Thread: How Many Dreams Do We Forget?

How many dreams do you think we have each night? I've been checking a lot of online dream journals, and 5 rememberd dreams per night seems to be the high average. Even at 5, I still think that leaves a ton of dreams unaccounted for.

Of course there is the problem of how long a dream is, where one ends and another begins. But overall, just taking into account how much you remember on average, anyone care to geusstimate how many dreams we forget?

I suspect that lucid dreams aren't as uncommon as most people would beleive, but that the majority go unremembered.

Good question, i'd like to hear a good answer.

I always figured that im not forgetting my lucid dreams as much as other dreams because

a) My awareness is much greater while im LDing, so just as im able to remember waking life better than dreams, i should also be able to remember LD better than non-LD

b)The significance of having an LD might make a greater impact on my memory. More likely to remember a dream where I control the elements, than a lame dream where I am back in highschool sitting in math class.

c)constantly thinking about lucid dreaming during the day would trigger a memory of my lucid dreams. For example i see a certain person and remember a dream i had because they were in it. So when i think of lucidity, should remember that dream i had last night where i was lucid.

I really hope im not forgetting my lucids!

We have Rapid Eye Movement (REM) periods every hour and a half or so. We dream during REM, and these periods get successively longer as the night progresses. If you slept for eight hours, you would have approximately five REM periods. I think the minimum number of dreams we have during an eight hour sleep would be five. We probably have far more than this as apparently we wake up several times during the night but don't remember. If we woke up during the REM periods I guess the break might cause a new dream, or we might just re-enter the same dream unaware.

We dream so much more than we remember, I am sure. I'd love to be able to unlock those forgotten dream memories.

Lots and lots and lots.

When we get up, we think about our day, plan ahead. Our mind becomes a hive of thought and it shoves any threads of thought about dreams away. Without these threads we cannot look back and think about what we just experienced. Thus we go though the day with no recall of our dreams just because the morning is so dammed rushed.

Now, I'm a pretty laid back person. I attribute that to being on of the reasons i'm so sucessful in dreaming (I developed naturaly). I take 10 minutes of just lieing in bed after i've become concious just tieing off the ends of my yet incomplete dreams and remembering the ones i've had throughout the night. I don't really worry to much about too much in the morning so I can just sit back and let my mind wander bout the dreams. Its amazing what an extension of 10- 20 minutes to your sleep can do to your dream recall. Lie in your bed and picture all that you can remember from the dream you just had. If you remember nothing, try to grasp your last thought(s) then work backwards. Those few threads of thought can lead you back through the entire night if you are patient enough with your memory.

I know I've had up to 6 or 7 and maybe even 8 dreams in one night before, So I know if I only remember one dream a night I could be missing 7 of them ;_;