A little problem

I made a start to my own dream journal about a week ago, but there's this little problem I'm facing. Sometimes I wake up during the night and that's when I start recording my dreams in my dream journal. Usually it takes me about five minutes to write everything down, but when I try to go back to sleep I'm having trouble actually falling asleep again. It feels like a myriad of thoughts are running through my head, almost like I'm wide awake. Anybody else ever had this problem before?

I've also got another question I would like to ask. Since I've not been trying to recall my dreams for that long now (just a week), I'm wondering if my dream recollection will still improve, since most of my dreams are often a blur when I wake up. I can remember certain elements of my dreams, but I can't really vividly describe them in my journal.

Hey Odd Eye welcome to the forum:)
A good way to not wake up too much when writing in a journal would be to keep all the stuff right near your bed so when you wake up you can jot it down quickly and also just writing some quick points down so you can remember the dream when you wake up in the morning and expand on the details then.

My dream recall got better in a quick span of time when I started. And like ThePhobia said, make sure your journal is accessible from your sleeping position

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Originally Posted by Odd Eye

I made a start to my own dream journal about a week ago, but there's this little problem I'm facing. Sometimes I wake up during the night and that's when I start recording my dreams in my dream journal. Usually it takes me about five minutes to write everything down, but when I try to go back to sleep I'm having trouble actually falling asleep again. It feels like a myriad of thoughts are running through my head, almost like I'm wide awake. Anybody else ever had this problem before?

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Yeah, I wouldn't worry about it Odd Eye. I often have trouble falling asleep again if I wake up in the night. I usually get up for a little while and go back to bed once I'm tired again.

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Originally Posted by Odd Eye

I've also got another question I would like to ask. Since I've not been trying to recall my dreams for that long now (just a week), I'm wondering if my dream recollection will still improve, since most of my dreams are often a blur when I wake up. I can remember certain elements of my dreams, but I can't really vividly describe them in my journal.

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My recall increased after about two weeks. I was the same as you and couldn't really remember my dreams at all - just fragments and general themes, but nothing concrete.

Basically just keep at it and it'll pay off. :goodjob2:

It's also very important, as thephobiaviewed just said, that you don't write down a coherent story but some keywords in order to find the coherence in the next morning or even day. I found out because of my lazyness in the morning that I can recall almost every part of my dream during the day by just noting some keywords as soon as I wake up. However, you need to train you in finding good keywords (this is not easy sometimes) afterwards you can relax and begin the morning as usual. And as soon as you have some time to spare you transform the keywords into a little text. Usually, I don't have to look at the keywords anymore, because as I wrote them down my mind kinda prevented the dreams to fade (as they normally do if you try to recall too hard)... and as soon as you are a bit more proficient with that technique you'll have to spend less than 5 minutes to write those keywords down. Thus, if you wake up during the night you'll be sleeping again almost instantly... Frankly spoken, I haven't reached that level of DJ-noting, but compared to my first try I made already lots of progress and I suppose it's a good way of keeping the DJ...

stuetzl

ps: another hint: I keep my DJ by just writing on the left-hand side, whereas the right side is kept for notes, comments OR (by using a pencil) for keywords... it works quite well

Dream recall gets better over time

Thanks guys!;) I have noticed a little increase in my dream recall and it seems I've discovered one of my dream signs too.

That's good! Keep it up.