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How to remember your dreams

To remember more dreams, give yourself a moment of stillness when you wake, recall the dream before you move or reach for your phone, and write or say it straight away. Get enough sleep, since the longest dreams come late in the night. Keeping a dream journal is the single habit with the most evidence behind it.

Everyone dreams, including people who say they never do. What differs is how much survives the moment of waking. This guide explains why dreams are so easily lost, what research has found about people who remember many and people who remember few, and what you can change; the larger question of why we dream at all belongs to the guide on why we dream.

Why dreams vanish

Modern dream research begins with a 1957 study that tied dreaming to rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and gave scientists an objective way to catch dreams as they happen, by waking sleepers during it1. Dreaming is not limited to REM, but REM periods grow longer towards morning, so the last hours of sleep tend to hold the longest and most vivid dreams.

The problem is storage. The sleeping brain does not write a dream into long-term memory unless you wake. In a study comparing people who recall dreams often with people who rarely do, the researchers concluded that the length of an awakening, not just being briefly roused, is what matters, and that a waking of roughly two minutes is the minimum for a dream to be stored2. A brief stir at 3 a.m. may leave nothing behind, while lying awake for a few minutes after a dream gives it a chance.

Why some people remember more

Differences between people are large. In one brain imaging study, people classed as low recallers remembered about half a dream a week on average, and high recallers about five. The high recallers showed more activity in two regions, the temporoparietal junction and the medial prefrontal cortex; the authors suggest this may lead to more brief wakefulness during the night, which helps encode dreams3.

Personality and attitude matter less than people assume. A study of 444 participants found that personality, creativity, night awakenings and attitude towards dreams together explained only 8.4 percent of the differences in home dream recall4. The authors pointed to factors they had not measured, such as sleep duration and how alert people are in the first moments after waking. Diary data from the same research group later showed that sleep duration does affect recall, both from night to night and between people5.

What actually helps

Keep a dream journal. This has the strongest support. Logging dreams every morning yields higher recall than people estimate from memory, and the act of keeping a log appears to raise recall in its own right6. In a two-week study the effect was clearest for people who normally remember few or a moderate number of dreams7. The guide on keeping a dream journal covers the practical side.

Wake gently and stay still. Since storage depends on a short period of wakefulness, the first minute matters. Before you open your eyes fully, before you move, ask yourself what you were just experiencing. A single image is enough to pull on: often the rest of the dream follows it. An alarm that jolts you awake into a busy morning works against this.

Record before anything else. Checking messages, getting up, even planning the day can push a dream out of reach within a minute or two. Speak or write it immediately, even if all you have is a fragment and a feeling.

Catch night wakings. If you wake in the dark from a dream, a few keywords are enough: "red car, sister, bridge". In the morning those words are often enough to bring back the rest. A voice note or a pad you can write on without turning on the light keeps the interruption small.

Notice what returns during the day. A fragment you lost at breakfast sometimes comes back hours later when something echoes it, a smell or a face or a phrase. Add it to the entry when it does.

Sleep enough. Because dreams in the late morning hours tend to be longer, cutting sleep short also cuts off the dreams you are most likely to remember, and the diary data link longer sleep to better recall5. Weekends or holidays, when you wake without an alarm, are a good time to start.

Set an intention, lightly. Many people find that simply telling themselves at bedtime that they will remember a dream helps. This is widely recommended but less studied than journaling, so treat it as a cheap experiment.

What not to expect

Recall changes slowly and unevenly. Some weeks will be full, others empty, and stress, alcohol, medicines and broken sleep can all shift it. Training is not magic either. In a study of 42 therapy clients with below-average recall, those given training in dream recall and interpretation did not differ from the comparison groups in how many dreams they recalled8. Persistence with a simple routine tends to work better than technique.

If you remember dreams so vividly that they disturb your sleep or your days, more recall is not the goal. The guide on nightmares explains when that calls for help. And if better recall is a first step towards lucid dreaming, the guide on lucid dreaming picks up from here: good dream recall predicted success in the largest recent induction study.

Common questions

How can I remember my dreams better?

Keep a dream journal: it is the habit with the strongest support, and logging dreams each morning appears to raise recall in its own right6. Wake gently, stay still and ask yourself what you were just experiencing before you move. Record the dream before checking messages or getting up, and sleep enough, since the longest dreams come late in the night.

Why can't I remember my dreams?

Everyone dreams, including people who say they never do; what differs is how much survives waking. The sleeping brain does not store a dream in long-term memory unless you wake, and research comparing frequent and rare recallers suggests a waking of roughly two minutes is the minimum for a dream to be stored2. A brief stir at night may leave nothing behind.

Why do some people remember more dreams than others?

Differences between people are large. In one brain imaging study, low recallers remembered about half a dream a week and high recallers about five. High recallers showed more activity in the temporoparietal junction and the medial prefrontal cortex, which the authors suggest may lead to more brief wakefulness at night and so help encode dreams3. Personality and attitude explain surprisingly little4.

Does how long you sleep affect dream recall?

Yes. REM periods grow longer towards morning, so the last hours of sleep tend to hold the longest and most vivid dreams. Cutting sleep short also cuts off the dreams you are most likely to remember. Diary data from one research group showed that sleep duration affects recall both from night to night and between people5.

Can you train yourself to remember more dreams?

Keeping a morning log does raise recall, most clearly for people who normally remember few or a moderate number of dreams7. Formal training is less impressive: in a study of 42 therapy clients with below-average recall, those trained in dream recall and interpretation did not recall more dreams than the comparison groups8. Persistence with a simple routine tends to work better than technique.

theDreamly is designed for the first minute of the morning: one tap, speak the dream with your eyes half closed, and the transcript is waiting when you are properly awake. Five dreams a month are free, with thirty days of history. Over time the patterns view shows which figures and feelings return, which is where remembered dreams start to become useful.

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Sources

  1. Dement W, Kleitman N (1957). The relation of eye movements during sleep to dream activity: an objective method for the study of dreaming. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 53(5), 339-346. doi.org/10.1037/h0048189
  2. Vallat R, Lajnef T, Eichenlaub JB, Berthomier C, Jerbi K, Morlet D, Ruby PM (2017). Increased evoked potentials to arousing auditory stimuli during sleep: implication for the understanding of dream recall. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 11, 132. doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00132
  3. Eichenlaub JB, Nicolas A, Daltrozzo J, Redouté J, Costes N, Ruby P (2014). Resting brain activity varies with dream recall frequency between subjects. Neuropsychopharmacology, 39(7), 1594-1602. doi.org/10.1038/npp.2014.6
  4. Schredl M, Wittmann L, Ciric P, Götz S (2003). Factors of home dream recall: a structural equation model. Journal of Sleep Research, 12(2), 133-141. doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2869.2003.00344.x
  5. Schredl M, Reinhard I (2008). Dream recall, dream length, and sleep duration: state or trait factor. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 106(2), 633-636. doi.org/10.2466/pms.106.2.633-636
  6. Aspy DJ (2016). Is dream recall underestimated by retrospective measures and enhanced by keeping a logbook? An empirical investigation. Consciousness and Cognition, 42, 181-203. doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2016.03.015
  7. Schredl M (2002). Questionnaires and diaries as research instruments in dream research: methodological issues. Dreaming, 12(1), 17-26. doi.org/10.1023/A:1013890421674
  8. Rochlen AB, Ligiero DP, Hill CE, Heaton KJ (1999). Effects of training in dream recall and dream interpretation skills on dream recall, attitudes, and dream interpretation outcome. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 46(1), 27-34. doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.46.1.27