Why do I only remember the bad things?

[David1959]

Memory is an odd duck. I for example have extremely limited memory of my childhood but that is not my subject for today, it would take a book.

Whenever I think back to an event that was wonderful I immediately remember and focus on the one thing that was wrong and let it consume my memories. Example, my wife and i ran a tour operating business for 10 years. We managed private trips all over the word for affinity groups of 100-300 people. We probably did 50 of these trips, they were very popular and people had a great time. My memories of specific trips only focus on the things that went wrong, even if the trip was hugely successful?

I wish that my memories were more complete and embraced some of the joy in my life as opposed to only the negative thoughts, maybe I only deserve that or maybe my mind is so broken that this is all it allows.

 

[somerandomguy]

I think this is very normal for us folks with PTSD. The specific way in which our brains are broken makes it easy to recall negative memories, difficult to remember positive ones.

 

[FreeSoul]

Memory is an odd duck. I for example have extremely limited memory of my childhood but that is not my subject for today, it would take a book.

Whenever I think back to an event that was wonderful I immediately remember and focus on the one thing that was wrong and let it consume my memories. Example, my wife and i ran a tour operating business for 10 years. We managed private trips all over the word for affinity groups of 100-300 people. We probably did 50 of these trips, they were very popular and people had a great time. My memories of specific trips only focus on the things that went wrong, even if the trip was hugely successful?

I wish that my memories were more complete and embraced some of the joy in my life as opposed to only the negative thoughts, maybe I only deserve that or maybe my mind is so broken that this is all it allows.

I suffer something similar; I tend to focus on 1 negative event or incident and ignore all the other memories that were good and positive. I believe it came from me not getting validation from my parents, and rather receiving silent treatments and minimization.
I have compiled a list on my mobile and my computer, of the positive things and events in my life that I have experienced and the positive and encouraging people I have met, and occasionally go through the list. These are just bullet points of different events, and it usually helps me focus on the positive in my life. The results are often seen immediately, and lasts for nearly 24 hours.
The more often we go through the list, the more our brain gets accustomed to seeing the good experiences and people.
Hope something similar helps you and makes your life little bit better.

 

[Survivor3]

I think that sometimes we remember the bad things so that we can try and figure out how to learn from our mistakes. My counsellor said that also, that we tend to only remember the bad things. It's very common.

 

[RussellSue]

I do this, as well. I am really, really bad about fixating on my own "failures" and this often plays into the things I remember. For instance, I used to own a home-based laser engraving business which was hard to start, hard to run and took like a million hours a day of work to keep going. But I don't remember feeling proud or even having moments where I finished something and felt excited.

What I do remember is one store that I used to sell to and the two ladies that ran it who got angry with me when I closed up shop years later because they couldn't get their souvenirs for cheap anymore and because I told them that I could not sell them my equipment and teach them to use it. Since I was unable to ease their frustration and not able to explain why I couldn't teach them to use my equipment, I felt that I had failed to communicate properly (which is probably plenty accurate). To this day, I am pretty sure they both think I am a snotty bitch because I didn't think they were smart enough to operate a laser engraver which was not precisely what the problem was. That's a really long story but ultimately, I felt like I messed up and like @Survivor3 pointed out, I want to do better next time.