Why Can't I Remember What I Dream of
There are people who tend to remember perfectly everything that happens in their dreams and relate it the next day even as if what they lived in those dreams had been real. On the other hand, it may be that sometimes we wake up in the middle of the night remembering the dream but the next morning we have totally or partially forgotten it. But why does this happen? Why don't we remember what we dream of?
If you feel identified with this situation and would like to find an answer to this that is happening to you, in this Psychology-Online article: why I do not remember what I dream , we are going to explain to you what are the main reasons why you this is happening.
Not remembering dreams: what does it mean?
The fact of not remembering what we dream usually draws a lot of attention to many people since it is said that dreams give us a lot of information about our unconscious and how we live those situations we are going through. On the other hand, there are people who know they have dreamed and end up frustrated because they do not remember what exactly they dreamed of. Here are the main reasons:
Repression
According to the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud , when we do not remember what we have dreamed it is a sign that we are repressing our emotions and feelings. Being related to what we feel and everything we experience and live with what we dream, when we find ourselves going through difficult situations or that we consciously avoid, in dreams we are going to represent it, however we are going to forget about it. That is, not remembering our dreams would be like a defense mechanism that protects us from everything that is difficult for us to accept.
Dreams not understandable
It is also said that we may not be remembering what we dream because what happens to us during sleep is highly incomprehensible to our conscious mind. It may be, for example, that we dream very fanciful things or that we have one or more dreams that seem to have no meaning or relationship with each other and therefore we cannot easily transfer them to our conscious mind.
Increased activity in one area of the brain
According to a study carried out by a team of neuroscientists, it has been found that people who remember what they dream have more active the temporo-parietal area of the brain, which refers to the attention that a person pays towards their external stimuli, which it also has to do with how often they wake up during sleep.
Tricks to remember dreams when waking up
There are some guidelines that we can follow that can help us better remember what we dream of. Some tips that you can carry out to begin to achieve this are the following:
Sleep well
It is necessary to have a fairly restful sleep so that you can better remember your dreams. For this it is advisable that you have a more or less established schedule to sleep and that you try to comply with it, do not have too much dinner before going to bed, that you go to bed as calmly as possible, not have ingested large amounts of alcohol, sleep in a place that is comfortable enough, among other things that will allow you to rest calmly and relax your mind before going to sleep.
Wake up slowly
When you get up in the morning, take time to relax in bed thinking and meditating a bit about what you have dreamed of, trying to remember something, without being pressured. That when your alarm sounds it is not to run away immediately and do not go on time. Give yourself time to reflect and go little by little activating and not suddenly.
How to make a dream journal
In case it happens to you that you wake up in the middle of the night after having a dream, you remember it clearly, you go back to sleep and the next day you have forgotten completely, the best thing you can do is a small record in that moment when you woke up. It is clear that at that time you will not have any desire to write everything you have been dreaming of, however you can dedicate yourself to writing only keywords that help you the next day to decipher and remember clearly at least what it was about your dream. It is advisable that you leave a pencil or pen and a notebook ready next to your bed on the night table so that you do not have to be moving to some part of your house at that time.
You simply wake up, turn on your bedside lamp, write it down in the notebook that you already have previously ready along with the pen or pencil, taking into account that they will only be keywords and that's it. Make sure that the key words or phrases that you are going to write down have been quite relevant in the dream that you just had so that you have greater security that the next day you will be able to remember it. When you start to carry out this activity frequently, little by little you will realize that it will be easier for you to remember without having to write down too much and there may even be times when you remember without having done it.
