Does taking note of one's dreams help to remember them?

I almost always remember the dreams I have. Many are recurring, with elements that repeat night after night. Often they are nightmares. If things get too painful, I can switch to another scenario with the same ease as changing channels with a click. Who knows if the awareness of dreaming while dreaming is a symptom of not being able to trust and let go, of wanting to control even the unconscious. Dreams can be analyzed, interpreted to understand something about ourselves that helps us face daily life. It's a pity not everyone can have lucid dreams or even remember them upon waking up. But what if there was a method to achieve this? The solution might be dream journaling, a more specific version of journaling that, like an emotions diary, offers benefits for mental health and personal well-being.

What is a dream journal?

As easily inferred from its name, a dream journal is the practice of recording each morning what we remember from the dreams we had during the night, a practice also favored by Freud and Jung. If for Cinderella "dreams are wishes, locked in the heart," for Freud they represent hidden desires, while for Jung they reveal a new perspective on a fact or person in our lives. So, grabbing pen and paper and writing down our dream visions while they are still relatively fresh in our minds could be useful for unlocking creativity, training memory, or practicing introspection to understand who we are. The fragments that remain in our minds, elaborated by the unconscious when the brain is deeply relaxed, are often pieces of reality to be decoded to better tackle everyday life.

How to keep a dream journal

There are many ways to compile a dream journal. Some prefer the classic pen and paper, others like to choose a dedicated notebook or diary, while some are content with loose pages and post it held together with a clip. The more tech-savvy opt for recording dreams on a voice recorder, using a smartphone app, or typing on a laptop. Those who enjoy writing jot down their memories freely like a stream of consciousness, a narrative, or even a fairy tale. Meanwhile, more practical diarists proceed with specific points, outlining locations, protagonists, events, noises, and other fundamental details in a schematic manner. Others find themselves more comfortable with drawing. In short, there's no right or singular way to tell our dreams—it all depends on what makes us feel most comfortable.

How to organize it

Many TikTok creators suggest dividing the page into two parts, horizontally or vertically: on one side, we write down the dream or fragments we remember from our sleep, on the other side, we add interpretations and any considerations. Different colors, markers, pencils, or highlighters can also be used to mark key moments, making them easier to identify when we revisit our text. Once we find our journaling style, here are some "rules" that will help us stay organized:

• Do it first thing: write in the dream journal every day, right after waking up in the morning while still in bed. By dedicating ourselves to it before anything else, we can capture relevant details. To facilitate speed and immediacy, it's best to keep our dream journal and a pen handy, perhaps on the bedside table.
• Note down the date, title, and write in the present: marking the date helps connect the dream to the present we are living, while giving each dream a title is useful both for identifying important concepts and for a more organized and functional future consultation. Finally, writing in the present encourages the emergence of details.
• Record all details and emotions: write down everything we remember, including emotions and their intensity, specifying whether our dream visions were positive or negative, but without adding any judgment afterwards. Let's limit ourselves to faithfully transcribing on paper what we experienced and felt while sleeping.
• Set an intention: before going to bed, think about wanting to remember what you dream. We can also focus on a person or a particular issue, channeling them to make it easier to recall and relive them in the dream. With a bit of luck, we might even find a solution to what troubles us.

How to remember dreams? The benefits of dream journaling

Pouring our dreams onto paper helps us access our most intimate world more easily. While dreaming, we often openly and sincerely confront themes and things we don't usually face when awake, due to modesty or preconceptions. The benefits of this practice are many, here are the most important:

• Trains memory: keeping track of our dream life regularly not only increases our ability to remember dreams. The effort to remember every day, focusing on bringing into focus sometimes foggy fragments, is a real exercise for the mind that becomes more elastic as we proceed with dream journaling.
• Unlocks creativity: for creatives, dreams can be an incredible source of inspiration. How many artists, authors, singers, or scientists have turned unconscious visions into masterpieces and ingenious discoveries? It seems that the non-traditional structure of dreams helps us think outside the box, developing creativity even in waking life.
• Helps decipher complex emotions: according to Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of The Committee of Sleep, "Dreams represent a part of ourselves that we generally don't pay as much attention to as our waking and verbal reasoning selves. So you can get in touch with your intuition and some of your emotions that you may not be aware of." Therefore, keeping a dream journal helps to become aware of anxiety, fear, restlessness, and other emotions we experience. Confronting them in dreams may suggest how to handle them when awake.
• Aids self-knowledge: dreams speak to us about what happens deep within us, unlocking themes and emotions we struggle to confront while awake. A tip: those in therapy could analyze the dreams reported in the journal with the help of a psychologist to delve even deeper.
• Helps with nightmares: writing down the scariest dreams allows us to process and metabolize them, understanding what causes them and reducing their power to scare us.
• Improves sleep quality: when we get used to keeping a dream journal, going to bed becomes a ritual, a form of self-love, a private moment that gives us great well-being. Thus, the mind relaxes and we fall asleep more easily and peacefully.

What if we don't remember our dreams?

It is important to note that some people have a less developed dream activity than others, especially if they often consume alcohol or suffer from sleep disorders. In any case, remembering dreams is a matter of patience and practice. Attention to our dream world, and consequently its memory, can be trained. Dream journaling can be helpful because going over our dreams each morning exercises the brain, which, over time, will remember more and more.