Yes, alarm clocks can mess with dream recall, especially if they wake you up at the wrong point in your sleep cycle. Try setting your alarm for half an hour earlier for example, or go to bed half an hour earlier - experiment with your sleep schedule to see whether it makes a difference. If you have a smart phone their are apps like "smart alarms" where you can put the phone on your pillow or mattress and based on when you stir, it will adjust when the alarm rings, so if your alarm was set for 6am and you are stirring a lot at 5:30 then your alarm would go off half an hour earlier instead. If you have a smart phone, you could give that a try.
However, did you know that our minds are capable of waking us up at will at a time specified without an alarm? You could go to sleep with the intension of waking up half an hour or an hour before your alarm, and see whether that works. Waking up without an alarm may be less disruptive, and make it more likely that you remember a dream.
Did you know that all of us actually wake up every night naturally every 1.5 or 2 hours? Most of us just turn and fall back asleep and forget about it. But one can through sheer will power change that, and these natural middle of the night wake ups may be great opportunities for dream recall, and you can either write down the whole dream or just some key words at that time, and then fill in the dream when you wake up for good in the morning. Last night I went to bed around 8:30pm because I was exhausted, not having had enough sleep during other week days this week. I woke up at 1am and wrote down a long dream. Then I woke up at 4am and remembered more dreams. And then I actually slept some more, and when I woke up at 7:30am in the morning I recalled even more. Of course, it was Friday to Saturday night, and I do not work on Sturday so I had the luxury to mess around like that, but the point is, whenever you have the time to do that kind of thing, I highly recommend middle of the night dream journaling.
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