Autobiographical Memory

[7Cs]

My memory is awful. Throughout most of my childhood and teens my memories are in flashes with little detail. A few are relatively graphic/ clear (primary traumas are the worst since they come as flashbacks - most of that is emotion though).

I guess memories are supposed to come with more detail? Things that happened before, after, what people said or what you said or thought, what people were wearing (or what they even looked like! ), scents, temperatures, seasons, even days dates or times! Mine are nothing like that. I only remember a few names and pretty much no faces except for my closest family and friends. After I was 12 I didn't have them anymore and there are no adults with names or faces for the rest of my childhood.

I think most of my childhood is blocked because of memory avoidance and or dissociation.

Even now my memories aren't fully formed. I'm very forgetful too one moment to the next.


I'm pretty sure this is normal with complex/ childhood ptsd but wanted to ask if others experience the same or similar or am I a little "unusual" that way?

 

[Enaila]

My memories were blocked and many still are blocked in my mind, but as I process some of my traumas, more memories return. Some days it is nice to have the memories return...others not so much. I used to get frustrated I couldn't remember anything from many chunks of time. The brain is an amazing thing.

 

[7Cs]

My memories were blocked and many still are blocked in my mind, but as I process some of my traumas, mor...

Are you noticing as memory comes back that your current memory is improving too?

 

[Abstract]

Hi,

I can only say what mine are like. I have an increasing scattering from around age 3 to 6 with gaps - quite a lot age 4 and a good dollop age 6. Then I have an almost total block for around 6 years. A black hole. Thereafter for my childhood and early adulthood they are scattered. A few more significant total gaps. Later years do not correlate with more or clearer memories. But the memories when they are there are more like paging through a magazine than fully formed memories. Unlike the pre 6 year ones. Like someone got the pages and threw them up in the air. I have painstakingly attempted to put them in order and verify them and that has helped me feel that I have a bit of a history rather than the vacuum I previously experienced (I also wrote down many things I do not remember but for which there are multiple proof sources of confirmation) but there is no way I could ever be sure of the timings or order of things. Even this sounds way more exact than I can really be sure of.

I only had proper memories regularly again in more recent years after realising these things and finding out about dissociaton so can compare and see the difference. The old memories don't fade. I seem to get more not less. Like bubbles I pop and release. More recent "old" memories fade and I think its in a normal way. I think the change comes from multiple things at a guess: a more integrated way of processing things around me to do with identity; less dissociation, less serious stressors around me. In other words absolutely do process things differently now because of changes in my identity development and control of dissociation. And I have had less serious stressors around me. I'm still considered unusually scattered by those around me but am much improved.

I didn't seem to have much normal autobiographical memory until I actively started working on it if that makes sense.

 

[EveHarrington]

:hug:

I don't have memory issues like yours, but I'm wondering if you've ever tried brain strengthening exercises which can help improve your memory?

 

[7Cs]

:hug:

I don't have memory issues like yours, but I'm wondering if you've ever tried brain streng...

Yes, I've played memory games. I am also an avid reader (sometimes spending hours a day reading). Supposedly reading improves a persons memory.

I think in my case it's more from unintentional memory blocking and dissociation.


I'm hoping that working through those issues will help someday.

 

[EveHarrington]

I understand. Sometimes it takes awhile to figure out exactly what's going on. I'm glad you're working in strengthening you memory. (It's something all of us could probably benefit from!)

:hug:

 

[Enaila]

Are you noticing as memory comes back that your current memory is improving too?

I have noticed I am getting better memory for day to day things as my memories come back. I hadn't thought about it before. This week I regained some high school memories and today when working with a student, I recalled everything on his brainstorm web and where the items were located on the web. I "saw" it. I don't usually have photographic memory.

I have wondered if the fact I am becoming more ambidextrous, since hand surgery, may be forming more connections as I have been learning new ways of doing things and doing more cross brain activities. My work stressors are still as severe as ever, so it isn't from the lessening of them. I'm glad I have a break next week or therapist might be forcing me to take a break!

 

[katz]

My memory is awful. Throughout most of my childhood and teens my memories are in flashes with little detail...

Oh, yes. Mine are mostly hidden also. I know what happened, even where. But the Who will probably never be. I know the family names of them, but I will never have a names or faces for the strangers. Some times it drives me crazy. I almost want to know....I don't know what I would do with the information if I had it.

Even worse is that I have very little emotions to go with them. I'm working on that.

 

[shimmerz]

Are you noticing as memory comes back that your current memory is improving too?

Yes, absolutely this has been the case with me. And I know at this point when I am having a bad day when my memory starts to get holes in it. It is normally temporary these days.

 

[Gs172003]

I remember absolutely NOTHING from when I was living with both my parents before the age of 5. I have some memory after that but it's scattered. My second marriage... Anything involving the man I was married to? Mostly gone. Weird. I remember in great detail everybody and everything else in my life at the time but not him.