Do you feel emotionally disconnected from your past?

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I have a really bad memory, and I find it very difficult to recall things from my past even if just from a few months ago - when I do there is little or no emotional connection to the memories I bring up, I can recall the facts but not the emotions I should connect to the memories and no recollection of how I felt at the time. For example things like childhood abuse and bullying, or nasty relationships...I'm sure I should feel upset, other people get upset for me if I share details of my past, but for me there just doesn't seem to be an emotional connection.

I don't remember this always being the case, I'm sure at some point my memory was better and my emotions were not so flat...I wonder if this is due to my worsening autism, getting older, from having had minor strokes, or something else...

There could be a loose/weak connection between your hippocampus and neocortex. The hippocampus is a key anatomical feature of the brain's limbic (emotional) system and it is known to be involved in memory and emotional processing. The orbitofrontal cortex (the part of the brain just behind your forehead) also has connections with the brain's limbic system. These connections function in associating life experiences with fear.

Since autism does seem to have something to do with connectivity and how the different parts of the brain "communicate" with each other, it's no surprise that some of us do experience a disconnect between memory and emotions. In my experience, I do remember negative memories from my childhood, but I no longer feel sad when I think about them. I think this is the result of the cognitive behavioral therapy that I've been receiving.

So, the concept of forgetting really exists?

I do forget lots of minor things (where I put my keys, and conversations I had etc.) Important things (for me) I never forget - I just do not get the concept of forgetting things, it is not something that I can do. I guess that it has its good sides as well (like forgetting bullying)

I feel completely disconnected from my past, when I see old photos it doesn't even look like me.

even when I take a photo now I feel like it's some other person.

I find it incredibly easily to just block out the past as well, even the good memories are hard to recover.

My partner is going through treatment for PTSD right now, and the way I have learned that memory is supposed to work is that you can remember things but not feel the same emotions that you felt then. If you have a traumatic memory that has caused PTSD, the memory creates all the same emotions, fear, etc., in the present that it did originally. So, maybe you just dealt with the bad emotions at the time they happened. What other people are expressing when they hear the stories is empathy, I think.

I'm like that for the most part OP. Sometimes I won't be, and I will be able to remember a feeling for something that happened. I describe it as remembering that the event happened, and I'll remember that I was upset at the time (or happy), but won't be able to tap into the actual emotion.

I also have issues experiencing emotions when I'm around people, even close people. I do experience emotions, but the strongest ones I'm nearly always alone. I recall at some point in my childhood, I tried very hard to control my emotional response to events because it seemed that that was the only way I could choose how to act. Also, doing something like talking seems to necessarily draw me away from feeling emotions. It's rather frustrating not being able to talk about emotions while experiencing them.

This whole emotional dysregulation has been a thing of distress and concern for me very recently in fact. It's played a role in the break up of my marriage and loving someone else. I've had it for a long time, but I'd been depressed for a long time too, so I just chalked it up to depression. But I don't perceive myself as being depressed anymore, (it's possible I am but it's just so mild compared to what I've had it feels like I'm not, and it's been so long since I haven't been depressed at all and since I have a hard time bringing emotional memories back it's also hard to make a good comparison of depressed to undepressed) yet this problem still persists.

As someone else has pointed out, and as I've discovered in part on my own, is that emotional distancing is a part of PTSD. It's a form of dissociation, and although I can scarcely say that I've perceived my past as traumatic compared to what so many people who suffer abuse go through, there are definitely negative events that happened in it that have affected me deeply. And, also, I think I in part trained myself to be this way. And yeah, there are different brain pathways for emotional memory versus events, and ways that one can suppress emotional memories via brain connections.

Unfortunately, there's not much research done on how to properly treat dissociative disorders. The good side to this though is that, from what I've read, it's not a permanent problem, and it can be fixed. I think just having support and being aware of what's going on within and around you, and allowing yourself to feel for a moment then let the emotion slip away, those are the important things.

Personally, I think my poor ability to focus plays a fairly large role in this too. Like, I have a hard time getting into stories novels for instance, simply because of a lack of focus. That same thing it seems applies to so many various aspects of my life I've found. In order to enjoy or take part in things properly, one must be in the moment. But if I'm only getting snippets of the moment while my mind wanders or worries, at it's worst it's nigh impossible to get emotional about something. And the same thing goes with memories too, gotta be able to focus on a memory in order to experience it first and foremost.

On the other hand, if you're not emotionally remembering negative events of your past, perhaps that's all for the best and it's a sign that you've gotten over them somehow.

Maybe not all these things relate to you though, but perhaps some do and you just haven't really thought about it yet.

Since this something that was not always present I would see someone.

I have no problems remembering my past. Whether or not I feel emotional about it depends on whether or not it's an emotional memory. Most of them are, which is likely why I remember them.
I still tend to feel what I felt then.

I don't remember my emotions either.

I am very good with remembering my childhood. I could write pages and pages of different memories I have from my childhood and teenhood (not so much babyhood), and some I can rigidly remember in detail. I can even remember the emotions I felt during different times, even certain songs and smells take me back to a certain time. I sometimes wish I could travel back in time and live the 90's again. Things were so much better than compared to now.

I've had a dramatic change in personality from between my early and mid 20s. So, the child I once was is nothing like I am now. For that reason I do feel very disconnected from my childhood. I still think I can experience those same emotions of the brief memories I can conjure up but that's for very important moments of my life, like when watch a scene from The Neverending Story which inspired me to be a writer.

I have no trouble remembering my emotions. If anything, I find it too easy for comfort.

I consider myself to be. I'd rather not think about when I used to get upset. All I do now is think "What WAS I thinking, being like that?" Some of my past is embarrassing.