Memories ...... anyone else share my problem ??

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I have a very bad memory. It's very annoying too as when I think of a catchy musical theme I forget it 20 seconds later after it's done playing in my head

I suffer from one of those, too (is there a medical term for those?). Since I don't seem to experience any abnormal memory deficiencies, I would agree that there's probably no correlation there.

I have very good longterm memory and can, like some others said, memorize stuff really easely, the long term memory might be related to the fact aspies can visualize things very well. Visualization is often used by psychiatrists and hypnotists to recover lost or burried memory's and details about events with NT people.

But my short term memory is pretty bad when it comes to what I like to call non-essential information.

I can glanse at a text and remember it completely, I can look at a schematic and reproduce it, but don't ask me where I put my cellphone or carkeys just a minute ago, because I simply don't know. I can however backtrack my movements from memory and find what I lost like that.

I guess the short term memory problems is one of the reasons why aspies tend to double, triple and quadruple check alot of the things they do.

When I go out, I go trough the house and my things a douzen times before I'm content I have everything with me I needed and finally leave.

Sometimes I feel like I forgot most of the memories of my life. I had a reunion with my highschool mates (we haven't seen each other for 7 years); one girl said I like puzzles and the like. I can guess it's true, but I don't remember anything about that

About the poor auditory memory, have you checked the symptoms of Central Auditory Processing Disorder? It's when you have problems understanding people talking in rooms full of voices. One of the symptoms is that, due to unconscious mental fatigue in understanding a voice, you can keep in your head only a short fragment of conversation. I have a mild CAPD and I did notice that sometimes when a film has too long dialogues I have to rewind to get them.

I had an incident about this recently. I was talking with this guy who, besides the fact that he was telling logical bullshits (he later told me he had a "reciprocal contribution" frame, which means if you actually know more than him he stops being "collaborative"), started talking longer than I could substain. I interrupted him because I was lost and told him to restart from the beginning. He continued from the point I stopped him in, which ended in a question. I answered the question with "What do I care?". I got more and more enraged and annoyed till I told him I was ready to beat him. The next time it happens me with somebody, I may actually do it

I would say that I have an excellent memory for fact and trivia bits, but for mundane day to day stuff that I don't care about I don't remember at all. I think that part is normal for everyone though.
My biggest problem is that I have no time frame to place my memories in. I couldn't tell you what day, week, month, or year something that I remember occured in, but I could tell you who was there, what we were doing, what I did before and after. So I sometimes can work out when it was from the context.
I remember weird obscure facts, but I have no idea when I learned them, sometimes I could tell you the exact place, and describe the room I was in, but don't have a clue when that was.
A good example is my brother was looking for a dvd of his. I could remember seeing it lying sideways at a certain angle on a small stack of papers. I also remember seeing it sitting on a shelf. I could visibly see both of those pictures in my head. I had no idea when I had seen the dvd in those places though. Turns out he had moves the dvd off of the stack of papers onto the shelf, where it had gotten pushed to the back and out of view. So when I checked where I remembered it being it was in deeper on the shelf so I didn't see it. I would be in serious trouble if I ever had people cleaning up for me or moving my stuff around.
It makes it hard at work sometimes when I need to know the last time someone called or ordered something. I can remember the order, but sometimes think it was recent when it was like 2 months ago.

My auditory memory is pretty bad, but my memories for things that have happened to me is pretty good. I can still remember things from before the age of 5. One of my problems with my memory is while I can remember things clearly, I can't remember how recent they are if the memories are more than a few months old.

I have to say that living with the knowledge of whats "wrong" with me (I say "wrong" because imho theres nothing wrong with me that should be considered a problem by society, but IS considered a problem because society is egotistical, backward and compassion less) over the last 4 months has given me some insights and realizations, even about things like my memory.

I've noticed that I don't really have a "bad" short term memory, just that I have trouble accessing whats in it and don't have an internal system like others around me seem to have, that reminds them they had to do something at a certain time and place around the time they were supposed to do it, remembering you have to do something sometime is no problem, but having the realization that that event is upcoming or already passed doesn't happen until you either happen on your agenda or someone comes yell at you for being late.

The first I'm sure of because, in the example that I lost something I just put somewhere a minute ago, when I finally find it, I can recollect everything leading up to me putting it there. I can recollect it visually and even things like the song that was playing on the radio. This shows that my extreme good memory extends to short term affairs, but that accessing the data in there can be problematic without certain extra inputs. This persists even when the information has shifted into long term memory and I'm looking for something I put away years ago. I'll have a rough idea of where I put it, but can't really find it, but then when I finally do find it, I can remember the entire event of me putting it there quite vividly.

