Remembering dreams: why we forget, how to write them down

Remembering your dreams depends mostly on the night’s micro-awakenings and on the attention you give them on waking: it can be trained.

Recall
Notebook
Waking

The essentials

Remembering your dreams at a glance

For you, the simplest way remains a notebook at the bedside and a minute of stillness on waking, before thinking about the day.

Free tool: Interpret my dream
Also read: Recurring dreams and nightmares

Interpret my dream

Why we forget

Everyone dreams, but not everyone remembers. A dream fades within minutes if nothing fixes it: sleeping memory retains poorly what is not taken up again while awake. As soon as you think about your day, the time, or your phone, the scene dissipates. Not remembering your dreams is therefore common and nothing to worry about.

What research observes

A team in Lyon led by Perrine Ruby compared people who remember a dream almost every morning, 5.2 mornings a week on average, with others who retain two a month. The former wake up more during the night, often without realizing it, and their brains react more to noises. These brief awakenings would leave time to memorize the dream in progress.

Writing down without ruining your sleep

Put a notebook and pen near the bed, or a note on your phone in airplane mode. On waking, stay still for a minute, eyes closed, and let the last scene come back: one image is enough to pull the rest along. Write at once, even fragments, with the emotion felt. There is no need to set alarms in the middle of the night: the intention to remember, repeated in the evening, already helps many people.

Facts and sources

People who often remember their dreams wake up more during the night, which would help to memorize the dream. J.-B. Eichenlaub et al., “Resting brain activity varies with dream recall frequency between subjects,” Neuropsychopharmacology, 39, 2014, pp. 1594–1602; J.-B. Eichenlaub et al., Cerebral Cortex, 2014
In Eichenlaub’s study (2014), people who often remember their dreams reported one on 5.2 mornings a week on average, against about 2 a month for the others. J.-B. Eichenlaub et al., Neuropsychopharmacology, 39, 2014, pp. 1594–1602
In Aspy’s Australian study (2017), the success of the MILD technique depended in particular on habitual dream recall. D. J. Aspy et al., Dreaming, 27 (3), 2017, pp. 206–231

A dream is read as a mirror of what you are living, never as an omen: no reading here predicts anything at all.

Remembering your dreams: your questions

Why do I never remember my dreams?

You most likely dream every night, but your sleep may be more continuous, and the dream fades before it is fixed. Try a few weeks of a notebook on waking, without moving or looking at the time: recall often improves quickly.

Is remembering a lot of dreams a bad sign?

No. People who often remember their dreams wake a little more during the night, which is not a problem for most. If fatigue sets in, or if your dreams wake you in distress, talk to a sleep professional.