New dreamer! terible recall.

I'm really new not only to this site but to dreaming all together, its been about a week scince i started getting into lucid dreaming and things of that sort.

so i started dream recall not to long ago and the first 4 to 5 days i was remembering about 2-3 dreams a night and was very very excited about moving to the next step then for the past few days i have not remembered one dream, not even a little detail.

i tell myself every night before i go to bed "i will remember my dream tonight" but i dont.

Am i doing something wrong?
any suggestions?

well thats ok if u dont rember ur dreams for a night or two i find that thinking but dreams during the day helps you rember them, like i have a better chance of rembering a dream if i spent some time on dv then if i do not
btw welcome to dv (Dream Views) :cheers:

Welcome.
I think you may be in a phase that I was in for a little, which is getting ahead of yourself. When I started with dream recall, I did really well for a bit. Then I thought to myself "this is easy, I will be lucid dreaming in no time."
Then my dream recall hit zero. I think what happened is I went a little too fast and got a little too excited. When I sat back and relized that I have much to learn and am in no real hurry to lucid dreams since I have plenty of time, my recall came back.

Welcome!

First, start a dream journal if you haven't already. This generally increases the number of dreams you remember each night. Next, if you still have trouble, consider setting an alarm clock for about five hours after you go to sleep. This should interrupt an REM cycle, and possibly, a dream. Because of this, you should be able to remember the last dream or two.

Hope it helps!
-Tsen :upsidedown:

I use to be able to recall most of my dreams, which was during the summer, but now i barely remember any of my dreams. I had my first lucid dream during the summer and after i had it i became very excited and did some research on it. Recently every night before i go to bed, i have been telling myself that i will remember my dream or i will ask myself during my dream "am i dreaming". This hasnt worked so far and i dont know what am i doing wrong. Some nights i will remember my whole dream, but other nights i wont be able to remember anything.

I had the same thing, kinda...

For the first days my recall was pretty good (1 dream/night). Then for a whole week I kinda remembered nothing or just useless fractures of dreams... Then one night I remembered a pretty long dream and during the next night/morning I had my very first LD... Now I'm remembering very little again... weird.

i only remember dreams if they have strong emotion, like a nightmare. I can only remember 2 dreams in my life that are not nightmares, and those were about something that i really really wanted.

I've read that using future tense while giving yourself mental instructions doesn't work as well as using the present tense. The article/book (or whatever it was) explained how the subconscious would misinterpret the use of the future tense in the message to mean you don't possess the ability to do whatever it is you're telling yourself to do (since its something that you'll do in the future).

So, instead of telling yourself, "I will remember my dream tonight", try telling yourself something like, "I remember all of my dreams" or "I have perfect dream recell".

If you give that a try for a few days, let us know what happens.

Quote:

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Originally posted by FireDancer
I've read that using future tense while giving yourself mental instructions doesn't work as well as using the present tense.

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I find that to be true. I've had better success thinking "I am..." rather than "I will..."