not sure what else I can do.

Thanks. I miss my dreams, and I miss the opportunity to become lucid!

Dream journals do usually help. One thing that is important, is to write down everything you can remember, even tiny or pointless details. You can write down feelings and thoughts you had in the dream as well. It also helps that once you have written down every little thing you can recall, to lay back down and close your eyes and think about the dream, to see if you can recall anymore things, and if you do write them down as well.

One of the interesting things about this lack of clarity is that it seems my dreams aren't clear enough to go lucid: last night I encountered two separate dreams in which I consciously thought "Do a reality check!", yet my focus was so wobbly I couldn't even see my hands to check them and the effort caused me to wake up both times. Frustrating, to say the least...

Hey there,

For me, the less attention I pay to my dreams overall, the less 'fantastic' and 'vivid' the dreams become. During periods in my life where I'm not quite as disciplined as I should be in keeping my dream journal, I'd find myself dreaming 'short and vague' dreams about very mundane things: friends, work, family, just basic waking life stuff rehashed in my dreams. As I begin to pay more and more attention to my dreams again, the dreams themselves become more interesting, vivid, and often fantastic.

(I actually theorize that we remember the mundane dreams easier, because they associate with the things on our mind during waking life and when we wake up, but that's a different discussion).

In short, the situation you describe, for me, is usually attributed to a lack of attention and interest in my dreams. I'd take Alric's advise and try to work on recall, write down as much as you can, and see if it improves.

Just my 2 cents,

-Redrivertears-

Thank you. I've decided to ease up a bit on trying to have lucid dreams, at least until I can get my clarity back stronger. I'll still do reality checks and dream journaling, but I won't try to force lucid dreams yet. Taking it slow is probably for the best. I'm jealous of those people who can lucid dream as soon as they hear about the concept, haha.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NocturnalEcho

(...) I'm jealous of those people who can lucid dream as soon as they hear about the concept, haha.

---

hahah! [2]!
I'm re-trying lucid dream about 2 months... But even my dream recalls is not good enough yet. :-/
I was getting good, I was remember about 3 dreams every night in the beginning of this month. But now, I'm badly remember 1 dream each night. :(
I don't now what happened.

I think it's now just a matter of effort and patience to bring your dreams back. The long no-dreaming period got you used to living without considering your dreams. Redrivertears hit the nail on the head with the advice to *pay attention* to your dreams. Why does journaling help build recall? It's because you are giving your dreams your attention, and practicing recalling them. Doing that on a constant basis shows your SC that dream memories are important to you. The more you exercise your dream memory access in recalling dreams, the stronger this ability will become.

The second part to dream recall is to pay attention to your life experiences in the waking state. Our dreaming mind is basically our waking mind with an extra layer of fog, dullness, and impaired access to memory. You need to build a bright/strong waking awareness to pierce through this veil of fog in the dream state. If you live waking life on autopilot, your dreams will be the same. We only remember things to which we give our attention. Train your attention, focus, awareness, and access to memory in the waking state, and your dreaming life will blossom again. You can also have a read through of my dream recall tips (link in my sig) for more ideas.

Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

I've been giving a lot more attention to the nature of reality lately, not just the reality checks but thinking about what I'm experiencing and how would I know if it was a simulation, etc. It's pretty heavy stuff to think about, but it's been on my mind lately and I'm hoping that helps me to notice when things are "not quite right" in a dream.

As an anecdote: The other night I had a dream that had some children in it that looked like 3-dimensional cartoons, kinda like the new CG version of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts characters. I realized only after I woke up that I should've taken notice of the fact that they looked unlike human beings and unlike every other person in the dream, but of course at the time I didn't give them a second glance and took their appearance at face value. Good grief!

On the other hand, I was happy because I actually had details in the dream that weren't murky or cloudy, and I was able to remember them upon waking.

Dreams are tricky, hahaha.

When i stepped back into lucid dreaming, it took me a couple months of journaling to get my dreams back to a vivid status. Also, ADA, All-Day Awareness, or something similar, has helped a lot as well. As stated by Flyingman, the more aware you are in your waking life the more aware you are in your dream life. Your consciousness, your attention to awareness, will slowly get echoed in your dream state. I also don't think stopping your LD efforts is needed either. Just choose a relaxed approach, such as MILD with ADA, and let the Lucidity come to you. No stress. No intense expectation. Just relaxed intention. Good dreaming.

It WILL happen. I didn't think it would happen for me, but I woke up from my first lucid dream tonight and am getting ready to post it! Keep working at it: it WILL happen. I'm proof!