Personally, I have terrible autobiographical memory. I have no concept of the sequence of events as I recall them. For example, I know my father flew in to meet my fiance at the time, but I'm not sure what season it was, and for that matter I'm not even sure what year it was. I have to be constantly reminded by my wife about my important life events. I never thought I had a poor "memory" until my wife started to bring it up.
Curiously, this (self perceived) ailment has not hindered my ability to do well in academia and work. Once I learn a fact, I'll remember it forever - random details from senior chemistry class are still fresh in my mind. I believe it has something to do with my inability to record the sequence of memories, rather than my ability to recall them.
Edit: Hopefully SDAM gets further investigation. If people are wondering what I've learned to do to cope with this deficiency, I've got some recommendations
- Learn to build habits - it's difficult to remember promises that you make to yourself and to others; but habits will stick forever.
- Keep a calendar - for everything.
- Take physical pictures of excursions and life events, and date them
> Take physical pictures of excursions and life events, and date them
I have the same awful autobiographical memory. I've been sorting a collection of photos from the past few years with ExifTool [0]. It's been eye-opening to be able to click through folders sorted by year and month to see what I was doing.
I'm hoping to combine this with some notes into a neat visual timeline tool called Life [1].
From some of the comments here, it seems like it could be correlated with aphantasia. I wonder if it might be also correlated with alexithymia: https://www.alexithymia.us/
I think it's great that we're finally discovering how people's minds are measurably different internally, even when we've all learned to present similarly, and when we all expect each other to have the same inner experience.
I was curious about this, too. I found several studies suggesting that the two disorders are often comorbid, but distinct disorders.
A significant correlation was found between measures on the Observer Alexithymia Scale (OAS; subscales are Distant, Uninsightful, Somatizing, Humorless, and Rigid) and schizoid personality disorder. The correlation wasn’t incredible, however - correlation is described as ‘moderate’, and is mostly prominent under the Distant subscale. Alexithymia and schizoid personality disorder have similar features, but unique variance, so while may features of the two overlap, it would be inaccurate to say that they are one and the same. For the sake of comparison, however, the correlation between alexithymia and avoidant personality disorder was shown to also be significant to a similar degree. Alexithymia, rather than being a syndrome of its own, is described more as a trait that can be found within ‘normal’ ranges of personality, so it’s unsurprising that it would have a strong connection with schizoid personality disorder, major depression, and other disorders while also remaining prominent in non-clinical samples.
Edit: and for what it's worth, I have a family member who probably has alexithymia, but not schizoid. He is a bit on the introverted side, but can be warm, funny, and engaged in one-on-one conversation (so probably not schizoid). However, when he tries to describe his own emotions beyond really basic stuff (angry, sad, happy, etc.), it's like watching a colorblind person try to describe a flower. He clearly has some real difficulties verbally elaborating on his emotional states, even though those states seem clearly present.
It took me until my mid 20s to realize something was wrong with me. I have a few impressions here and there from my past but can only roughly order any of it and mostly it's just gone, by a day or two later.
Probably why my most dreaded assignment every single year in elementary school was "write about what you did over the break" or "write about a fun time that [something from your past]". I'd struggle with those for way longer than was intended. Not kidding, hardest schoolwork I had K-5. Occasionally things like that would still come up in later grades but by then I'd figured out I could just make up most of it and no-one would care, which solved the problem.
I remember the general phenomenon. I couldn't tell you about any one of them in particular. That's about how my memory works.
"Oh that was totally a thing, yeah, I feel this way about it."
"Oh neat, can you tell me about a time that happened?"
"Um. No, not a single detail nor do I have any certainty when or how many times it may have happened. More than one I think? A half dozen? Over... years? Starting... youngish?"
Trying to conjure up something relevant I get an incredibly impressionistic snapshot of I think some desks. Row? Pod? Dunno. It's... sunny? That's 100% of what I've got. No people or other objects are present. Just a splatter of colors that may be some desks in some configuration.
The only memories I used to have in any detail were ones where I'd done something bad (I had a perhaps too-well tuned sense of "bad" for a kid, mind, though fortunately that also meant I didn't do bad things that much) and that's only because I'd spend like an hour cataloguing and re-living and ruminating over all of them every. Single. Night. Those are almost entirely gone now too, as I managed to break myself of that years ago.
It's really sad now that I have kids. Mostly I just try not to think about how I'm kinda sorta more dead than most people, in a sense, even as I live. If not for the fact that being clever is so valuable to my family (as in it pays the bills) I'd trade a bit of that for a somewhat better autobiographical memory without hesitation.
I tried to hold on to a couple vivid memories of my kids when they were very young by re-playing them a few times a day, but I slipped too many times and those are mostly gone too. Kept one semi-intact for a year or two, which is really good for me. There's a bit left, but not much. I don't even remember what the others were at all.
Emotional spikes tend to rise above the noise floor of your day to day, so it makes sense that a mundane summer was forgotten, but the anguish of trying to remember stays fresh.
Actress Marilu Henner has an exceptionally good memory she can recall every second of her life in perfect detail she has hyperthymesia. She was on the TV show Taxi in the 1970s.
I also work in academia and while I hard time recalling what I eat yesterday memory is good for recalling papers I read.
By taking notes (not as often as I would like to) I’m always surprised years later to find that events totally disconnected in my mind happened the same day, or in quick succession.
I have the same memory problem and keeping a journal has changed my life. I can look back and see what I was doing on a particular day and get a clearer picture of my mental landscape at the time. This helps me to stop repeating negative patterns and also is sometimes just nice for nostalgia. I also try to write a summary at the end of each month so I can see where my life has been going over the last year. This helps connect the details to the big picture.
Also academia - I had an epiphany on the way in to work the other day, hurried into my office to write it down, only to discover I'd already put it on my whiteboard 2 months earlier.
Curiously, this (self perceived) ailment has not hindered my ability to do well in academia and work. Once I learn a fact, I'll remember it forever - random details from senior chemistry class are still fresh in my mind. I believe it has something to do with my inability to record the sequence of memories, rather than my ability to recall them.
Edit: Hopefully SDAM gets further investigation. If people are wondering what I've learned to do to cope with this deficiency, I've got some recommendations
- Learn to build habits - it's difficult to remember promises that you make to yourself and to others; but habits will stick forever.
- Keep a calendar - for everything.
- Take physical pictures of excursions and life events, and date them