Over a lifetime, we’re present for a lot of moments. We’re there for them, we experience them, and then later it turns out our memory kept…a summary.
If something fades from memory quickly, do you think it mattered at all, or just for a while?
© 2026 – SoulSequel
6 responses to “Why don’t we remember more of our lives?”
Sometimes, I can’t turn my thoughts off and go to sleep. I do memories of where the bathroom was in every house I lived in. What did the bathroom look like? I review place after place. If that doesn’t make me go to sleep, I visualize each kitchen. Sleep comes. I think that things that I have forgotten about did not matter. I remember times with my kids, like how frustrating it was to have a son that would not stop wetting the bed. Then, my older son and I were remembering things from his childhood. He was an adult and he told me how he used to wake up every morning to go to the bathroom. Then he would get a glass of water and pour it into his brother’s bed. That was why the younger son always wet the bed. Whenever I get together with my son, we go over memories. Immortal Pirate and I go through memories that come to mind when we are having breakfast each morning. It is an exercise for the brain.
I think in some cases we dissociate and that’s why we don’t remember. Have you heard of EMDR? Sometimes thinking about something while doing eye movements or some other kind of bilateral movement can help us remember.
There’s also negativity bias where our brains tend to remember the worst events and hang on to them.
I feel like the amount and vibrancy of our memories can vary from person to person depending on brain architecture and past trauma.
I feel like I remember more than anyone else from my family or origin. I have 5 brothers and sisters and sometimes I’ll recall a memory and they will say they have no memory or it.
My adult daughter tells me about things that happen when I was married to her father that I don’t remember at all because I think I was dissociated.
@Scarlett2 Yes I’ve heard of EMDR. Eyes moving around under closed eyelids freak me out. I don’t know why but I don’t like it.
I think I dissociate. It’s like my brain makes space for whatever needs emotional attention in the present. I’ve probably done the same with difficult experiences and memories from the past. Those experiences are still there, but they don’t carry the same emotional significance for me.
I think it’s fascinating when I speak to people who have strong memories. I have an aunt who will recall outfits with eerie accuracy. She’ll remember what dress I wore on my 6th birthday or a bracelet I wore to brunch 2 years ago. It’s cuckoo bananas. I can barely remember what I wore 2 days ago without some serious thought.
But then again…now that I think about it, since I don’t remember the things my aunt does, who’s to say her memories are actually accurate? Memory is a funny thing.
I recently recalled a long-suppressed memory from my childhood about a birthday cake. When I was in the 3rd grade, I took a birthday cake that my mother had made for me to school to share with my classmates. The teacher snatched up the cake and destroyed it and tossed it into the trash, saying, we don’t do birthday parties in school. That teacher was mean spirited and cruel. That was a traumatic event that I never wanted to remember but did.
In the past 2 years I’ve quit my job and moved to a horse farm in another state. It took about 2 years to fully adjust to not working at my old job. Through this I noticed that I can’t recall events in my life at the ready. I have to have a “spark” to get those neurons firing.
Two nights ago I was sitting with my mom and brother. He brought up his old dog (from maybe 10 years ago??) Again my memory is fuzzy. He mentioned how bad she was before she was euthanized.
…I couldn’t recall any of this other than she was euthanized. I didn’t mention it at the time but brought it up to my mom the next day asking her what happened to his dog because I couldn’t remember. I was almost in tears because that memory is just not there.
She explained how it all unfolded (the dog was old and had incontinence issues) but she ended up going into organ failure. By bad off he meant sickly, I originally thought he meant behavioral.
Anyway, even though she gave me details I cannot recall it at all. Its scary.
So I started reading about memory loss (there’s a 24 year old who died from early onset dementia) scared me more. I also read that large amounts of ongoing stress decreases the hippocampus (what holds memories).
Rewind, the past 20 years I worked at a highly stressful job and I know because of the stress and exhaustion I dissociated a lot of those 20 years. I can recall a lot of the highlights of working and I can recall the really big disasters but the usual daily things are a blur (even though they are still there). My personal life, however, feels …gone
I remember a lot of things. Whether or not I remember them 100% accurately is debatable. Maybe some of it is important. Maybe some if it was just amusing enough to leave a mark. Most of it seems inconsequential, but I figure that if it leaves an impression, it’s easier to remember. Its kinda like remembering dreams, yea? Maybe I’m just really impressionable?