Trying to Return to LDing Habit: Frustrating?

Quest for Lucidity
1

Hello all,

A few years ago I managed to achieve lucid dreaming and I continued with this habit for several months. However, it turns out my brother was reading my dream journal. Since my dreams are a highly personal and intimate subject to me, I was hugely upset and consequently stopped keeping a dream journal. As an extension of this, I stopped having lucid dreams.

Fast forward a few years. Because of a medication I am prescribed I now have highly surreal and extremely vivid dreams, some of which seem to last for hours (one particularly amazing one seemed to last for days). The amazing dreams I am having has prompted me to try and keep a dream journal again. When I first dabbled in lucid dreaming a few years ago, I had no problem keeping a dream journal. Now when I try to remember dreams it is like pulling teeth. Part of the problem is that when I wake myself up to remember dreams I am pretty groggy. I set my alarm for about an hour to a few hours before I actually need to wake up specifically to record dreams, but half the time I don’t even remember waking up and turning off the alarm before going back to sleep. I usually go to sleep at around 9:00 or 9:30 PM, so it isn’t really because I’m not getting enough sleep. When I wake up to start my day, I typically don’t remember anything then either.

This isn’t the first time I have tried to start having lucid dreams again either. I have made a small handful of attempts over several years. One time I came really close (did a reality check and would have been lucid had my alarm not gone off). Interestingly, during an earlier attempt to start up again a dream character told me that I would not have a lucid dream again until I taught ten other people how to dream lucidly (so far he’s right). Actually, now that I remember, my dream characters were always hostile towards my lucid dream attempts. It amazes me that when I first started it came so easily. Now it seems to be the hardest thing in the world to do.

Is there anybody else here who fell out of the habit and got back into it? Your insight would be very welcome. Also, any general dream-recall advice would be welcome too. I’m hoping that registering for, reading, and posting in this forum will help provide that extra boost that I need.

Thanks!

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Hi and welcome :wave:

There are many members who gave a break at LD’ing and then return, let’s hope some post here with their experiences.

One thing I can say about dream recall is to get the best improvement you should record as much as you can. That means even if you recall nothing at all, you should write something like “Today I didn’t remember my dreams”. One thing I’ve found helps me too is writing down even vague feelings. Things like “I don’t remember my dreams from last night, but I have a vague feeling there was a waterfall in one”. It can be anything, objects, people, emotions, random thoughts, etc. At this point I don’t really think it matters if you did dream about these things or if it’s just a feeling :razz: These practices should help jumpstart your DR.

Plus, if you are able to wake up and not move (or moving little), just trying lying there and searching your mind, asking yourself what you dreamed, that usually helps. It may take a few mintues, though. You can also go through a list of things in your head that appear in your dreams. One way to wake up without moving is to try auto-suggestion instead of an alarm. When I use an alarm I usually wake up very groggy too, so it’s something you can give a try.

Good luck! :wink:

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Do you set your alarm for 4.5/6/7.5 hours after going to sleep? If not, try that out, the chance that you remember your dreams after these amounts of times is bigger. Try autosuggestion and motivate yourself as much as possible. Make sure that you know and that you want to wake up when your alarm goes off and that you want to remember your dreams, it should help you to actually achieve this. This way it’s not so much of a big shock/surprise when your sleep gets interrupted in the middle of the night, you might even wake up before your alarm rings.

Here is a good guide for DR: link. I agree with everything mattias said, keep it up and think positively. :smile: