Tell Me Again I Cant Remember

Recently, a segment of the news program 60 Minutes profiled individuals (such equally extra Marilu Henner) who have HSAM, highly superior autobiographical memory. Proper noun a date in their lifetime, a person with HSAM can tell y'all what they were doing, where they were, and ofttimes very specific details such equally what they had to eat on that verbal engagement. Even if it was twenty or 30 years agone.  It's a fascinating ability.  But what I establish virtually interesting in the story was their descriptions of how their condition affected them emotionally and socially. Some of it felt very familiar.

 Information technology's something that caught my attention because, as I noted in a recent post, many of u.s. on the spectrum experience more prolific and detailed early memories than peers who are non on the spectrum. Similar the individuals interviewed with HSAM, these memories can exist as vivid as reliving the event. However, in my case, there appear to be specific differences.  I cannot say that my volume of recall is annihilation close to that of these individuals.  And, however detailed a retention might be, I am rarely ever able to connect it with a specific engagement.

I've idea a lot almost why that is, and I suspect it has to practice with how I process information. To recollect a slice of data, the person would need to be aware of it in the commencement identify.  Just, as I've written before, I tend to take troubles with time.  I think primarily visually and seem to have very little room in my mind for random bits of data, especially for things like dates and times that are a moving target, constantly in flux. So, unless I take a calendar in front end of me, or have reason to check it on my phone, it tends to slip away.

This petty memory departure causes me a number social challenges, not the least of which is with birthdays.  Most people don't think about it, but the social task we label every bit "remembering someone'south birthday" isn't only remembering the date of that person's birthday. Y'all have to too realize that today's date coincides with that appointment. I tin memorize facts similar nativity dates easily, but the second part causes me issues. Information technology too means I take trouble with ages, including my own.  What kind of a person tin can't even tell yous her own age? Typically, I just accept the fifth.

For many, what is described in HSAM is unbelievable.  It'southward then different from how nigh recollect.  Just, for those who accept that such differences be, it seems to brand more than sense to people than my particular profile of retention. People tend to see retention as monolithic. A good memory is a adept memory.  The reality is that there is more diverseness in how memory works than many realize. Unfortunately, the biases people have about retention and how it functions can have social impacts. Peoples' abilities tin be misjudged. Or they may be mistrusted altogether.

Picture by David Shankbone via Wikimedia Commons

A few years agone, I read an article from New York Magazine which profiled the memoirist Augusten Burroughs. I was struck past the tone of mistrust throughout the article, and whenever the author noted that his "internal polygraph" was "pinging," the mechanism of retentiveness was the trigger.

He described a conversation with Mr. Burroughs in his former neighborhood:

"'All these little details come back when I'm here,' he says. 'Information technology'south like there'south a whole other time layered over this one. And the people that lived here even so live here for me, still walk the streets.' He says he remembers, for instance, watching a painter—'navy shirt, white pants, dark-brown belt, black boots'—painting a door across from his old flat. 'White drop material spread out over the stone steps,' he says. 'The fashion the light hit him.'

My internal polygraph begins to twitch here, subtly, because what sort of freakishly swollen cortex retains, for eighteen years, the color of a random workman'due south chugalug? This is exactly the kind of improbably authenticating detail Burroughs has been defendant of inventing in his books—not a big bargain on its ain, peradventure, only patch enough of them together and your life story is suddenly more imagined than remembered. 'The style the light hit him'? Seriously?...Who tin remember the color of a stranger's chugalug, and the precise bending of the back corner of an old cinema's entrance hall, but not the number of his ain apartment, or any of the movies he saw? What kind of memory is that?"

He may question it, simply my own memory is a slap-up deal like that.  Light and colour are exactly the type of affair that would grab my attention and stick.  I of my strongest early memories is watching the glint off a sparkly sticker as I twisted and turned it in the dominicus, standing at the border of a fairground with the off-white going full swing some anxiety away.  What kind of child remembers lite flickering off a sticker over the rest of attractions your boilerplate off-white has to offering?  What about the rides? The sweets?  The games?  What kind of retentivity remembers the lite glinting off the sticker, merely not the address of the last house the person  lived in? Mine.

Interestingly plenty, Augusten Burroughs himself has drawn parallels betwixt his own retentivity and the memories of those on the spectrum.  His blood brother, John Elder Robison,  is also on the autism spectrum.  In an interview for Large Think, he has stated that they've wondered "...if something in my brain is similar to what is in his brain and that's why in fact nosotros have this peculiar retention where our childhood is very accessible to usa."

