So i do WBTB (no lucid dreams yet) and when my alarm wakes me up i don’t remember any dream. Then when i go back to sleep and wake up i remember alot of my dream.
And when i don’t use WBTB i rarely remember my dreams. Is this because my dream recall is bad?
That is nothing to worry about, it is the same for me most of the time. I think you are not able to remember the dreams from the first part of sleep because the REM phases in these hours are not very long thus you don’t have many dreams. In addition, your sleep is quite deep and you are not very likely to remember every dream. After the WBTB your mind is more awake, your sleep not so deep and your REM longer, that’s why it’s easier to remember the dreams which happened in the second half of the night.
Just adding to this, your using an alarm to wake yourself up. I find it difficult to remember my dreams after being forcefully woken up, especially by harsh lights or loud noises.
Every time I wake up for school during a weekday, I have difficulty remembering my dream. Due to the four-day weekend this week, I’ve recorded nearly every detail of my dreams since thursday night. If this is what your experiencing, eventually it will stop as your recall becomes better and better, but it takes a while to get to that point.