Recently, my life feels like a blur, like I dont really remember what happened even in the past 2 weeks, and this has cause me some anxiety.
I just want to know if this is what everyone’s memory is like.
How much of your life do you remember, like do you only remember major events in your life, or do you remember like what you have been doing for the past 2 weeks.
What I mean is like, if someone asked you “So, what have you been last week”
You can come up with an answer like:
“So I watched [X] movie on Netflix on Monday, went to a nearby park on Tuesday, ate at [X] restaurant on Wednesday, found a new interesting Youtube Channel to watch on Thursday, petted a friendly neighborhood cat on Friday…” etc…
And like you can still remember what happened that week the following Monday.
Like obviously most people wouldn’t remember what they ate every meal, but like just one major event that happened each day.
I feel like I don’t remember shit. Not a single event.
Memory is associative. I have a really, really good memory, but it’s mostly because I know how to exploit that associativity.
If you asked me what I did for the last two weeks, I’d have to find “anchor” memories to relate to other memories. E.g., I remember a conversation at work on Friday, which I know was the result of a thing I did earlier that day, which I had talked about doing on Thursday, etc. I can reconstruct things, but part of that is “digging” through memories to find anchor points.
If you asked me about last Wednesday or the one before, I could probably tell you eventually. You might get a lot of detail about the rest of the week along the way, because I’d have to piece together what I did and which day Wednesday was.
It would be about the same if you asked me about the current weather moments after I walked inside. I might be able to tell you, but I’m going to have to build the memories on the spot.
Stress can wreck memory.
I am not great with faces, apparently, because people recognize me but I don’t recognize them, a lot. Like, no shit the FedEx guy bringing stuff to my work recognized me from grade school. Some people are REALLY good at recognizing people.
In general I’d say I am much better at figuring things out, than remembering them, and it has ever been so. Even in school I passed algebra by remembering the quadratic formula and just figuring out the rest of it each time. I don’t do things the same way every time. When I try to do things by rote, without thinking I fuck them up.
If it’s bothering you, try mindfulness - throughout the day take a breath, relax and become more aware of what you are doing and hearing and seeing and feeling. Get in the habit of paying close attention.
But I do think it’s normal to sort of discard a lot and only remember a little.
My memory has been somewhat blurry/fuzzy since 2011, so yeah. After coming out from a surgery where I was under longer than the surgeons thought I was gonna, it’s been a bit fuzzy. I can remember things from a long time ago, but ask me pre-2011, middle of tweenhood and below, is hit or miss what I remember. Even after then, it can sometimes feel a little hit or miss whether I remember an event that happened.
Fire at a nearby apartment building a couple years ago? Remember. The song I was listening to 10 minutes ago? Absolutely no clue. Name of someone in my ENGL 101 class I’ve been attending all quarter? No clue for almost all of them. The time my parents got a Sonic Mega Collection game for me and my brothers when I was 4-5 years old? Absolutely remember that!
My memory is poor and my facial recognition is zero.
I remember broad timelines, and I try to take pictures of my life so I can look back and jog my memories. Sometimes weird memories randomly bubble up to my consciousness though.
Recently, my life feels like a blur, like I dont really remember what happened even in the past 2 weeks, and this has cause me some anxiety. […] How much of your life do you remember, like do you only remember major events in your life, or do you remember like what you have been doing for the past 2 weeks. […]
I experience the same sort of feelings. What I find helps me a little bit is to journal at the end of the night and document what I did during the day and what happened during the day. This helps me reflect and ground myself on what goes on around me. Instead of me just existing with events passively happening around me, it forces me to sort of anchor events to my life. Having this sort of stuff documented also allows me to reflect on it in the future.
I can remember dates oddly well.
However, where the fuck are my keys???
People tend to look at me funny when I tell them that I don’t remember my childhood all the way up through highschool.
Certain big events in highschool I can remember of course. But for most of it is just vague impressions of “Yeah…I must have done that at some point, but can’t recall specifics”.
For Childhood it gets even more nebulous; again, a few things I clearly remember, and much of the rest of it I can’t decide if I actually remember it, or if I’m “filling in the blanks” from old photographs (the brain is funny that way…implanting a fake memory is pretty easy it turns out)
People have told me that that’s a reaction to childhood trauma, but since I’m kind of stupidly good at holding useless trivia in my brain, I just think I pushed it all out to make room for random facts about ancient history and star trek lore.
Its a mixed bag.
I don’t remember a lot of specifics from my childhood, but I also wouldn’t say I don’t remember my childhood. I don’t remember the names of all my elementary schools, or exactly where they were, but I can remember most of my friends and what we did together. Like at my first elementary school I can remember that I basically just did normal kid stuff. I know at my second elementary school I got into videogames, because a lot of my friends from that school had gamecubes. But I can only remember a few actual individual times we were playing gamecube, even though we played together several times a week for literally years. I know mario sunshine was my jam but can’t remember any specific days I played it on. I know when I was homeschooled I spent more time on neopets than doing actual school (thanks mom), but I have literally no individual memories of playing neopets.
So like… I do know my own history well enough, but just not specific days unless it was something really noteworthy. I have no idea if thats “normal” or not.
I can remember medical facts really well. I want to get into the medical field in some capacity, because for whatever reason that shits sticks in my head. Special interest I guess? Idk.
Ummm
Yes, both.
- I’ve always been bad at remembering who I met or what we talk about
- I can doom scroll for hours without recalling anything of note
- when things are hectic the daily details disappears
- ask me a technical question and I’ll vomit entire manuals at you
Hey do you dissociate a lot? My dissociation ruins my memory in a way very similar to yours. This questionnaire can kind of give you a guideline on how much dissociation you may have
http://traumadissociation.com/desLongish term cannabis dependency chiming in - not great.
Yeah me too. I don’t know how much of my memory issues are my fault or the ganja’s.
The best way to test this is to take a break. The first thing I notice, after about 2 weeks (YMMV), is my memory seems to improve dramatically. That and my perception of time seems to change - in general, things move slower/more sensory information fills the same amount of time - which I think is related to memory.
Now, the question becomes: Is that purely because I stopped smoking weed, or because I’m having a comparatively novel experience of my day to day activities - where the salience of things in your environment increases, which means it’s easier to form and recall a memory of them? Or is it just that I’m eating better, getting more exercise, etc. as means to distract from wanting to smoke in the early break stages?
No idea. All I know is it’s pretty sweet until (for me, at max so far) six months out when smoking seems like a great idea again.
Mostly spatial. I can often find a passage in a book by where it was located on the page (I hate audiobooks and ebooks for this reason). I can’t remember a lot of my experiences later, unless someone can tell me where I was or what I might have been looking at. I’ll probably remember exactly where everyone was standing, but not what any of us said. Sometimes I wonder if I lost my eyesight if I would still be able to make memories at all.
I have repeatedly described my memory as ‘an etch a sketch held by a Parkinson’s patient’.
