Good Memory for the Past

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Is it common for autistics to have a good memory for things that happened a long time ago? I notice that I tend to have strong memories for the past even if the event didnt initially phase me much. I sometimes flip through memories and then realize something I havent previously realized socially like a persons reaction and what it meant. It could have happened a year ago and I didnt notice anything at the time. But the bad part is that I can flip through memories and suddenly realize that something I did was inappropriate when I thought it was perfectly fine at the time and then I will suddenly get ashamed of it. On average I will start regretting things that I did 1 to 1.5 yrs ago. I guess it indicates a sign of growth. Ive had so much growth this yr, I started regretting things I did 6 months ago. The personal accusations of thinking I was such an idiot is endless.

I notice NTs tend to forget past events more easily and see it as very trivial because it happened in the past.

Twenty something years ago, We (my wife and I) bought a bag (more a rucksack really), my wife doesn’t remember the bag, even though we had it for years and used it to carry all the baby stuff needed when you have a very young child, I remember not only where and when but why and how much it cost, where we ate afterwards, what we ate, the flavour of the coffee she had, and the taste of the French Mashed pork baguette, that we shared when sheltering from the wind and the rain in Paris. I remember where I was when I heard each and every album I have in my record collection (1800 titles) but only when I am listening to them or about to play them. I also remember my first day at nursery school, and a lot of the “milestones” that NTs forget.
I am also cursed, as I can remember every time I have embarrassed myself and others by my odd misunderstanding of the social rules that I still struggle to remember in time so as not to do it again.
I have trained my mind to “sort out the good from the bad memories” , and I choose to only remember the good times, unless I deliberately think of the bad times, mostly I do this to find out the ‘something’ I’ve done ‘again’, that has upset someone, so I know how to react or put it “right”

NTs tend to 'reframe' things that happen in their past. If you have a shared experience with someone you might find that if at some time they are recounting an event to others, even others who were present at the event, they recount it( and seem to remember it) as being in a more positive light, especially their own actions if their actions do not fit with socially favoured views on morality, and those others who were present tend to sympathetically agree, subconsciously or not. Or if something unpleasant happened to them, it is easier to remember it as not being so bad. Like in one episode of the TV series South Park, where the children are remembering some of the horrific events they have experienced in previous episodes, but in their recounting they remember how they all had ice-cream( yay! though this never happened in the episodes) which made Kenny's death more palatable. This mental rewriting of history allows people to be happier.

I think this mental reordering of events is what makes NTs seem to have a bad memory, as they push unwanted memories in to their subconscious and replace them with a less lucid and inherently vague 'anecdotal memory', whereas you may be remembering things exactly as they happened.

I have seen good advice on the forum many times to focus on the future. I try to imagine there being much ice-cream in the future, rather than painting it in to the past. Not literally though, eating disorders are not good.

I remember that episode! It was great!

Back on topic though, yes I do remember a lot more than others seem to be able to. My Mum and Dad can't remember a lot of the things that happened throughout my early childhood yet I can recall them really well. Unfortunately, this good memory also works against me as it allows me to remember all the bullying, violence and hatered that happened in my life

My memory is kind of patchy......I "lost" a lot over time, but was able to reconstruct my life history by using the dates on photos and sound recordings to jog my memory. It's all in there somewhere, but not always accessible. Even now I can't retain the dates....I have to look them up on my written time line.

Details of significant interpersonal matters seem to get preserved very well......I can recall lots of conversations and things I did with people as if it were yesterday. Funnily enough I usually have a lousy memory for the events of a couple of days ago, and if I don't write in my diary every day, some days just get "lost" completely. And if I read my old diaries, I often find quite significant events that I'd completely forgotten about.

Having said that, I've lived for over 21,000 days, and I'd have a hard time remembering more than a few percent of the total. I guess most of our time is spent doing fairly indifferent things that have no reason to be retained.

I agree that NTs probably fudge their memories more than we do. We tend to have a powerful respect for accuracy, and don't find it so easy to do this wishful thinking that leads to false memory.

I thought I had some sort of psychological illness which caused me to keep going over things that happened in the past, which now cause embarrassment, but didn't at the time. I'm glad there are others on here with similar experiences. I seldom see my dad's family, just because of distance. Every encounter has a bad memory associated with it, all of which are down to me putting my foot in it, or being misunderstood. Sometimes, I just can't get those incidents out of my head and some go right back to my childhood. I don't think my dad's family remember any of it.

I also have a very good memory of things about my past. If it happened, I can remember it. That's all very good for the most part. The only downfall for me is that since I remember everything that happened to me since I was a year and a half old, is that I have some emotional flashbacks sometimes.

I can remember with perfect clarity every moment of every day since the age of five (I have patchier memories from the ages of 1.5 to 5).

Due to my parents lying to me constantly, and always re-framing events or denying they ever happened, I decided at the age of five to turn my mind into a sort of human video-recorder to capture the real truth and preserve it forever. It was my only defense against a constantly shifting and unreliable lying family. I could then prove that they were lying and my version was correct, since I could provide all the details of every event and conversation while they could not back up their false stories. This of course made them angry, but I stubbornly felt quite ready to bear their angry attacks so long as I made them unable to keep lying.

