I want my dreams back and an Introduction

Hi Fellow Dreamers,

My whole life I have been blessed with a rich dream life. My dreams have always been very vivid and many of them with quite complex themes. They were more entertaining than anything you might find on TV and often better than a movie. I always looked forward to whatever my dreams had in store for me. Usually I would recall one dream vividly each night and one or two dream fragments. That was until our last move.

My husbands new job had him up at 4-4:30 every morning. The kids had to be up at 5:45 and the dogs wanted to go out. I am a very light sleeper, so I was up for the morning after all this. All of this left me tired and grumpy in the mornings and unable to recall my dreams. The time between 4-6 AM has always been the most important time for me to be sleeping. If I was disturbed during that time, I would be out of sorts for the rest of the day. Now this happened on a daily basis. I hoped that my body would compensate within a few weeks, but it never did. It has now been years since my rich dream life and I miss it terribly. I want it back. I have recently started to remember some of my dreams again, but it is not every night and the dreams lack the vivid complexity they used to have. They mostly occur when my husband is out of town or on the rare occasion that he slips out of bed without disturbing me. My goal here is to get my dreams back! I am not interested in lucid dreaming at the moment, that can wait.

Eat peanut butter

Healthy diet, B vitamins.

sounds like you're coping with stress and stress doesn't help.

You sleep in 90 minute cycles, during i think the last what. 40-45 minutes? You enter the REM period, you dream in the REM period, im guessing if you wake up during or just after the REM period you recall much easier than if you were woken up say 10 minutes into a new cycle.

Soooo whatever time you expect yourself to be "woken" up you should plan when you should be going to sleep, along with a good 15-30 minutes of winding down with a book or something, obviously its understandble that having dogs kids and a husband in the house isn't going to help with the winding down part.

Drink some green tea like a hour-2 hours before bed. Maybe this may help (i heard it helps with vividity) DON'T drink coffee like a few hours or less before going to bed. the last few nights and previous nights ive had coffee before bed my recall has been horrendous, really not sure if its the coffee but ive never usually had coffee before bed so thats my personal correlation although i havent done scientific research into it :P just i wouldn't reccommend it anyway.

Ummm all I can really think of really, and yeah Peanut butter apparently does help, so eat some PB for supper XD and good luck with getting your dreams back.

Good luck!

alcohol is bad as ofc its a depressant so will affect your nervous system - and ofc REM. so cut out that tempting glass of wine after work ;)

Stress and lack of sleep destroy recall.

Eat plenty of B vitamins. Oh and there is this supplement called dream boost, it helps me a lotl

Thank-you everyone for your suggestions. I will look into what foods contain the most B vitamins. I always have peanut butter on hand, so I will give that a try as well. I do not have to worry about the caffeine thing because I always avoid it. I am supper sensitive to caffeine and just a small bit and I am up for 48 hours straight. I will not be able to try the green tea unless it is caffeine free.