Since there are many benefits to remembering dreams, many people wonder what causes us to forget dreams in the first place. When asked what they dream of, some people say that they do not dream. However, this is rarely the case. We all dream (almost), but most people forget most of their dreams.

Scientists have not yet come to a conclusion as to why some people remember their dreams better than others, but many have discovered that it may be linked to brain structure, such as the density of white matter in the brain, or psychological characteristics of an individual.^[1]

What actually happens when you forget a dream#

The honest answer to the title question is that forgetting is the default and remembering is the exception. But we now know something about what tips it one way or the other, and the surprise is that it's decided before you wake up.

Researchers recorded people's brain activity through the night and then woke them, comparing the nights they recalled a dream with the nights they didn't. After waking from REM sleep, successful recall was predicted by higher frontal theta activity in the minutes beforehand. That's the same brain signature that predicts whether you'll remember something you're learning while awake. After waking from lighter NREM sleep, a different marker did the work: lower alpha activity over the right temporal area.^[2]

In other words, dream recall behaves like ordinary memory encoding. Your brain either wrote the dream down as it happened, or it didn't, and by the time you open your eyes that's largely settled.

There's a second piece. People who remember lots of dreams and people who remember almost none differ in how reactive their brains are, and not only during sleep. When both groups were played sounds, including their own names, while watching a silent film and again while asleep, the high recallers showed markedly bigger attention-orienting responses in both states.^[3] High recallers also wake more often in the night, briefly and forgettably, and those small windows of wakefulness appear to be when a dream gets transferred into memory you can keep.^[4]

So if you're a low recaller, you're not dreamless and you're not doing it wrong. You're running a brain that's a bit less easily interrupted, which is a fine thing to be in most other respects.

The good news is that none of it is fixed.

Dreams are still mostly a mystery even to science, and your dreams can currently only be experienced by you. Every so often I will wake up in the middle of the night from an amazingly detailed dream that felt like it lasted an eternity. The feelings it would arouse in me stuck in my heart, and I knew this would be a dream that would linger in my mind for a while or so I had thought. Due to my body aching for more sleep, I would tell myself, "I will still remember it in the morning."

However, by the time the sunrise had woken me up, a newer dream was fresh in my head whilst the one I had cherished before was now forgotten. This is the dreaded trick we play on ourselves in our dreary delusions. We convince ourselves that we will be able to remember an extravagant setting with a plot that is like The Lord of the Rings, that is, very long and intricate. Not only that, but we tell ourselves that we will perfectly recall the emotions that we felt; nevertheless, when memories fade so do sentiments.

It may be difficult to get out of this habit, but dream journaling is a key helper when building up dream recall. While it can be hard to remember dreams, it’s worth the effort, and the effort required is smaller than you'd guess.

One study makes the point better than any advice can. 45 people who all reported not recalling a single dream in the previous month were split into two groups. One group was simply encouraged to remember their dreams. The other was just asked about them. Nothing else changed: no journals, no alarms, no supplements. By the next session, 32% of the asked group had recalled a dream, against 68% of the encouraged group.^[5]

Attitude does much of the work here, which larger surveys back up: how positively you regard dreams predicts how many you remember.^[6] Deciding your dreams are worth remembering is not a soft first step before the real technique. It substantially is the technique.

How to remember your dreams better#

Make sure to get enough sleep#

I personally seem to remember my dreams better based on the quality of sleep I get as well as how I wake up. If I am able to set aside at least 8 hours to sleep a night, I have more dream content to remember, so my brain is usually able to remember at least one dream from the night.^[7] In addition, if my body wakes up from my sleep cycle on its own, I am usually able to come out of a dream remembering it. On occasion if my alarm is the one to wake me up, my brain fills up with thoughts of what I must complete for the day and pushes out any knowledge of dreams I may have had.

Don't be too hard on yourself for not remembering your dreams though. You always have tomorrow to try again. Now, and this is the most important part, when you start remembering fragments of your dreams, write it down as soon as possible.

Write down your dreams as you wake up#

There are two main ways to jot down your dreams in the middle of the night: on paper or on your phone. You may prefer one or the other based on your middle-of-the-night habits. The phone is an easy choice since you can quickly pull up a dream journal app to type up your dream on. However, just beware that blue light from your screen may mess with your sleep cycle and quality of sleep if you are on your phone for too long.

If you do not feel like typing, the Oniri app now has a feature where you can add a voice recording to your dream entries. This is a great option since I find myself remembering dreams longer if I share them aloud. If you are not a fan of pulling out your phone in the middle of the night, a classic pen/pencil and paper will also do the trick. You do not even have to turn on your light for this technique if you do not wish to, but make sure your scribbles are legible. I find this abstract moment to write down your dreams in the dark almost freeing.

Do not underestimate how much you may forget#

If you find yourself not wanting to wake yourself up too much to note your dreams or if you do not have time to write them down, try writing as little as possible with only the key points you feel will trigger the rest of your memory. Do not underestimate how much you may forget, though. On one occasion I woke up and only wrote down, “Lerakin, Wizard of Labor Day,” expecting that phrase to explain everything that just happened in my dream; now all I have to show is five words in that journal entry.

Make sure to leave enough bare bones that you can add in the meat of the story later. Although dreams are still an enigma to science, what goes on in your mind at night is your story to tell. We may never know what truly causes us to forget our dreams, but that only means we should cherish when we do remember them. Instead of being upset at yourself for a lapse in memory, celebrate when you wake up with that dream still in your mind.

Journal it as quickly as possible so you may hold that story forever.