Does anyone else suffer from a poor autobiographical memory?

Did you wander over here from the Pot/Alzheimer’s thread?

It is normal to have one area of memory not as precise as others. Many people can remember incredible detail, but be absent minded with regard to things like appointments – things to do etc. If there a single period of time, say one or two years with no recollection at all you might have cause for concern, but many people experience the things that you mention – that’s why they invented diaries.

I have trouble with chronology when it comes to my own life. I get sequences mixed up, and I can never identify times properly. My girlfriend, who remembers everything including dates and times, makes fun of me a lot. I hope I never get arrested for a serious crime; I will sound guilty as hell.

I often find that family members remember incidents that I don’t. They tell me what has happened, and I believe them, but I can’t recall anything about them.

@DarkScribe Nah, I hadn’t even noticed there was a thread like that. I forget what exactly caused me to think about this. Maybe I should start to keep a diary. I had one when I was younger but only got ⅓ through the year. Plus I ended up losing it.

I forgot my own name once….I have a photographic memory; I can read a book from the library, & remember the page exactly how it looked….the words, any stains, any rips…...But if it happened to me, I’ll probably forget it within hours.

I also have a pornographic memory….

@Draconess25 I find eidetic/photographic memories interesting. I don’t believe you store an image of what it is you remember, but instead that you can recreate it based on a large amount of information. Do you think this is the case?

I personally wouldn’t say I have a photographic memory, but I can reconstruct images in my spatio-visual sketchpad based on memory of say a location or a page of text. I cannot remember every word though as some people but can roughly locate pieces of information (ie rough location of a key point to make for an essay).

@Ame_Evil Ummm….sure! That sounds a bit confusing, but it makes sense!

@Draconess25 I guess a way to demonstrate if its true: can you imagine a place and then add something unexpected (that you would never find) in it? For example if you remember your living room, could you add a clown to the image? I can sort of do this but only vaguely. Probably because I have never seen a clown in real life. Or probably because its hard to bridge the two things together /shrug. Maybe you can do it better than me if your photgraphic memory is better? Or is it impossible altogether?

I have a really good memory. I can remember things going back to my childhood. I visualise them as I am thinking of them.

Sometimes I think I am extremely fortunate, but then I not only remember the good things, but also the bad things, which I would like to forget.

I would be going to jail with dpworkin.

I often wonder just how big the desk in my working memory is, I fear it is the size of my kindergarten desk.

I’m more or less the same way. I also have trouble with time, dates, and sequence of events. For instance, in my memory I had my Atari 400 for several years; but going through a time line of Atari’s history I couldn’t have had it more than a year or so.

But I will forget that I’ve seen a movie, or not be able to remember the last movie I saw in a theater. There are a lot of other things I can remember very well, though, such as conversations or events that were external to me.

I’ve had a lot on my mind, though.

I may be in the minority here but I find a little odd the range of things about yourself you can’t remember. I forget things, names of people I’ve just met, and mix up dates [I am a horror with appointments] and I don’t remember birthdays of my youth.
I also have that eidetic memory about pages, or locations of places based on whether the place next door had a black and white tile floor.
But the number of things your forgetting about your recent past seem to suggest some stress, maybe overwork. Doesn’t sound like something to get overly worried about though.

My ex was quite bad at remembering events and often changed them when telling the story, putting himself in a good light. I used to say to him, ‘You don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.’ In the end, to stop arguments, we’d bet $50 on who was right, if there was a way to look up a date etc… to prove the facts. I’d win, 9 times out of 10.

I’m similar & also thought it was just me. While my sister (7 years younger than I am) often remembers details from when we were children, I don’t remember many of them & really have no memories earlier than 6th grade (guess around 11 yrs old). I’m 45 yrs old and while I can remember numbers & patterns & remember where things are on pages (very visually oriented), I am terrible about remembering names (even people I know for years if they are out of their usual “context” will draw a blank) and events & stuff.
Fascinating how the mind works, especially as it works differently in different people.

Names and dates are my nemesis! I work with 100’s of customers and can remember every detail of them but birthdays, anniversaries, planned events….forget about it! And I almost always do!

I diarize and have done so since I was 11. I didn’t know how important that would be in remembering different events in my life. Especially during the dark days of raising toddlers.

I went through a period a few years back where I didn’t see my extended family for almost 2 years. When we finally did visit again and the family stories started flying I came the realization of how important family ties are for memory. One sister would say something about our shared past and then I would remember other parts of what happened.

My brain gets clogged with the day to day stuff I need to remember, it’s no wonder that once information is useless, I tend to drop it. Your brain really does operate under a “use it or lose it” basis.

This seems normal enough, and I think it’s healthy.

Think about it, if you remembered the specific things that happened to you (like movies, conversations, etc.) the same way you remember a shopping list, everything would be compartmentalized in your mind, segregated. Leaving these things unlabeled in your mind, (memory really is just a labeling system,) allows them to flow amongst themselves more freely thus bringing a more intuitive relationship between yourself and your environment.

It seems natural. People who try so hard to record themselves seek some sort of justification, I suspect. You shouldn’t need to justify your life, or your daily decisions (generally)

It is okay, to just be you. Regardless of what music you’re into lately or the movie you saw recently.

I used to get really pissed off at my mother for not remembering things like which of her kids had chicken pox. Now I understand it. Like you, ask me to generate a list of movies I have seen recently or books read, and I will usually go blank. However. if you give me a title, I will not only recall whether I read or saw it, but just about all of the plot.

OTOH, my memory for meals eaten is not quite as good as it used to be but still frighteningly intact. I used to be able to remember what someone else ate at restaurant 10 years ago; now I can just remember what I ate!

@Ame_Evil I can picture that….easily. But I hate clowns. I also have a tendency to picture things exactly the way they are, before I ever actually see them.

I have trouble remembering things from the distant past, like my childhood over a half century ago, but I do remember many things from my son’s childhoods, but not much. I remember things from my adult grandson’s childhoods better.

I have pictures of a lot of things throughout my life, and that helps me remember the occasions when they were taken.

Ive often worried about the very same thing. I have a terrible memory. My older sister constantly brings up shared events from our childhoods and I cant remember it at all. Ive heard other people talk about how they remember everything since about the age of two or three, but I cant seem to remember anything before the age of about eleven or so. Its very frustrating.