I didn’t jump on the dream journal bandwagon for a while. I have frequent nightmares so why would I want to write them down. I thought the only benefit to recording dreams was remembering your wacky sleep adventures, but as usual, I was wrong. Journaling helped me learn about myself and identify features of dreams that become nightmares.
Scientists may not be completely sure what goes into dreaming but it doesn’t take a degree to know that dreams are deeply personal. The content of dreams can be analyzed with some accuracy. A woman kept a dream journal for 32 years and a psychologist was able to read through the entries and identify attributes of her life. Her dreams revealed she was closer to her mom than her dad, Jewish, and afraid of death. My journal is not as long but I did manage to get some information out of the scraps. My dreams often reflect the things I want. I typically downplay how much I want something. I rarely make impulse buys. However, when I see something in the store and then dream about it I never regret buying it. Not all of my dreams are this shallow. The subject matter of my dreams reveals how concerned I am with the well being of those around me.
Everybody and their mother wants to lucid dream. It comes naturally to some but others try in vain for years. Lucid dreaming, to the uninitiated, is maintaining control and lucidity in dreams. This sounds great and all but I don’t really want to be control of my dreams, I’m indecisive enough as it is. I don’t need 7+ more hours of me having no idea what’s going on. The journaling techniques still helped me out, though. By recording my dreams on and off for a year I identified patterns of a nightmare before it became scary. Recognizing these patterns help me force myself awake before I’m awoken by my heart pounding out of my chest.
You don’t need a thousand reasons to dream journal. Dreams usually being wild and fun is reason enough to write them down. I personally like to annoy the people I know by telling them what they did in my dreams. No matter what, just have fun journaling. Or not. See if I care.