Later on when I was a young teen, I heard the Simon & Garfunkel song "Old Friends" with the line "Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M24Yhd7N91s[/youtube]

I took the line "preserve your memories, they're all that's left you" very literally. I began gathering and storing memories as avariciously as some people gather and save money. In fact I vowed to remember every moment, no matter how unimportant it was, preserving it for my old age as if it were a pension fund I was collecting.

When I was an older teen, I read the book "Stranger In A Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein. I became fascinated with his description of "Fair Witnesses" in the story. Fair Witnesses are a legal institution created to provide impartial and accurate observation, and Fair Witnesses have total recall. I privately resolved to become a Fair Witness myself (even though I realized they did not really exist), and avidly continued to hone my ability to recall events as perfectly and impartially as possible.

So now at age 41 I have approximately 12,960 days' worth of perfectly intact memories, and I can remember all the details of what I wore on any given day, and what the weather was like, and what I ate, and of course all the conversations and things that happened in perfect recall. Sometimes I re-analyze my memories and discover that something I did in the past was wrong or embarrassing, but I try not to dwell on it because I know no one else remembers it anymore.

My memories are so important to me that I would panic and be helpless if they became fuzzy or I forgot them. It would be as horrible for me to lose my memories as it would be for a rich person to lose all their money, or even worse since money can be regained. I don't need a photo album because every image is seared permanently into my mind. When ordinary people tell me that they have blank spots in their memories or they don't recall their childhood at all, I secretly cringe and feel horrified for them, a feeling of aching pity similar to what I feel when commercials for starving African orphan children come on TV. I feel mystified that their amnesia does not seem to bother them very much.

Interestingly, therapists do not seem to like it that I have total recall. They keep on trying to "uncover" lost memories of sexual abuse and stuff like that, and I keep telling them that I can prove there was never any sexual abuse because I would certainly have remembered it in detail. But for some reason they insist on not believing me, and keep telling me my behavior "strongly suggests" that certain things happened which in reality did not. Therapists who don't believe what you tell them are of no use whatsoever.

Molly

That sounds like a savant ability. I watched a documentary about twin sisters, who had low functioning autism and a savant ability for remembering everything that ever happened to them, including meals they'd eaten and what their favourite TV personality was wearing.

Today, I was getting nervous about something and I realized that I did something horribly bad 5 years ago and I didnt know it was bad at the time, nor had I even thought about it. I just suddently remembered it. My memory is really too good for my own good. It was 5 f-in years ago!

My memory used to be really good. I can still recall most details from my life at any age after about 3 years old. However, I am finding that some names & details duing events have been lost, sadly. Maybe my memory banks are too full. I wish we could add chips lilke we can with computers to expand memory modules.

Yep but there is a problem with things I just thought about. I need to interrupt someone so I can tell them what I need to tell them before it's gone. The past is easier to remember than the present.

In my family I am known for my memory, I remember events from when I was only a small child that my parents don't remember. Also when I listen to music I can remember emotions and places from when I first started listening to that particular track.

My long term memory is my greatest Aspie gift in life. One time a coworker told me that she would be happy just to know the few things that I have forgotten. I routinely remember precise details from my childhood that others in my family have long since forgotten even in vague form. I even remember the pain in my first days after birth when my parents were cleaning my still healing navel or circumcision wound (I don't rememeber which though). I was aware of what was going on at the time and later thought it might have been alcohol they were using for cleaning, but when I mentioned this to my mom one time, she told me she would have never used alcohol for that purpose. I suppose it must have been water and the sensitivity of a newborn was such that it made it feel like alcohol.

Now that you mention it, I do something very similar, remembering all kinds of things associated with some main item that returns to mind. I saw a show one time featuring one of these carnival type memory whizes who was putting on a demonstration of how he could remember a dozen or more minute facts that he was told about people in the audience. It was said that the key to such memory was associating the main item with something else. This is what I have often done myself at times. For instance, one time I wanted to remember the name of the manager at an apartment complex I was looking at. Her name was Nofi so I simply told myself that the one thing an apartment manager would never say to you was "no fee". Now I will rememeber her name until the day that I die, whether I want to or not.

I think this is true. My memories from the past are the raw sensory data, but when I asked my NT mother about her memories, she said that hers were a general idea of what happened during the event. I usually recall the sensory information in detail, like what the scene looked like and what the people were wearing and what the people said and even their facial expressions and body language that I didn't pick up on during the event. My mother says that she doesn't recall that much detail, especially not the exact words that people said, but instead stores and retrieves a summary of the conversation in her memory. I think my way is slower and more accurate, and her way is faster and less accurate.

Also, generalizing a summary would allow a person to more easily warp a memory into a slightly to somewhat to very different version, but if I wanted to do that, then I would have to overwrite many of the teeny-tiny details one at a time, which frankly seems impossible to me.