This may not be the best place to post this but discord is my only other social so I’m going with here. Also this post is long and a little rambly and may not be well articulated.
So I due to a combonation of different things, I have a really bad memory. Like god awful memory to the point it genuinely inhibits my ability to function, communicate and form relationships and could proably be considered a disability entirely on its own.
I also have a bad sense of time but I’m unsure if this is it’s own thing or something that happens as a consequence of my bad memory. Mostly bc I don’t know what the norm is for memory and sense of time so I’m unable to work out how and why I differ from it.
From what I can gather other people seem to be able to “feel” how long ago something happened?? Like this sense doesn’t seem to be perfect for most people, like most people don’t have a perfect memory.
For me, memories fit into 2 categeories: things that happened recently and things that didn’t happen recently. I don’t work this out based on any sort of “feeling” of how long ago it happened but based on the content of the memory itself.
Like if a memory is about me going to school I know that didn’t happen recently bc I haven’t been to school in years but that memory wouldnt “feel” any different to a memory that happened last week or that happened earlier today or when I was a toddler.
Like if you give me 2 memories one that happened last week and one that happened 2 months ago, I would not be able to tell you which one happened first. Like I would have no fucking clue. If I remember a memory more vividly than usual I might be able to draw on context clues but that’s unlikely as I rarely remember anything vividly.
The assumption I have been working off is that other people have better memories so they are able to remember these context clues and that’s why other people seem to have a better sense of when memories happen in relation to each other but, while I still think that is part of it, some things people say seem to hint that there is another factor at play.
Like people will talk about a memory from last year and say it “feels like it happened yesterday”. I’ve always thought of that as just an expression and a strange one at that bc something can’t “feel like it happened yesterday”. Like my memories of yesterday don’t “feel” like they happened a certain amount of time ago.
Like can most people just “feel” how long ago something happened? Is that not an expression? Do people actually “feel” time and not just work out when things happen? Like that is what my observations tell me is the case but I’m struggling grasp it as that sounds like magic to me.
If yes I think might be entirely missing my “sense of time” bc from what I can gather people with a “bad” sense of time can still “feel” when things happened, its just that the feeling is usuallly wrong. I can’t feel when things happened at all, I’ ve felt like a certain amount of time passed or that something happened a certain amount of time ago, I just work all that out from context clues when possible and consult other when not.
So questions:
- Can you “feel” when things happen?
- Is that feeling usually accurate to when the thing actually happened?
- Do you think it’s normal to “feel” when things happened? (by normal I mean do you think the majority of people feel it not whether its “okay” or “healthy” to feel it)
- Any theories on what I’m expriencing? (optional)
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- Yes. It’s like memories are pages written in a book and I can feel their relativity to whether one happened before or after another
- I suppose
- I’d say it’s typical yes
🐾1. We have a pretty photographic memory, Mei in particular can remember things from an insanely long time ago. 2. Generally yes, though details can be funny and have to be filled in by intuition and meditation. Our memories are very precious to us and form the foundation and basis of who we are. 3. Absolutely! It’s a beautiful thing to remember how you felt in a certain moment. I can still kind of smell and feel the water from the water park we went to years back for example. 4. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with you. People have different personalities, functions and brain chemistry and some are better at memory retention than others. I know people who can’t remember their childhood at all and then there’s us who do remember it like yesterday. If you don’t have a history of brain trauma, it shouldn’t be something to lose sleep over, and it’s perfectly valid to remember things and experience time in your own way. If you’re still bothered by this you could look into things like meditation, maybe cross check what you know with people who share memories with you. Hope this helped. Sorry if I misunderstood anything!
Hey, sorry to derail from the questions format, but I think we are experiencing similar things.
My memories feel like a scrabble bag. I also roughly determine the time they took place based on my appearance. Throughout the day I have very little sense of time passing. I don’t do well on timed tasks, as I can’t figure out how long something I do will take. Like you I wouldn’t be able to distinguish between a memory from last week and last month. I am glad we live in a dimension with one way time otherwise I wouldn’t even be able to recall if a memory happened in the past or future.
I think it is Dyschronia.
I’ve had experiences where I was able to sense time, in the moment, as being ‘long’, this has happened while I am doing a boring task, waiting, drunk, in sleep limbo, or sleep deprived. Sleep limbo is what I call when I’m in between the state of awake and sleeping.
I’ve also had experiences where reflecting back on something I’d just done, it’d feel like time has flown by in an instant, but I wasn’t in the moment able to experience it as short because I was distracted and engaged with whatever I was doing. Logically, being in that state and not really processing your surroundings would lead to feeling like missing time.
Also little side note of the ‘I remember it like yesterday’ saying. I think people say this because on average people remember their yesterdays vividly, and this phrase is used about memories that are remembered vividly.
