Dream recall suddenly stopped!

Hello,

To give you just a little history, about 3 weeks ago I made a promise to myself to get into LDing. After some research, first thing I did to reach my goal was worked on my dream recall. For about a week and a half... remembered nothing, then one night, it was like someone turned the faucet on. I was having no problems with DR in the mornings, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night and recording 2 and 3 in my digital recorder. I thought it was going great...

One night, Last Monday night to be exact, I had my first lucid dream. Very quick as I got too excited and woke up, but I still continued to dream that night and the following morning, remembered everything. I was in a great mood that day...

Stop...

I haven't been able to DR since that night. Two nights ago, I got close, remembered a very tiny snippet of the dream... but I mean... very very small snippet. This is extremely frustrating, going from DRing every night and finally getting a taste of lucidity and then... it get's stolen from me. :(

I took some B vitamins last night, drank some apple juice, all in the attempt to remember my dreams, nothing.

Has anyone run into a wall like this before? How did you break through?

First of all, congrats on the lucid :)

Regarding your dream control, RELAX!! First of all, it's only been a couple of days. Take a nice big breather and just give it time. Stressing out about it might just make things worse. Make sure you're getting enough sleep, letting yourself have a nice wake-up time in the morning, and give it time. They'll come and go, you have the drive to build it so just let it happen and record it when it does.

You can take some of those aids for vivid dreams too, but my main recommendation is to relax, give it time, maybe try sleeping in a new position or bed but just make sure to get enough sleep and stay relaxed and motivated, not stressed and aggravated!

Hope that helps!

True, maybe I'm just trying for too much...

I plan to try WBTB for the first time this weekend (It's Friday! Woo hoo!), hopefully that will trigger something... If I don't turn up anything with that exercise, I'll try and take a big step back and stop trying to make it my #1 priority.

As it stands right now, I'm pushing pretty hard (at least in my eyes)... I've got my iPhone setup to remind me to RC about 15 times a day as well as trying to randomly RC as often as I remember. I've been doing nothing this past week except reading random internet articles and watching YouTube videos on LDing. Now that I take a look back, the influx of information and my drive to LD is probably what is causing the frustration when my only goal should be to recall my dreams. We'll see... Thanx!

So many factors can influence dream recall. It could be stress, a slight change in your sleeping cycle, distraction, ect. Sadly, everyone seems to get dry spells every once and a while. Don't worry too much about it. Do what you can to pinpoint the problem, but don't let it become a source of more stress.

Trying a WBTB is a great idea. I hope it works to bring you some amazing dreams :D

I had lost DR for like 3 days and on the fourth I said to myself: Fuck DR!!! I'm not gonna be a slave to it. I didn't think about it at all and even had a beer a little before bedtime. Guess what. DR is back!!!:banana:

Hah! Nice technique... Reverse Psychology on your own sub conscious, kind of playing dirty, no? Heh. :D

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think it might just be me trying too hard and making a big deal out of it. Someone needs to invent a lucid button, I like buttons. On... Off... :P

So I woke up this morning to do WBTB... and well, nothing lucid.

On the good side, I had a pretty vivid recall of what I dreamed about after I went back to bed. This is the most vivid recall I've had since last Monday night...

This gives me a few things to figure out, like what is causing me to not be able to recall under normal circumstances, but under WBTB, recall is in full force. Something for me to think about...

I still think I'm killing my recall with the amount of pressure I'm putting on myself to do it, but I'm not quite sure why that pressure didn't effect the recall on my WBTB.

Keep up the work and it'll come sooner or later.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Enzo

Keep up the work and it'll come sooner or later.

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Yeah just do that.

My DR turned off for a week, and I finally was able to remember last night - 5 dreams!

It really gets you pissed off, but try to relax.

Thanks for the advice! I really have no ambitions to stop, so I'm not so much worried about never being able to recall again. I think the root of my stress over this "not being able to recall" is the fact that I would like to get to a point where I can become lucid on a nightly basis or even more often. Obviously pretty ambitious goals and I'm fully aware that it might take a very very long time to get to this level... but when I can't do a simple thing like remember one dream a night, oh man... it murders my mood. Hah. I just get up in the morning already expecting to have a bad day. Hah... which only adds to anxiety when I lay down the next night. Vicious cycle!

Oh well.. I guess you could say I'm getting used to not recalling every night now, which lowers my anxiety, which in turn is lowering my stress over dream recalling... which in turn... should help me recall better. Hah!! Another cycle!

I don't know if anyone is following... or cares.

Came home yesterday, my amazon.com order came, V for Vendetta BluRay (which I promptly watched right away) and "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" book. The book is pretty good... I powered through chapters 1 and 2 before I went to bed. No lucid dreams, but... they aren't what I'm focusing on at the moment.

The good news... I was able to recall 2 dreams last night, one around 3:30 in the morning (I would give myself a 60-70%, I remembered a lot of details from the part I recalled, but I think there is a big chunk missing in the beginning) The second one was later on and ended when my alarm went off a 6AM, this one was awesome! There is some vague parts, but overall, I remember 90-95% of the dream. I'm so stoked about this... I'm probably jinxing it but, it's good to know my recall didn't just vanish, never to return. Today is a good day.

Thank you for all the words of encouragement! I really appreciate them.