The later, the internal scheduling problem, is probably because I'm so focussed on what I'm doing or what I'm thinking about that I'm sometimes completely oblivious to whats happening around me and how time progresses.
If your that focussed, you loose your realization of time and when you don't have the feeling that while you were working, 5 hours passed, you don't realize that meeting you were supposed to goto started 2 hours ago.

Because of this I was told to use agenda's and schedulers, preferably the digital type which can give audible warnings when events are upcoming, but events that have a definite start and end time are rare in my life and where this problem pops up most often is when I'm working on several projects at once and I need to space my time to be able to finish the tasks in a timeframe.

When I run into a problem or something else that catches my attention during one of the tasks (could be something as silly as a cute squirrel sitting in a tree) , I can easily waste all of the time I have for all of the tasks, unless someone is around to refocus me. Also, I never leave a problem unsolved, but often things I regard as problems are minor things in the scope of the entire project. This is the typical "someone with aspergers can get lost in details completely loosing track of the bigger picture".

I don't know about you guys, but it is almost like I may do some things without thinking. If I don't consider them, they will just not really be remembered. This, of course, happens most under stress.

Just EARLY last week, I had such an event. I tried VERY hard to recall the situation, I ACTUALLY got the time of loss down to about a 20 minute span! That is pretty good, considering it was a very hectic day, etc... I had a VAGUE recollection of it falling out of my pocket at a toll booth, and thought I set it aside. Just YESTERDAY, I finally found it! I THOUGHT it fell out of my right pocket, and I set it aside. Apparently, it fell out of my left. 8-(

MANY have similar problems. Most don't even TRY to recollect!

Still Sopho, you must have a pretty good memory to love history SO much! If I get into it, it becomes almost like a movie, and I can remember it, maybe much like you, but the relative sequence and dates, that are so important to history classes are things I have trouble with.

i just cant remember people names:P

idem dito, except if its a girl thats A: hot and B: nice to me :p their names I remember instantly.

I've always had a bad short term memory. Apparantly, that's common with auditory processing disorder and AS. I used a have an exquisite long term memory and a photographic memory of everything I read. But I also remembered a lot of things I didn't want to remember. Then several things happened that changed that. I nearly drowned. I had a heat stroke. I had a seizure. Now my memory's generally subpar. I can still remember phone numbers, liscence plate numbers, and dates better than most people, though.

u are luckky i cant remember anyone names though i remember everythink else

Yeah I have bad memory.

I'm actually kind of afraid that one day something terrible will happen, and the police will be called, and I won't remember things right.

Plus whenever I mention memories people usually tell me they never happened.

ShadesOfMe: I have had that happen to me too, but eventually it always turns out I was right anyway and its their memory thats faulty.

As bad as I am finding the stuff I put down a minute ago, if I witnessed someone else putting away some papers or something weeks ago, and today they are looking for them and can't find them, I can tell them where they put it in a heartbeat.

Last argument where I was being told I was remembering something that didn't exist/happen was about a set of kitchen knives we used to have, I said I was sure of the brand, contents of the set and when/where we got them and my parents were sure we never had that set.

I spent a week digging trough our storage spaces and attic and even though I didn't find the set of knives, I did find the receipt that we did buy them, from the store I remembered around the time I remembered (I generally don't remember exact dates, but a period of year with a 5 to 10 day error margin)

Don't doubt your memory or yourself and never ever take someone's word on face value.
Before thinking your memory is bad, verify that you were actually wrong rather then believing they were right by default.

I have a weird memory..
I have absolutely no timeline...and huge chunks of my like are just difficult to conjur up...
I don't remember names OR faces very well...
I have always had a very shoddy and defective memory...

I do, however have a great memory for small, irrelivant details...

and

I have a photographic memory that is only useful for finding lost objects. I will know the specific location of a small object in a large pile.

Oh, thank Heavens it's not just me.

I have few memories of childhood, either mine or my childrens'. I remember facts all right, and I have an embarrassingly encyclopaedic memory for songwords, but dates, timelines, which year we went to Prestatyn for our summer holiday - I don't have a clue. Sometimes, if somebody describes an event to me, then I can dredge it up, and then I might even be able to add a few details to it, but that's by no means certain. It's as though the memories are there, but I can't access them for some reason.