If REM sleep is occurring, the vivid dreams that are associated with it may not be recalled. If there is a transition from REM sleep to another state of sleep (most often stage 1 or stage 2), prior to recovering consciousness, you may forget your dreams.
If you don't remember your dreams but are getting good sleep, you don't have anything to worry about. If you don't remember dreaming and feel tired during the day, or like your quality of sleep is worse than usual, you might be getting less REM sleep than you usually do, which means you're not dreaming as much.
Dreams are still the great frontier of sleep science, one reason being that dream research is hard to conduct or measure. Our resident sleep medicine specialist feels that it's likely fine if you remember your dreams … or you forget them. It's not a good or bad thing, so don't get too invested or worried either way.
Anxiety, Medication, and Personality May All Affect Dreams and Dream Recall. Remembering your dreams doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how restful your sleep is, Dr. Harris says.
The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes. People are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase.
Dreaming sleep is a deep stage of sleep with intense brain activity in the forebrain and midbrain. It is characterized by the ability of dreams to occur, along with the absence of motor function with the exception of the eye muscles and the diaphragm.
According to a poll done by CBS, 4 out of 10 adults under 30 say that they can remember their dreams the majority of the time. That is less than half of the young adults in the U.S. Younger people have better memory function than older adults, which is why forgetting dreams may scare some people.
Not surprisingly, PTSD sufferers often wake from sleep with the covers torn off, or may even find themselves on the floor. Some remember in precise detail what they've dreamt; while others wake with no memory of a dream, but have intense emotions of fear, horror or anger, as though the trauma has just occurred.
Although depressed people are dreaming more frequently, they are often left feeling more tired as well. People who are depressed may have a harder time falling asleep, but they enter REM sleep, the stage of sleep when dreaming occurs, earlier and stay in this stage longer.
As dreams are all about the self—your feelings and behaviors—if you're dreaming about a specific person in your life, then it's likely there's some aspect of them that is currently at work in your life, Loewenberg explains. Perhaps you both share a behavioral trait that is currently being activated.
So, why do my dreams sometimes feel so incredibly real? It comes down to how intensely stimulated parts of the brain become during REM sleep. Coupled with the powerful emotions we're experiencing within them at the same time – creating an illusion that feels more life-like than reality itself!
We usually recall only those dreams we had just before we wake up in the morning (or the middle of the night). This may be because during sleep, our brains do not seem to be able to transfer short-term memories into long-term memory, and thus dreams we had earlier in the night dissipate without leaving a trace.
As Breus explains, "Medication, any kind of sleep, anxiety, depression, or even pain medication has a dramatic effect on lowering REM sleep." Less REM sleep means less dream material available to recall, and certain supplements, alcohol, and caffeine can also have a less-than-ideal influence on REM sleep.
In other words, dreams alone are not enough to diagnose mental illness. Some of the characteristics of a dream may yield some hints, however. For example, the frequency of nightmares is generally higher in people with a mental disorder, whether depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder.
The sensations you feel while sleeping and the emotions you experience before bed may cause you to wake up crying. If you wake up crying from a bad dream, that is your body's response to the weight of the suppressed emotion.
Impact on PTSD
A nightmare usually involves replaying the traumatic event, feeling like they are right back there again. For veterans, this might mean re-witnessing horrific events or even deaths of people they witnessed while on combat missions.
“According to the American Psychological Association, trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event. Trauma can occur once, or on multiple occasions and an individual can experience more than one type of trauma.” PTSD is the mental health disorder that is associated when someone experiences or witnesses a trauma.
“Dreams are often about identity, because we're figuring out who we are and what we need, and the beliefs and perspectives we hold,” says Wallace. “If you feel unfulfilled, undervalued or not the person you want to be in waking life, your dreams will often reflect that.
Belicki (3) found in the laboratory that wakening people up in the REM sleep phase reveals that about 80% of them remember dreams, but in clinical practice young adults remember dreams upon awakening once or twice a week.
It's unlikely that people never dream. It's far more likely to have issues with REM sleep, memory recall, or other sleep disturbances. Certain substances, such as caffeine, alcohol, benzodiazepines, and psychiatric medications, may affect REM sleep, which may impact dreaming.
Overall, researchers and study participants agreed that black and white dreams were the norm, and rare cases of coloured dreams were dubbed 'Technicolor' dreams (Calef, 1954, Hall, 1951), highlighting their perceived artificiality. This tendency to report black and white dreams suddenly disappeared in the 1960's.
As we have said, dreaming uses more energy than being awake, and if you dream too much, you will find that you wake frequently. Your brain will rouse you from sleep if your energy levels are dropping. This accounts for the kind of broken sleep that tends to accompany a night of extensive dreaming.
Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is the stage of sleep where most dreams happen. Its name comes from how your eyes move behind your eyelids while you're dreaming. During REM sleep, your brain activity looks very similar to brain activity while you're awake. REM sleep makes up about 25% of your total time asleep.
Experts aren't sure, but there's evidence that suggests dreaming plays a role in supporting brain functions that occur while we're awake, such as processing thoughts, memories, and emotions. So, is dreaming a sign of good sleep? Researchers believe it either reflects or contributes to healthy sleep.