Memory

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One of the reasons I've spent so long thinking there was no way I could be on the spectrum was because I had always heard that ND people had really good memories. Since I started lurking around on WP I've found that there is a huge amount of diversity between individuals, so I've become really curious to see if anyone has an experience of memory similar to mine.

I've found a lot of things about day to day life overwhelming for my whole life, and starting when I was very small, I developed the habit of disassociating (or repressing maybe? I don't know which term would be more appropriate) when I'm in a stressful situation. I usually function alright in the moment, I have procedures in place for social interactions, but after I've gotten some time to myself I'll likely remember very little of what actually happened.

As a result, I don't have very many clear memories of most of my life. I have some vague biographical memories and I could put together a general timeline of my life, but I don't really feel connected to the few memories I have. Unfortunately some of my clearer memories are the more traumatic ones, because apparently my defense mechanism fails me past a certain threshold. I wonder sometimes if my brain has just gotten too good at forgetting and now I can't hold onto things even if I wanted to. The only things I do remember are things related to special interests, and things in books, tv shows, or films that I've really liked. I have huge swaths of my life where I remember books I've read more than any people I may have met during the same period. Has anything like this happened to anyone else?

Yes I found this one of the stereotypic things that I don't identify with. I have wider Executive Function issues so I suspect it may just be part of that. I will absorb useless facts though.

Traumatic memory is most definitely a strong point, in fact pretty much anything can remind me of a traumatic experience that I will relive in that moment. It is a particularly effective form of torture. I have no idea if this is an autistic thing or just another psychological issue?

Although I was screened for ADHD I wasn't diagnosed with it along with the AS diagnosis; the screening wasn't very thorough though and I think biased to the hyperactive stereotype. I suspect I have co-morbid ADD as I identify with the issues strongly.

As for PTSD i'm not sure, it isn't one event but any minor thing I've ever felt bad about: a negative comment, a mistake, an awkward sexual experience etc. They burn into my memory with great clarity, I think it's the strong emotional connection. I wish I could remember everything like that.

I'm similar in some ways -
I have been tested and under control conditions (so, I was calm, the information was purely factual dry recall, I was not expected to multitask while doing the test as I was simply sitting in an office with the assessor without other distractions) I have near perfect memory recall. She said this was unusual even among autistics. Usually only savants have eidetic memories, and I'm definitely no savant. This proves that the blanks are not a cognitive or memory problem in itself.
But I have very few memories from my life. Other people have a history - I just don't remember. There are bits and pieces, but nowhere near the memories that others have. People tell me this was because of "trauma" but I am always extremely skeptical of those terms being so easily applied nowdays.
Another thing with memory - I have this amnesiac circular repetition around obsessive behaviour. I can have the same handful of thoughts, over and and over, and not remember that I have just thought this exact same process, sometimes just the day before. That gets scary. It's like groundhog day, and if I don't keep a check on it, I could be stuck in that circular wheel like a hamster, just going over and over the same thoughts without realizing I've thought it all before.
Plus, many autistic people have trouble with working memory when other input is there and you are getting overloaded with too many things going on. I found this on a job trial in fast food. The procedures were simple, and if asked, I could have recounted the sequence flawlessly. But actually doing it, there was heat, light, noise, people too close to me, many things going on at once, social interaction, physical movement, the requirement to speak, etc.
In that situation, I can hardly remember my own name.

I believe I've had many similar experiences to you and I think it has a lot to do with dis-association and repression to protect your mind from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But on the whole I believe that ASDs have a great deal better memories than NTs especially those of us who are high functioning.

I honestly believe that ASDs have great memories but sometimes have difficulty recalling traumatic events because of typical social difficulties and inexperience related to Autism so it has nothing to do with memory capacity but the willingness to remember bad things in our life.

Now there are NTs who do have good memories and there are always exceptions to the rule but on the whole most Autistics have better memories than NTs I believe. This can be a double-edged sword, believe me.

For myself there are many events in my life that I would like to forget but that has to do with me having a highly accurate and autobiographical memory. An excellent memory is not all that it's cracked up to be. Sometimes I have been able to employ disassociation and repression to forget painful things but this doesn't always work. Sadly.

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*** High Functioning Autism - Asperger's Syndrome ***

ADHD, OCD, and PTSD.

Keep calm and stim away.

Overall I have poor recall. Although I can remember obscure details of things.

