The two most common questions I get from people when they find out I am a dreamwork practitioner are: “what does X dream mean” and “how can I remember more of my dreams?” You can find many tips in the articles archive, under Remembering Dreams. Today, I want to bring to your attention how the content that you’re watching and listening to every day directly impacts the frequency of your dreams, the content of your dreams, and your capacity to remember your dreams.
It’s not news that social media consumption has an effect on our ability to pay attention, our mood, and our memory. Knowing this does not seem to motivate most of us from reducing or stopping our intake. But if you are someone who really wants to remember your dreams, and even more so if you are someone who is trying to work intentionally with your dreams for healing or spiritual growth, you must reduce your external content intake.
It’s pretty simple, or at least I will offer here the simplest explanation. Everything you perceive when you are awake is taken in and processed by you. This taking in and processing requires a lot of brain power, energy, effort, and attention. We are so unaware of just how much energy, effort, and attention this requires. All those videos you scroll by, all those podcasts you listen to on the drive to work, all those video games you play, all those true crime dramas you fall asleep to — they all exhaust working memory, which is limited. All of this content must be processed, categorized, and stored. The more we perceive the more likely we are to experience cognitive overload. This overload is exacerbated because so few of us rest. We are getting less and less mental rest than we used to and require in order to “reset” our brain’s capacity.
For instance, there used to be a time when you had to wait in a line in order to buy something. Those brief moments in line were actually opportunities for your mind to rest a little. Sure, you may have glanced around at your environment or talked to the person behind you in line. But now, while waiting in line at the grocery store, most of us are watching many videos, one after the other. The videos are of different people, some we know and some we don’t. They take place in different places, some familiar, some foreign. There is music playing in the background of each. Talking, screaming, laughter. Maybe you’re not watching videos. Maybe you’re reading texts, taking in news or information, figuring out if you can add this to your to-do list or not, and how to fit it in, and feel all the associated feelings around it.
Your nervous system has to process all of that.
When it comes to videos, especially, the brain must ask each time: Is this real or fake? Is this far away or near? Is this relevant to my safety or not? Is it preferred or not? Do I want that? Will it make me happier, richer, more desirable? Do I like this? Do I trust her? What does it mean? Do I need to store this data away for the future? Is it reminding me of the past?
It’s really way too much. Isn’t it?
Reducing your external content intake — especially that which requires massive sensory processing like videos, reels, shorts, etc. — will improve your memory, in general, and over time, will definitely enable you to remember more dreams.
Your reasons for not remembering dreams are likely very connected to your lifestyle choices. This is the case for most people. For some people, a failure to remember more dreams may also be connected to their conscious and unconscious feelings about sleep, about being alone, or about nighttime or the dark.
However, a good place for the average person to start when it comes to lifestyle changes that promote remembering your dreams is to either do a content detox for a month and see what happens, or slowly start to reduce your content intake — beginning with video games, short videos (like TikTok and Reels), and binge-watching TV. Further, you should add in more mental rest time, and even better, add in a nap if you can. If you’re not already getting 7-8 hours of sleep and leaving yourself time in the morning to awaken slowly and write your dreams down immediately, then do that, too.
Instead of all those videos games, reels, and true crime dramas, you could spend your time on these memory-improving activities: daydreaming, walks in nature (without headphones), learning a musical instrument, making any kind of art, lunch with a friend in a quiet cafe, raking the leaves, fixing something that is broken around the house, or visiting a sick or lonely friend.
There are ways to bring back your memories of your nightly dreams, and guess what: these changes will also improve your memory, in general, too, as well as your ability to focus longer and pay attention.
Okay, so number one is to reduce content intake, especially the kind that requires the attention of multiple sense organs. I’ll be back soon with a follow up article on how social media, video games, news, and TV shows can actually infiltrate the content of your dreams and get in the way of your knowing your own intuitive capacities. Namely, the more you watch, the less you are aware of your own internal images which could be images from the future (precognitive), images from alternate timelines or past lives, or images that your deeper soul knowing wants to make you aware of for your healing or benefit.
