Page 1 of 2 [ 17 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

firemonkey
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Mar 2015
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,570
Location: Calne,England

14 Nov 2016, 2:01 am

Poor autobiographical memory . I find it hard to recall things in much depth/detail . To use an analogy; if my memories were a pie there would be very little filling.

They say it's connected to aphantasia or at least a subset of people with it.



liveandrew
Velociraptor
Velociraptor

User avatar

Joined: 4 Oct 2016
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 479
Location: Cornwall, UK

14 Nov 2016, 2:40 am

firemonkey wrote:
Poor autobiographical memory . I find it hard to recall things in much depth/detail . To use an analogy; if my memories were a pie there would be very little filling.

They say it's connected to aphantasia or at least a subset of people with it.


Mine is pretty crappy as well (and I have aphantasia). I've been spending the past month or so trying to remember details about my life for my AS diagnosis and it's not easy. Some things stand out, especially if they were traumatic, but the memories are not very detailed - I know I fractured my wrist when I was in junior school but cannot remember how; it's just a vague recollection.


_________________
Diagnosed: Asperger's Syndrome (ICD-10)
Self-Diagnosed: Aphantasia
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 152 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 46 of 200

Listener of all things noisy, viewer of all things bloody, writer of all things sh*t.


firemonkey
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Mar 2015
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,570
Location: Calne,England

14 Nov 2016, 9:30 am

I have aphantasia too. I posted the question on the Aphantasia (Non-Imager / Mental Blindness) Awareness Group on Facebook , and so far quite a few people are saying theirs is also poor.



JakeASD
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 8 Jul 2015
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,297
Location: Kent, UK

14 Nov 2016, 9:50 am

I am extremely concerned about my memory. My whole life feels like a complete blur. Could this be a consequence of having chemotherapy when I had cancer as a child?

Pardon the slight contradiction in my last sentence.


_________________
"Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. " - Special Agent Dale Cooper, Twin Peaks


Hector Scorn
Tufted Titmouse
Tufted Titmouse

Joined: 11 Nov 2016
Gender: Male
Posts: 35

14 Nov 2016, 10:31 am

I remember my late father's cars and their registration numbers more than I remember him. :(



kokopelli
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 27 Nov 2017
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,634
Location: amid the sunlight and the dust and the wind

10 Aug 2018, 1:46 pm

Much of my life is a blur. I can remember plenty of individual details, but nothing that ties them together.

Years ago, I was one of the higher ups at a certain high tech company and was generally seen as the one most likely to replace the president of the company when he retired.

I neither expected nor wanted that to happen.

We'd have frequent meetings whenever the president of the company returned from a business trip. In the meetings, the president of the company would recount the details of the trip in great detail including entire conversations. I knew that I could never do that. I could pick up the two or three high points, but that was it.

In an account of a meeting that he could spend half an hour on providing the details, my best summary would have been over in a minute. If someone asked a specific question about what was said in a meeting, I would have no problem answering it, but I generally couldn't put it in any particular order.

It's like there is a bunch of individual data points, but nothing tying them together into a cohesive whole. And without those ties between the data points, when I think of one, there is nothing to make me think about what happened immediately before or after.



Serpentine
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 2 Aug 2018
Gender: Female
Posts: 167

10 Aug 2018, 2:45 pm

JakeASD, look up "chemo brain." There is definitely a relationship between chemotherapy and memory loss.

I too have memory problems. They have gotten progressively worse, though I suspect at least some of that is due to medication.

Most of my childhood is also a blur, though there are certain memories that stand out, even from the very early years. Honestly most of my childhood was pretty miserable so that may be a measure of self-defense.

People with poor verbal function tend to have more memory problems because language and memory are very closely linked.

I don't know what my excuse is these days, other than medication. I have very high verbal function but I have reached the point where I forget why I walked into a room multiple times per day or forget what I was saying halfway into a sentence. Sometimes I forget things that are very, very important with dire consequences. And yet I can remember useless academic trivia that I never even knew I knew (Jeopardy, anyone)?

It's frustrating to say the least.


_________________
"That isn't damage. It's proof of what you can survive."

- Joanne M. Harris, The Testament of Loki


TwilightPrincess
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 28 Sep 2016
Age: 39
Gender: Female
Posts: 20,127
Location: Hell

10 Aug 2018, 4:24 pm

My memory is below average. When I had my neuropsychological evaluation, my evaluator was surprised by how poor it was considering my above average intelligence. I think my ADHD has something to do with that. I’m so scattered that it’s hard for me to focus on a memory long enough for it to make it into my long term memory.


_________________
“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake...by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep.”
Walden


Magna
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Jun 2018
Gender: Male
Posts: 6,932

10 Aug 2018, 4:33 pm

Very interesting topic here. When I think back to my childhood up to being on my own, I've always been astonished that I feel like a can recall so few memories from my childhood. I recall certain milestone memories and when I really think about it for a long time, additional memories do come up, but overall for me too, I feel like I have retained few memories of my childhood. It's not like I've recently forgotten them, I never retained much of them, period.

