Having Trouble Waking Up After Dreams

Hey, I'm extremely interested in lucid dreaming. I can't wait to have one. I know the first step is to be able to recall one's dreams easily and record them in the dream journal. However, I'm having trouble waking up after my REMS/dreams. I've got my dream journal right by my bed, but I just can't wake up. I've tried setting my watch to 4.5 hours after when I estimate I will fall asleep, but that didn't work. Tonight I'm going to try drinking lots of water. Any more suggestions? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Autosuggestion is a great way to work with that, throughout the day keep telling your self "tonight I will Lucid Dream" or "tonight I will wake up after my dreams." Better yet, say both of those all day and it will make waking up after dreams much easier.

Also with your journal, even if you don't remember the dream in entirity, right down anything and everything that you remember, and after some time you'll be remembering your dreams completely.

Drinking the water should wake you up.

Welcome to Dream VIews.

Maybe the reason you're having trouble waking is that your body is not ready to wake up yet? If you don't already, make sure you get a good amount of sleep and try to go to bed and wake at the same time whenever possible. Regulating your sleep pattern might help you to be rested enough to wake in the mornings and to recall and record dreams.

:welcome: oatmeel

Make sure that dreaming is the last thing on your mind as you fall asleep at night. Tell yourself, or write down in your dream journal, "I will wake up after each dream and write it down."

And give it time. It takes a while to form new habits and break old ones.

Hello everyone. Yeah, everytime before I go to sleep I run the following sentence through my mind: "I'll wake from my dreams and remember everything completely." So far it hasn't worked, but as Robot_Butler said, it takes time. This will be the fourth night attempting to wake up after my dream. I'm also going to drink tons of water tonight. Gallons, literally.

Oh yeah, I think I had an FA last night in which I recorded the dream in my dream journal hehe.

That happens all the time, it's kind of annoying :P Try autosuggestion telling yourself that you will do a reality check when you write down the dream :)

Oh, I hate those. Sometimes, I even know its a FA, but I'm trying so hard to not lose the dream, I write it down anyways to help remember. It never works, so I don't know why I keep doing it.

What do you mean by autosuggestion? And it didn't work again last night. I think I need a new alarm clock.