What’s Your Attitude Toward Remembering Dreams?
The ten factors in the questionnaire below may be among the most significant for you. This questionnaire gives you a chance to measure some of the variables that contribute to whether or not you remember your dreams. You must decide for yourself how influential each factor is in your own recall habits. Then enter a rating, from 0 to 4, with higher numbers meaning greater influence.
For example, Item 1 is, "Waking up at the right moment." Does the timing of your awakening make much of a difference in whether or not you remember a dream? If it makes little or no difference at all to you, score that item either a 0 or 1. If it is a very important factor, score it either a 3 or 4.
Now evaluate each of the ten questions in terms of your own recall patterns. For each, enter a rating, from 0 to 4.
Vital influence: 4
Important influence: 3
Moderate influence: 2
Minor influence: 1
No influence: 0
0 1 2 3 4
1. Waking up at the right moment. ______
2. How much I sincerely expect to remember my dreams. ______
3. How emotional my dream is ______
4. Giving myself a bedtime suggestion to remember a dream. ______
5. Something the next day reminding me of a dream ______
6. Placing my dream diary by my bed at night ______
7. Being awakened by an alarm clock ______
8. How much morning time I spend trying to remember my dreams ______
9. How colorful, extraordinary, vivid, or bizarre my dream is ______
10. How much time I have devoted recently to dream study ______
Total up your scores separately for the even and for the odd numbered questions.
Your score for the odd numbered questions reflects how much importance you place on factors outside your control. Your score for the even numbered questions reflects how much importance you place on factors within your control. We’ll call your total score on the odd numbered questions your external score, as those factors are external to you, or outside your control. We’ll call your total score on the even numbered questions your internal score, as those factors are internal to you, or within your control.
If you don’t recall dreams very often, perhaps the results of this little test can give you some clue for what you might change. If your external score is higher than your internal score, then you are too passive with regard to dream recall. You believe more in fate than in your own efforts. You need to take a more active role in remembering dreams.
Rather than allowing external factors to play such a large role in whether or not you remember dreams, try to work on the internal factors.
Can you work to improve, for example, how much of an effect item #2 has on your dream recall? Reading about dreams and making a date with someone to discuss dreams the next day are two ways you might work on "expectancy."
In the sections that follow, there are some more specific hints on how you might pay more attention to these "internal" factors, that are within your control, and learn that your efforts can make a difference in how much dream recall you have. Learn the power of auto-suggestion. Learn how much it helps to stay in bed a few extra moments and write down anything that comes to mind. In these ways you’ll learn to redirect your attention to your dreams in a truly effective manner.
The Power of Auto-Suggestion
A positive attitude about dreams will mean you will plant suggestions within yourself constantly through the day:
"My dreams are important."
"I’m going to remember my dreams."
As you give yourself these suggestions, visualize yourself waking up in the morning with a dream on your mind. And when you go to bed at night, practice the routine of recalling a dream. Imagine yourself waking up in the morning, lying very still, with your eyes still closed, and recalling a dream. Then reach over to your bedside table and reach for your tablet or dream journal. Practice this sequence in your mind as you get ready to fall asleep.
If you don’t have something to write on nearby, then beware! It will be difficult for you to record your dream, and you may forget it--they’re slippery! But more important, you may be giving yourself a negative suggestion that you aren’t going to remember a dream. Having a tablet within reach, already dated and marked "MY DREAM THIS MORNING" is a good suggestion. It shows you mean business.
The Seven-Day Recall Test
Some people tell me they can’t remember their dreams. They say they are blocked. Thinking about blocks comes from what we think we’ve learned about dream theory and censorship. We fear our dreams may have dark or worrisome secrets to reveal. That worry itself creates a block. Usually the lack of dream recall is not because of any block, but rather reflects the lack of time that has been devoted to trying to remember them.
When I question people who say they can’t remember their dreams, I learn that most of them give it only about 15 seconds. If a dream is not immediately there for them, right away, then forget it! And they do.
I’ve found that for many people, it isn’t actually the recall process that’s difficult, but taking the time in the morning to let the dream memories appear. It requires patience to fish for dream memories, to wait for the feel of the fish’s presence, hook it, and bring it to the surface.
So I’ve devised this special technique. It’s a way to test whether or not there is any kind of blockage or if it’s just a matter of spending the time it takes to open the channel of dream recall.
If you’re serious about learning to remember your dreams, you would do well to conduct this experiment to see if you past the patience test. Make a commitment to yourself that for one week, every morning when you wake up but before getting out of bed, youÕll write a full page of your thoughts. Regardless of whether you believe you remember a dream, write down whatever comes to mind, no matter what it may be. It doesn’t matter what you write, just write whatever comes to mind. Write stream of consciousness style.
By writing out your feelings and ideas, you’ll be inviting dream memories. You’ll also be allowing sufficient time in bed to allow the dream memories to materialize. Everyone I know who has completed this test was writing down dreams before the week ended.