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Poll Do You Have Photographic Memory?

Do you have photographic memory?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 44 47.8%
  • No.

    Votes: 25 27.2%
  • Unsure, but I think I do.

    Votes: 20 21.7%
  • Unsure, but I don't think I do.

    Votes: 3 3.3%

  • Total voters
    92
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Innordinate

MyPTSD Pro
Photographic memory doesn't mean that you recall everything that you've seen or paid attention to. It's just the way some people recall information stored in their brain, mostly from re-imagining but also includes the other 4 senses.

For me, when I'm trying to remember something, I picture seeing it in my mind again. For example, when I'm doing a test, I visualize the part of the text book with the correct information to answer a certain question. I can see the page as if it was in front of me at the moment.

I'm wondering really, if this effects the number of flashbacks I have, and the crappy ability I have to recall almost exactly, sights, sounds, smells of my abuse. I had no repressed memories.

The memories aren't the same as a flashback, in that I can see everything happening from different angles as I watch myself go through the abuse. For me, the term flashback is more re-living than re-imaging. But my memories of the abuse are so vivid, so clear, it makes it really difficult to be rid of them completely.

So, what I'm wondering is, do you have photographic memory or not and do you think it makes you're trauma worse/harder to deal with? and how so?
 
In regards to some of the abuse - I can see it all in my head so vividly, like it happened an hour ago. So...yes. And I think it makes it that much worse.
 
yep almost photo recall, works great on tests, sux when trying to forget trauma. there are, oddly enough, things i cannot remember (my son's first birthday) but I don't think anything traumatic happened. If it was traumatic I can't remember it at all and I have TRIED. Lost time is very confusing to someone like me who remembers ,in pictures, almost everything.
 
This was tough for me to select my answer due to certainly having had a photographic memory for so many years.

I chose unsure, as sometimes I think I still do and other times I feel it's lost to damage. So, I answered your poll in the present.

Innordinate you precisely described many of my experiences as well. I relate so well that it's creepy!

Yes, I believe it makes trauma harder to deal with. And, I also believe it may help create further traumas, as in such case of one growing up in domestic violence, predominantly vocal and a disruptive witness to the battering.

Then that someone suddenly stands-out on different levels and (through a corrupt level of thinking) it is determined that he/she must be attacked and scape-goated, in order that their lights too are hopefully distinguished. - Systematically and dangerously put out, and due to such good memory (its threat), verbal skill and a talent for accurate and vivid depictions and play back occurrences of crimes.

Seems to get perceived as a great threat to the batterer and makes rebound abuse too easy, all of which very easily could provoke daily tension and fear in the batterers, especially when it become shockingly clear to them that you actually can remember every detail and can even recall their verbal and emotional abuse and threats verbatim.
 
I have a photographic memory when the form is in verbal communication. Does that count. I also remember physical surroundings. But when it comes to text I suck.
 
nighthawk, I believe Aural photographic memory is rarer than the visual kind. A different brain process for storage and retrieval with hearing stimuli. I have trouble storing aural cues without re-enforcing those memories deliberately. for instance: I can't remember a verbal grocery list but if I see it I have total recall. Hearing and seeing are processed in different sections of the brain.
 
I have both visual and auditory (if I'm listening, which usually means if it seems like I'm not listening) I imagine most blind people develop photographic touch memory.

I'm actually starting to wonder if I have photographic memory caused by abuse. Maybe I wouldn't if I wasn't abused. Being able to remember instructions was vital for my survival growing up. Hmm...
 
I can recall viewing myself from outside my body being abused which was in my toddler years. I'm not sure why that is, possibly a psychiatrist might know. I don't see my abuser in the memories, but I recall being abused somehow. I guess the same and the pain... This is hard to explain, but I can see my crib in detail, I see ME, I see the blankets on the crib floor, but the abuser is blocked from my memory. He was my grandfather, I saw him often enough, but I cannot recall what his face looked like even. I do recall his housecoat, which he wore all the time while in his house (not in ours though, but I cannot even recall what he wore when he abused me, I just know it was not his housecoat and I know I was in my parents' house, not his, when the abuse occurred.

Later, when he abused me while I was standing on a highchair, washing dishes at the age of two (because he said dishes were not a man's job and my grandmother was outside watching my sister and had asked him to do them) I can see me standing on the highchair, but again I cannot see him. I see the dishes, I don't see the one I broke, but I know he abused me for breaking it.

I guess I had selective photographic memory! What I can see I see clearly and is sharp color, but what I don't see is cloudy or in a kind of shadow.
 
No; but I can remember the most random stuff! People know not to test my memory!
 
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