How Much of Your Dreaming Do You Keep?
Remembering dreams, knowing you are in one, and what they do to your day
Nearly everyone dreams every night, yet some people wake up with a full story most mornings and others go months without a single image. The difference has less to do with how much you dream than with how you sleep, how you wake and how much attention you give your dreams. This test looks at four sides of your dream life that researchers measure separately, because they do not always travel together.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about the last few months of ordinary nights, not about one unforgettable dream.
What it measures
Four areas covered by the Mannheim Dream Questionnaire: how often you remember dreams, lucid dreaming (knowing you are dreaming while it happens), your attitude towards dreams, and how much dreams affect your waking life. It does not measure nightmares or sleep quality, and it does not interpret what your dreams mean.
Based on: Mannheim Dream Questionnaire, MADRE (Schredl, Berres, Klingauf, Schellhaas & Göritz, 2014)
Possible results
Dream recall
How often you wake up with a dream you can remember.
Lucid dreaming
How often you realise you are dreaming while the dream goes on.
Attitude towards dreams
Whether you see dreams as meaningful or as background noise.
Effect on waking life
How far dreams carry into your mood, ideas and decisions.
Common questions
Why do I never remember my dreams?
Almost certainly not because you do not dream. Dreams fade within minutes unless you wake close to one and give it attention, so people who sleep straight through and leap out of bed with an alarm remember least. Keeping a notebook by the bed and lying still for a moment on waking usually raises recall noticeably.
What is lucid dreaming, and how common is it?
A lucid dream is one in which you know you are dreaming while it is happening, sometimes with the ability to change what happens. A 2016 meta-analysis covering fifty years of studies estimated that about 55 percent of people have had at least one, and about 23 percent have them once a month or more.
Do dreams actually mean anything?
Researchers disagree, but there is no support for fixed symbol dictionaries. What studies do find is that dream content tends to reflect the concerns, people and emotions of waking life. So a dream can be a useful mirror of what is on your mind, read in the light of your own situation rather than a book of meanings.
Is remembering lots of dreams a sign of bad sleep?
Not by itself. High recall goes with brief awakenings in the night, which are a normal part of sleep, and with interest in dreams. If you wake up unrested most days or your dreams are regularly distressing, that is worth raising with a doctor, but vivid recall alone is not a problem.
Sources
- Schredl, M., Berres, S., Klingauf, A., Schellhaas, S., & Göritz, A. S. (2014). The Mannheim Dream questionnaire (MADRE): Retest reliability, age and gender effects. International Journal of Dream Research. doi:10.11588/ijodr.2014.2.16675
- Schredl, M., Ciric, P., Götz, S., & Wittmann, L. (2003). Dream recall frequency, attitude towards dreams and openness to experience. Dreaming. doi:10.1023/A:1025369311813
- Schredl, M., Wittmann, L., Ciric, P., & Götz, S. (2003). Factors of home dream recall: A structural equation model. Journal of Sleep Research. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2869.2003.00344.x
- Saunders, D. T., Roe, C. A., Smith, G., & Clegg, H. (2016). Lucid dreaming incidence: A quality effects meta-analysis of 50 years of research. Consciousness and Cognition. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2016.06.002
An honest note The Mannheim Dream Questionnaire mostly asks how often things happen, with its own answer formats; the items here are Quinthea's own wording adapted from its topics, so scores are not comparable to its norms. Dream research depends on people's memories of their dreams, which are an imperfect record. This is not a sleep assessment: if you sleep badly or have frequent distressing dreams that affect your days, talk to a doctor.
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