How To Stop Forgetting Your Dreams

You wake up in the morning and you suddenly realize that you’ve forgotten your dreams. It can be annoying sometimes because you knew you had a wonderful dream or maybe a bad one. There are reasons why you forget your dreams and there are solutions too.

Studies show that people who don’t talk about their dreams have a high tendency of forgetting them. Our brains sleep when we sleep but not all parts of our brains sleep at the same time, the hippocampus is the last part to go to sleep and probably also the last to wake up.

 

 

The hippocampus mainly consists of grey matter and it is shaped like a seahorse. The hippocampus is responsible for transferring information from our short-term memory to our long term memory. When we dream, the hippocampus might be storing only existing information to the long-term me more, thereby neglecting the new information.

Another reason why we forget our dreams is that when we sleep, we go through four stages. The first three are non-rapid eye movements while the last is rapid eye movement (REM). Most dreams occur during this last stage of sleep. The hippocampus is surrounded by some neurons which are known for ‘active forgetting’ which leads to information overload.

 

So how do we remember our dreams?

There are a few tricks that can you help you remember your dreams, some of which are:

 

1) Drink a lot of water before you sleep. Drinking a lot of water before you sleep helps you to wake up in the night and you will most likely wake up after a REM cycle.

2) Wake up slowly. When you wake up, do not be in a hurry because if you do, you will more likely forget your dream. Rather, when you wake up, rise slowly from the bed and try to remember your dream.

3) Before you sleep, have it in mind that you are going to remember your dream. It helps to think that you will remember your dreams before you go to bed.