Thread: been having disappointing nights. :(

It helps not to move when you wake up, but if you wake up and forget to lie still - I've found it helps to utter out loud some random words. More often than not one of the words will trigger the memory of a dream.

I also find that if I keep my thoughts calm and away from the concerns of the day while showering / making breakfast - often a stream of thought will occur which reminds me of a dream.

Your schedule is probably readjusting, so you're dreaming at different times. Don't worry about it too much. Your recall should come back as you get used to your new sleep schedule.

It could be that you used to have a dream immediately before you woke up in the morning, making it easy to remember. Now, your dreams may be pushed to a different time in the night.

Like Shift suggested, be sure to wake up in the middle of the night, either with or without alarms. Your goal should be to wake up after every dream and write it down. Waiting until morning to remember and record your dreams is very ambitious.

Thanks for all of the responses. And neuronex, I always stay still when I recall dreams, it has always worked in the past.

Originally Posted by neuronex

It helps not to move when you wake up,

Only problem with that is, you've gotta move to turn the alarm off.

This morning I woke up at 4, 6, and 8. I still did not remember any of my dreams at all; after I set the alarm clock, I laid in bed perfectly still and nothing came to my mind. Yet another "I did not recall any dreams last night." entry in the journal.

Don't be disheartened. I went from a period of recalling 4-6 dreams a night, to recalling NOTHING for 6 months straight, because i simply got too preoccupied to focus on my dreaming. Now that I want to start focussing again, it is difficult to get my dream recall up again. But in the last two weeks i have made progress from 0 dreams a night to 2 or 3 dreams every few nights. This might not sound like much, but your mind takes time to adjust and to settle. Give it time and im certain you'll see results.

As a curiosity, do you smoke marijuana? I found that over the last year a major factor which decreased my dream recall CONSIDERABLY was smoking weed. Although, now that i am focussing on dreaming again, i have not altered my smoking habits yet and am still seeing positive recall results.

This gives me hope as well

Yeah I smoke about 2 times a day, usually after work. I never thought weed would actually affect my dream recalling skills though.

Well, apparently, and as far as I can tell theres been one or two small studies done on this but nothing spectularly credible, weed does affect the patterns of your REM cycles. It possibly makes them shorter and shorter each night, and subsequently when you quit smoking (supposedly even for a day or so), you experience what they call the "rebound effect", whereby you experience more vivid and lucid dreams due to longer REM cycles.

Theres a few threads on it, but not much anywhere else. Its interesting though, im currently trying to play around with it myself, to figure out how much it actually does affect my recall or even my dreaming.

*edit
By smoking, im referring to smoking the reefer

In the past my dream recalling skills were pretty amazing but just one day i couldn't remeber anything. After that one day my dream recalling skills went to zero. However, i have recently been getting them back. It seems to me that sometimes your mind can be preocupied subconciously. It's almost like there are two people in your head and one is focusing on some of your thoughts while you are focusing on the others. If the other part of your mind is preocupied then it could affect recall skills. You getting a job is obviously now a big part of your life so there is a definite change in what you have to think about. Once you become comfortable and your job becomes just another part of your life then your recall skills should return.

Originally Posted by Lëzen

Only problem with that is, you've gotta move to turn the alarm off.

If you're using a mobile phone as an alarm clock - most phones nowadays allow using an mp3 as the alarm tone. Just get a 3 minute long mp3 file with an alarm sound at the beginning, and the rest silence. Set your phone to snooze for 5 minutes or however long you'd like to lie remembering your dreams.

Alarm goes off, plays once and goes into snooze. Next time the alarm goes off - then get up out of bed sleepy head.

I Suppose you could record yourself saying: "Lie still...relax", to play after or before the buzz and then have the long silence.

Here's a 3 minute mp3. A few beeps to start, then the rest silence:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=b...4e75f6e8ebb871