I questioned one of my teachers who has been teaching autistic students for over 20 years, and he said in his experience most had average to somewhat above average recall. Most were good at memorizing trivia. While most have been good students the majority haven't been superior students.

My memory is terrible. I genuinely struggle to remember things that happened the day previous.

It's something that has at times made me doubt my AS diagnosis, good to hear others don't have this cliched amazing memory thing too.

Those of us affected with Asperger's Syndrome have memories that can be quite extensive indeed. To quote the great Tony Attwood, who has more than 40 years experience dealing with Autism, in his book "The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome,":

"The child's encyclopedic knowledge can become quite remarkable and he or she is perceived as a 'little professor' eager to read about the interest, ask adults questions related to the interest and instruct peers about the interest in a manner more resembling a teacher that a peer."

It is a well-known fact that Savants have even greater memories than Aspies. Unfortunately, Non-verbal Autistics lack the verbal skills necessary to express themselves to display their memory capacities so we'll never know for sure for that group. Perhaps with writing they could, but high aggression factors usually interfere with any display of memory capacity they might possibly have.

Two groups out of three for Autistics who have high memory capacity would seem to tip the scales in favour of saying that on the whole, Autistics do have greater memory capacities than Neuro-Typicals (NTs).

I would say it's safe to say that based on empirical evidence. Any singular person saying they have low memory capacity are most likely just anomalies in the aforementioned groups.

In intelligent discussion, it's best to look on the whole than the anomalous one for broad-based reasoning.

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*** High Functioning Autism - Asperger's Syndrome ***

ADHD, OCD, and PTSD.

Keep calm and stim away.

I think that formal studies of memory don't tell the whole story, though. They are usually testing your memory of something that you have explicitly been told to remember, and rarely test autobiographical memory, as it would involve a lot of research into every test subject's background. There is another aspect to memory which I think is often not well recognised - what our minds decide to encode as memories in the first place. If the significance of a piece of information is not recognised, or inattention means that we miss it, then a memory may not be encoded to begin with - so that there is nothing to recall, even if our recall is generally good. I have thought for a while that this aspect might explain how I am so capable of remembering the tiniest details of special interests, yet have an incredibly poor autobiographical memory.

I am quite severely alexithymic, so at the time that an event happens, I often have no idea how it makes me feel. I may make sense of the emotions later, but crucially, not while the event is fresh in my mind. Without the emotional response being present, how would my mind be able to assess the significance of the event, and therefore determine whether or not it was worth committing to memory? Supporting this is the fact that recalling events that I do remember rarely brings up any emotion, the memories are very factual, as if I might just have read about them rather them having happened to me personally.

I have really good memory. I can recall events that happened years ago, and can also remember dates that have been stored in my head for a long period of time.

-LegoMaster2149 (Written on November 29, 2017)

Thank you all for so many informative answers! These forums end up being so educational, I related the most to the experiences described by Trogluddite and C2V, so I fell down a rabbit hole of reading alexithymia articles and I learned a lot. It's nice to know that there are some people who struggle with the same memory issues (disregarding interesting bits of trivia) as I do, even if we are anomalous among the larger group.

My memory is very good but it requires triggers to recall. When one shows up the memories come back to me as vividly as photos or movies.

There are also things I remember better or worse.
I tend to scan my environment all the time therefore I am very good at recalling things, places and events - I am always paying attention to what I see and it just sinks in. I am much worse with what other people are doing or saying - I focus more on things than humans. I also seem to have prosopagnosia but it could be because I just don't find human faces interesting enough to remember.

There is also the theory that you actually remember absolutely everything that has ever happened to you, you just cannot ordinarily access those memories. Not sure how that fits in. At times I think an eidetic memory would be awesome - but at other times, I'm glad that so much of my history has blacked out.

I have a lot of early memories. I have really clear memories of the decals on the cot I slept in. Mum got rid it when I was 2 because I kept climbing out and she was convinced I would break my neck if I fell. I remember the sound of the rain falling on the plastic rain cover of my pram. I remember the pattern on the lino in the kitchen of the house we were living in. I was sitting on the kitchen floor in a nappy and nothing else because it was really, really hot and I would have been about a year old. The memory is really clear because something black was coming across the lino and I had no idea what it was. It bit me and I screamed. It was a spider and I became extremely sick from the bite. Mum said it happened shortly before my first birthday. I also remember the kitchen window falling out when the wind slammed the kitchen door shut. I would have been about 2 at the time.
I have lots of memories I can date fairly accurately because of where we were living at the time.