Ask Lemmy

Mate, I look at it this way: if you've forgotten your memory, how would you know that you've lost it? You'ld just carry on.

There are people who exist with a syndrome where they have nearly perfect memory recall of their lived life and can remember nearly every moment of their lives very clearly.

Most of the people who live with it do not enjoy the experience.

Surprisingly, forgetting is a necessary and healthy thing, especially when it comes to things like traumatic experiences.

There's actually been several social scientists who claim that the permanent memory of the internet is extremely damaging to young people because they literally cannot escape every deeply embarrassing mistake they made in their youth. It follows them, haunts them, colors every aspect of their life, especially if the embarrassing moment causes bullying against the young person, leaving them constantly afraid of someone noticing them lest that person bully them for their past embarrassments. They advocate the idea that society and humans need to be able to forget to have healthy lives.

Not really. Just because you can't actively remember something doesn't mean it's lost. Just the pathways to that memory are not being stimulated at the time. There will be random times you remember something you thought you lost but the brain is resilient.

Having medical first hand experience with this: your long term memory is safe. Don't be scared.

alzheimer's on both sides of family so its real possibility for me. that's a better fate than being sane and stuck to a chair with nothing to do like my great grandpa. There are worst fates. Control what you can like treating your body right. Its all you can do.

Start journaling now.

Yeah, I remember vividly waking up one day at the end of my teenage years and realizing that I almost completely forgot my childhood, now I just see flashes when I try to remember it.

It's why I don't believe in biographies, no way you remember your entire childhood.

As someone with shitty memory: I forget a lot. Whole holidays, people, what I ate yesterday... I have always been that way, and so far I've been doing quite ok in life.

But while I forgot how it felt in a past, shitty job, I don't forget how I promised myself to never work for such a boss again. Or how 16-year old me decided to stay in school aftet trying out metalworking over a summer. I may forget how it was, but I rarely forget what conclusion I drew from it. And that is what defines me as a person, not that I remember the face of my condescending, stupid boss.

Also, while it sucks, my life is my present. My past might be entirely hallucinated, and I might be hit by a bus tomorrow. But now, here, I am alive.

Was in an abusive long term relationship. I remember as I was breaking out of it suddenly remembering things I was legitimately repressing. I hated that.

I will say though on the idea of the death of the current self, that is sort of inevitable and absolutely neccery for the future you to exist. Kind of like how us now are different people then when we are 5 years old, and that's a good thing, even if our existence at 5 was also a good thing.

If you are referring to Alzheimer's then yes. Few things I find more terrifying than forgetting who I am. You gotta keep your brain in shape. Reading books, doing puzzles, and learning languages help with that.

Well if you forget them, you wouldn't remember them to forget them.

Though seriously, I find interviews, photos, videos even of people telling stories helps. It's the same idea that documentaries use to tell stories.

The self is an illusion. If you want to be happy, forget.

I've found that you retain the important stuff, and unfortunately the embarrassing stuff.

Memory aids are a thing. So if a picture, song, smell, or object helps trigger a fond memory, then keep that thing around. Failing that, writing things down can help unlock the rest of a memory.

Music, and scent are the two main memory triggers though. If you can link a memory to one of those things then you're golden.

I'm not terrified, but I am a bit of a data hoarder and that includes my memories. So what I did was buy one of these things and now whenever I take my dog for a walk I record an audio log. I've got over ten years of them at this point. For most of that time it was just sitting stored in a folder as a bunch of audio files in subfolders by date, but in the past year or two thanks to the sudden advances in AI I've written up a Python script that transcribed them all and lets me search the transcripts. I'm expecting in another year or two I'll be able to feed all this into a local AI and be able to talk to it about this stuff.

So maybe start making logs like this, knowing that someday you'll be able to do some neat stuff with them.

Meh, you won't know what you forgot. And when you die you won't know how it's all gone. Best bet is to have kids - tell them your stories when they're young (and can't runaway). They'll remember for a bit and tell their kids. In a way your memories will last forever.

I have ADHD. I don't even remember how many things there are that I've forgotten, so I'm not worried about having forgotten them.

The amount of stuff I have forgotten over the years is huge. The only way to I've found to remember stuff for events is to have a few photos that you look back on. Like the 3/5/whatever years ago that you get on photo apps.

No, but I had a coworker once who very much was. She coped by taking lots of pictures/videos and making sure they were stored in a well-organized fashion. Maybe consider doing something similar? If you want to hang onto internal mindstates, write a journal/diary.

You, me, and everyone else are the amalgamations and culminations of our individual life experiences. You don’t have to remember the details for those details to have happened and influenced you at the time.

I understand your concerns after having my first concussion almost two years ago now and unvaccinated covid three years before that. Both affected my cognitive state and speed of thinking/remembering, and I’ve wondered/worried how much weaker my mind may be than it could have been. But ultimately what I tell myself is that I can’t change those things, they’re just another thing that led me to now. All I can do is the best with what I have and trust that it will be enough.

But that’s just living with the doom and gloom. I think you may be surprised at what you do remember but can’t recall unprompted. One time I lost the game (I lost the game, sorry) around a friend of a friend who paused for a moment then exclaimed that it had been 15 or 20 years since he last thought about the game. So for all that time one could think he had forgotten, but as soon as something triggered his memory, it was there. Based on that, I advise that you trust that if you have a relevant memory, it will surface at the time it is relevant. Some level of self-reflection is good, but don’t let the reinforcement of old brain connections in memory stand in the way of forming new ones.

I used to be worried about this.

Once when I was very young, I wondered if I could fix a moment in my memory and keep it for life - so I tried it.

Stupid result: I still remember that moment quite well, many decades later. It was a dumb boring moment. I'm sure I would have long forgotten, if I hadn't tried to keep it.

Now it is a precious memory of how I have always bent toward scientific method.

All that to say: memory works better and longer than I expected.

Disclaimer: My generic history suggests I will lose that memory and most others, if I live long enough. It is terrifying, but I've learned to live with that fear, and try to eat right and exercise. And I figure lots of things could take me out before that becomes a problem, so there's no need to borrow too much stress from that possible future, yet.

I read an article about how we don't remember events correctly and that's why I started writing a dairy. I've been writing almost every day now since 2016, sometimes just half a page, sometimes more.

Oh, that fear gets much worse when dealing with people with various forms of dementia.

I honestly hope that I die before I get really bad dementia.

You got it right; losing your memories is essentially death. However, all humans die, so it's an all roads lead to Rome kind of thing. You could get a concussion and forget everything, or you could get run over by a car and die. There's no reason to give memory loss special treatment over other terrible things that could also happen to you.

Amnesia is my #1 fear

Ever since my 2nd open heart surgery, I feel as though my memories from before then are kinda mushy and since then I don't know whether my memory formation would be considered normal, so yeah I am worried, too.

I'm in my mid-20s and wonder what's the issue with my brain. It's not such a big issue I need to be checked out, but I'm still curious. Not seeing whether my state health insurance would cover having my brain scanned and tested curious, but curious nonetheless.

I have foggy memories I would love to remember whether they're true or not, but I just don't know where to begin. I mean, I think I went on a road trip with my brother's friends family out of city, but I don't fully remember whether that actually happened or not. Just the feint potential memory of a slanted white basement ceiling with a while pillar holding it up, sunny day, and potentially walking on a TLC desperate road with my brother and his friend. I would ask the friends parents, but I'm not sure they'd remember and it would be kinda awkward to just ask out of the blue since I have zero contact with them.

Not really. Every day I refill on new stuff I can remember.