I wonder if part of it was being in my own world as a kid largely shutting out the temporal world and not being engaged in it and partly as a defense mechanism.



jimmy m
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Jun 2018
Age: 75
Gender: Male
Posts: 8,462
Location: Indiana

10 Aug 2018, 4:39 pm

I tend to develop methods for compensating for any weakness. Generally I make list. Whenever I go shopping I always have a list with me. I also write down details as quickly as possible without letting time go by. Because the details fade quickly. I kept journals at work with quite a bit of detail. Sometimes one phone call might transcribe into 6 or 7 pages of notes in my work journal.

But then my mind is like a library card index. I just tend to remember just some key point about any event. And some of these memories go back to when I was very young (2 years 3 months of age) over 67 years ago.


_________________
Author of Practical Preparations for a Coronavirus Pandemic.
A very unique plan. As Dr. Paul Thompson wrote, "This is the very best paper on the virus I have ever seen."


Joe90
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Feb 2010
Gender: Female
Posts: 26,492
Location: UK

10 Aug 2018, 5:45 pm

I have a very good autobiographical memory. I don't remember the exact dates of when things happened, but I can remember the year of when things happened and in what season of the year it happened.

I can remember nearly all my birthdays from my 10th birthday right to my 28th birthday (there's one or two brithdays under the age of 10 that I can also remember, and maybe one or two birthdays in my teens or early twenties that I can't quite remember). I can also remember lots of Christmasses and summers too.

Remembering my life is probably the only thing I'm good at remembering.


_________________
Female


Trogluddite
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 Feb 2016
Age: 53
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,075
Location: Yorkshire, UK

13 Aug 2018, 2:50 pm

My autobiographical memory has always been terrible. I think aphantasia might have some part to play, but I think there might be a couple of other factors too...

Firstly, I have quite severe alexithymia; so when an event happens to me, it can take quite some time before its emotional impact hits me and even longer for me to make sense of what the feelings are. When I recall autobiographical memories, they seem very abstract, almost as if they were things which I'd just been told about or read. They usually contain very little emotion, so I wonder whether that is because of the separation in time between the event and the emotion, so that they don't get recorded as a single, unified memory of the event.

Secondly, my sense of time is atrocious at all scales, from judging how long I've waited for a bus to having any idea when any particular event took place in my life. Even putting autobiographical memories into the correct order requires a lot of working out, and this often leads me to get confused about who else might recall the same event or the order of cause and effect when remembering things.


_________________
When you are fighting an invisible monster, first throw a bucket of paint over it.


kokopelli
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 27 Nov 2017
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,634
Location: amid the sunlight and the dust and the wind

13 Aug 2018, 5:14 pm

Trogluddite wrote:
My autobiographical memory has always been terrible. I think aphantasia might have some part to play, but I think there might be a couple of other factors too...

Firstly, I have quite severe alexithymia; so when an event happens to me, it can take quite some time before its emotional impact hits me and even longer for me to make sense of what the feelings are. When I recall autobiographical memories, they seem very abstract, almost as if they were things which I'd just been told about or read. They usually contain very little emotion, so I wonder whether that is because of the separation in time between the event and the emotion, so that they don't get recorded as a single, unified memory of the event.

Secondly, my sense of time is atrocious at all scales, from judging how long I've waited for a bus to having any idea when any particular event took place in my life. Even putting autobiographical memories into the correct order requires a lot of working out, and this often leads me to get confused about who else might recall the same event or the order of cause and effect when remembering things.


I'm really bad with the passage of time, too. It kind of goes by me in a blur.



Serpentine
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 2 Aug 2018
Gender: Female
Posts: 167

13 Aug 2018, 8:43 pm

Huh. I also have difficulty keeping track of time and judging how much of it has passed.

I am late everywhere I go even when I swear a solemn oath to myself that I'm going to make it this time... yeah, right.

Combine that with having to remember that I was supposed to go somewhere in the first place (and why), and I am often doomed before I even start.


_________________
"That isn't damage. It's proof of what you can survive."

- Joanne M. Harris, The Testament of Loki


firemonkey
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Mar 2015
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,570
Location: Calne,England

14 Aug 2018, 10:38 am

Trogluddite wrote:
My autobiographical memory has always been terrible. I think aphantasia might have some part to play, .


I have aphantasia . A good number of people with it are reckoned to have poor autobiographical memory.



Trogluddite
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 Feb 2016
Age: 53
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,075
Location: Yorkshire, UK

14 Aug 2018, 11:02 am

firemonkey wrote:
A good number of people with it are reckoned to have poor autobiographical memory.

That makes sense when I think of what I said earlier about my memories seeming "very abstract, almost as if they were things which I'd just been told about or read". Whenever there's a "remember the time when..." kind of conversation with friends, I certainly can't picture the scene in my mind or "relive the moment" as other people seem to be describing. I also seem to struggle to recall events as a whole; I can often recall many little details or verbatim snatches of conversation, but I get little sense of the wider picture.


_________________
When you are fighting an invisible monster, first throw a bucket of paint over it.