How Much Of One's Childhood Is Normally Remembered (w/o Ptsd)?

[Rainbow_Habitué]

Thanks! I can see how it would be a hard subject to study with the capricious nature of memories. Any in-depth study is likely to skew the results massively and unpredictably.

It's great to hear other people's views of their own memories because it's impossible to judge one's own without a comparison (and even then, who knows?). But yeah, one would think that an exclusion of memories of a certain place (but not age) would signify something, but it's hard to say what. Is it due to normal boredom, extreme pain causing amnesia, or dissociation?

 

[shell]

I have asked my therapist a bit about not having memories, I have very few memories from a young age, and it also depends on attachment to your parents. It's not just dissociation or amnesia, of which I have experienced both.

Because I didn't attach to my parents due to their abusiveness, I didn't encode a lot of memories. Children who are abused outside, of their immediate family, may have more memories of their childhood than say a person abused by immediate family. I was asking because I have no happy memories. I was told it was normal for children who don't attach to parents to not have as many memories.

 

[just me here]

I personally beleive in the microsoft word model of how my memory works.

If you are searching old files on your computer, you may find an old word file that you don't recognise by the title and open it out of curiosity. You read a bit, realise what it is and close it. But before closing, word asks if you want to save changes. What changes? All I did was read it, just a few paragraphs. OK, save changes.

This is my point: when you save changes, the file gets stamped with todays date.

Files we stored in memory back in the grade school days are sometimes clean and accurate and left unchanged from the time of occurance, others (the stronger or more important or hurtful ones) have been opened and edited and altered and resaved so many times, it can be tough to get a glimpse of the "history copy" and we are not always mindful that what we remember is maybe not the way things happened.

I know I have memories that I carry that can bring up feelings of anger or fear, but if I really dig into what the memory is about I will see that the original memory was recorded by a 5 year old and it begins to lose the credibility that it carried when I was looking at the memory superficially and weighing it's value on the fact that it was last saved in it's current version by me just a few weeks ago- I trust my ability to edit a file at my currrent age, as I should.

But we can't. It is well known by police and attorneys that witnesses will lose and add details as they are given more and more opportunities to open and close the memory file. Details can be suggested by questioning that might make it into the file and get saved, and reappear as full fledged reality when the memory is opened up again.

Ask any couple about their first kiss. Even just a year into a relationship, both memebers will have memories that are starting to seperate from one another. If one of them thinks about it 2 or 3 times a week, they will have more details and beleive their version more assuredly than their partner that thinks about it when prodded once or twice on the anniversary.

The memories we think about are the ones that are most likely innacurate or at least not as reliable as the mundane memories we leave unopened and unsaved. My memories of childhood trauma have the "feel" of being accurate because I opened them and reread them just a few days ago and the memory is given the reliability rating of everything else I saved last week. My memories of a 2 week road trip at age 4 are week and unreliable because I saved most of them when I was 4 and haven't thought about them since. Maybe if I sat and talked to someone else that was there on the trip we could bring out more details, add to our files based on each others additions and from now on, remember that trip in the context of two adults collaborating and re editing a memory file that has a date stamp that carries some "reliability".

I am sure I have memories from grade school, I know them well. I am learning to be more suspicious of their validity, I am learning to remember them as the scrawlings of a 5 year old and not the polished saved version I wrote as an adult last week or month or year or even when I talked about them with an old school friend when we were 10 or 8 or 6.

 

[Eleanor]

There is a lot of investigation into what kids remember. Psych people used to think little kids didn't make memories. (Psych people can be pretty dim..) Now the evidence seems to suggest that little kids have just as good or better memories (short term) as adults. The interesting thing is that kids seem to record their memories as long term memories only if they rehearse them while they are small - maybe at parental or sibling prompting - because of photos - or just because they recall them themselves.

Memory in general is pretty plastic, and is, as above, very subject to revision and open to suggestion. That is why detectives now "treat memory like a crime scene that can be contaminated." If you don't recall ANYTHING that's a bit fishy. But if you just recall bits and pieces I think that is pretty average. Also it is good to recall that kids get things wrong - we "see" our interpretations mostly. So what something seemed like to a toddler or five or six year old might be quite different if viewed from a more knowledgeable perspective.

 

[TLight]

I have no happy memories and many many holes. Mainly have solid memories starting at 9 or 10, and those were very traumatizing.

As far as being OK with not remembering, well I would be except that when I'm stressed or triggered, which is usually almost 24/7 lately, I feel so fragmented, like my brain is inaccessable to me because it is overwrought with stress chemicals and I'm so out of control.

A part of me, a very deep part me, feels that if I can 'remember' the worst at least, or piece together the whole awful constant picture more clearly, it might help me face these fears. Right now, the fears are ambiguous and amorphous and torment me so. How can I 'face' what I have no knowledge of? If I can remember, then perhaps I'll have some control over this constant hell I'm in.

I don't know......just seems to be my soul is yearning to remember, but it's too soon and it would break me even more........so I wait. 47 years and waiting to piece together a past that is incredably burdensome and disabling........a past that controls me, yet I don't even remember? Just another injustice that piles on and makes me feel helpless and angry.
Just my two sense on remembering........Pisses me off, wish I had all the pieces, perhaps I could come to some terms with them.

 

[Hashi]

My personal experience is that memories are few and fuzzy but amnesia is absolute. It might be selective - for example I remember random bits and pieces about school, holidays during that time, the kind of food we ate etc. But regarding X that was happening throughout that time, it's as if it never happened. Regarding X my brain has been absolutely wiped.

I think one reason for the other memories being few and fuzzy could be because when we remember things, often we're actually remembering memories of them. If I had a fantastic birthday party when I was five, say, I'd still be recollecting it when I was five and a half, and repeatedly remembering it would embed it in my memory. So I could recall it when I thought about it (less frequently) when I was six, then seven and so on. The number of times I'd already remembered it would in themselves be like memorising the details. So two decades later I'd still remember about my fifth birthday party.

With less pleasant and not very noteworthy things, I didn't have any reason to bring them back into my mind afterwards. In fact I tried to put them out of my mind. So I'm likely to have completely forgotten them by now. I think for me dissociation was probably the same - the awareness of having "gone away" for a while, that is. That's different from amnesia, though.

 

[Meadowsweet]

I can remember one memory pre 4 years old. I think this is considered quite normal. I can remember my first class at school. Then I can remember fuzzy things that happened regularly, like meal times and going on holiday. I don't have many specific memories and have less memories than my sister. But I think thats normal for me.

But more recently I've noticed a strange memory lapse. I can remember what classroom I was in and what teacher I had (if not their name) in reception class and later in classes 3, 4, 5 and 6 at primary school. But I cannot recall that information for classes 1 or 2. I think the difference between what I 'notmally' remember and this lapse seems weird.

 

[anthony]

How much do people typically remember from kindergarten through grade six?

Very little, both medically and factually. The brain will typically only retain something of emotional significance at such an age, and even then, it will be very clouded for details at best, as the brain factually does not store to memory at that age unless there is strong emotional connection to the memory.