In the same interview, he besides tackles some other question that I've been thinking about for some time.  Is there a psychological toll to having such vivid memories?  What happens when you can't forget the nigh traumatic experiences in your life? When they're every bit brilliant for you today as they were 30 years ago?  When asked in the interview if vivid memory was "an affliction," he answered:

"It'south a double-edged sword in the sense that it's very vivid, so when I was writing '[A] Wolf at the Table,' for case, my fingers were cold. Information technology was like I was writing outside in the winter and my heart would be pounding and I would be scared. It was very real. Those memories come back and they come back in full force and it tin be overwhelming so that'south one edge of the sword; that's the side of the sword that cuts."

threescore Minutes interviewer Lesley Stahl asked a similar question of the youngest of her interviewees, who is x. She asked, "What is the hardest function of having this kind of memory?" His response? "The worst affair is that I can remember every bad affair that happened to me…. I recall this from 'The King of beasts King.' 'Go out the by behind.' But I tin't do that." How does this affect him interpersonally?

 His parents describe their heartache when, on a summertime vacation trip, he woke up and told them, "'This was a really bad 24-hour interval concluding year because you yelled at me.'"  How does it affect personal relationships when you remember bad things others accept done that they no longer call up themselves? Or if they just remember it as Lesley Stahl indicated she does, equally a "two-dimensional retention" without much emotion attached to it?

When Ms. Stahl asked the adult interviewees whether they hold grudges, one of them, Neb Brown, answered, "I do, and I shouldn't. The frustrating function is when y'all know that you lot know that you know that somebody did something, and they won't admit it." When asked if it was difficult to "let people off the hook," he replied, "It is, considering we're all familiar with the phrase 'to forgive or forget' and we can….one out of two isn't bad."

And so, while it seems this difference in abilities clearly has some benefits, merely there tin can be a night side.  A Dec segment on NPR's "All Things Considered" discussed this dark side. In fact, it noted that HSAM came to light when the original bailiwick contacted researchers considering, "The emotions evoked by remembering bad things troubled her." A claiming noted in the NPR piece is how their course of memory is misinterpreted by their loved ones.  Bill Dark-brown said:

"'Merely because I remember something that you did wrong doesn't mean that I nonetheless hold it against you,' he says. 'But information technology's taken me a long while to realize that folks without my ability probably don't understand that stardom. Because after all, if yous're bringing it upwards, the logic from the other side would be: You lot must still hold information technology confronting me.'

This is not, in fact, the example, he says. 'It has more to do with wanting you to be honest in your dealings.'

What he somewhen realized was that most of the people he talks to are existence as honest equally they know how to exist. 'They just don't necessarily recall.'"

This is something I've likewise experienced.  At that place are times that I've wished that I could tape key conversations so that I could play back an interaction that a person denies occurred, or claims happened differently.  But, of course, most people frown on that.  It can become very disturbing, because you lot detect your own perceptions and memories challenged on an ongoing ground. Memories that are as bright and existent, every bit ane person said, every bit the memories virtually people have of traumatic events similar 9/eleven.

Practise you remember what y'all were doing on nine/11?  What if someone told you it happened differently, or that information technology didn't happen at all? How disorienting would that feel? It can feel very much similar gaslighting, particularly if the disagreement has to practice with something painful someone else did. You wonder if they're editing their own memories to suit their own ego, or if they really don't recall it, or only remember it inaccurately? Y'all too tin can't help but question your ain experience. Afterward all, no one'due south retention is infallible, not fifty-fifty people with HSAM.  Recent research has shown that they are just as likely equally anyone to have false memories.

How practise you bargain which such differences, when they ingather up?  When memory itself is at question, and each of you is convinced that your memories are the correct ones? If your memory is in fact more prolific to others, do acknowledge it? For myself, I've learned to prelude most of my stories and factual statements with the phrase, "Did I tell you about ___________?" even if I know that I take.  I tell them simply if they say no. This seems to keep people from feeling "lectured at," just it bothers me a scrap, because it feels quack.  Why should it be shameful to remember?

As we come up to larn more about retention, I hope that researchers will dig more deeply into the emotional and social impacts of differences in retentiveness.  Based on the accounts given in the 60 Minutes and NPR segments, information technology would very much help people with HSAM, and based on the similarities observed between how their memories piece of work and those of united states on the spectrum, it may help a great deal more than.

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Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/aspergers-diary/201405/when-you-can-t-remember-when-you-can-t-forget