Does your brain work like this?

[onetwofive]

Would be really interested if others have similar experiences!

I've been thinking a lot recently about how strange (my) memory is, how I can be thinking about, say, needing to buy milk and then BOOM I'll be remembering, say, riding a llama in Peru. The memory is SO totally unrelated to the thing that I was doing or thinking about when the memory struck me.

I always try to think backwards to work out the association but no, I definitely wasn't riding the llama to the shop to buy milk, nor did I milk the llama, etc etc. I also know some memories are triggered by smells but obviously those times you're probably able to pick up on it if you're thinking about it.

I feel like it happens allllll the time, many times a day, I asked DH if he had a similar thing and he said what the hell are you talking about no.

I know it's a bit of a weird one, but would just love to know if there are other weirdos out there

P.s. sometimes it will be a memory I've often thought about, other times it can be a memory I haven't remembered since it happened, say 20 years ago. Is this common?!

Just me then

I do seem to process information differently to many people, and certainly to my very logical DH!

He says my superpower is remembering trivia but it is more than that. I make links between bits of information, or ask questions that others don't. I get a "wow where did that come from?" And i can see what I say hasn't occurred to most people.
I have really creative ideas but am not arty or craft creative iyswim.
For many years, mainly because I worked with managers and colleagues who were very organised, focussed and followed systems, I was led to believe my way of thinking was wrong and needed to change. A new manager saw my creativity and ways of thinking as a plus. Teamed me with a very good administrator and often said, I don't pay you to shuffle paper. I pay you for your thoughts. Give yourself thinking time. The team benefits.
It was an eye-opener, suddenly I saw the way I processed things as a strength.
As a researcher it was great, when I taught not so much as my students didn't always see where I was going with my thoughts etc.
So, if say 20 years ago you told me you had a 3 legged cat, when I met you again, I'd remember and ask you about the cat!

I often have the 'how on earth did I end up thinking about this' experience but I can always work backwards to find the association - it's sometimes very convoluted and the association wouldn't necessarily be obvious to others though!

Thanks for the responses guys!

That's interesting EastMids, just goes to show perspective is everything! Glad you were able to play to your strengths eventually. Are you a GP now then? Does that creativity translate well into that role? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick from your username?

Argh, can't work out how to edit my post on here - screaming I was going to say, sounds similar but not quite the same as so often I really couldn't tell you how I got there if you paid me £1m!

I have the same thing eastmids! I used to dislike it because I would get frustrated that people hasn't made the connections and I used to think why haven't they? I would get frustrated with partners and think they just weren't listening properly. Now I see I was the common denominator and I just process things a bit differently

My mind never thinks about one thing at once. I get loads of random imagery thrown in. Just as I was reading your OP, I was also having imagery of an African Savannah and zebras. For no reason. Often there is no connection, I just can't seem to focus on one thing without myind drifting.

I don't know but my first thought on reading your post was ' Can you actually ride llamas then?' so I don't know what that says about me.

I do know that if there are two ways of interpreting something someone says I will pick up on the least likely. I was an Early Years teacher, though, and was very good at working out children's thought processes and how they reached their (mistaken) conclusions when some other people were completely flummoxed by them.

Sadly not a GP. GP in my user name relates to my guinea pigs (so maybe not that creative 😃😃)

I'm a bit like that with earworms; I'll find myself singing something utterly random that I haven't heard in decades and will be totally at a loss as to what caused it to surface.

I tell DP that I’ve a a butterfly brain I remember all types of odd trivia, things unrelated to what I’m thinking or talking about.

Are you left handed @Prequelle?
I know alot of people think it is nonsense but in all the tests I come out totally right brain dominant. Once I'd done one of these tests alongside my immediate manager (who scored totally the opposite) I realised why she was negative towards my ideas - my way if thinking was so alien to her, it frightened her.
Just recently I was invited to participate in a project. At the introduction stage the project manager said you've all been selected because we are all introverts, and there is nothing wrong with a quiet, methodical way of working.
I withdrew from the project as I am very loud, extrovert and in no way methodical. Reckon she'd got me mixed up with DH.

Different ways if working and thinking really fascinate me, a good manager is bold, brave and confident enough to have a mix in their team. Sadly many appoint people 'just like themselves'.

Interesting! It seems like there are lots of variations on a similar theme - would we call it lateral thinking? Sounds like quite a few of us have funny ways of thinking, but none quite like me (where's the princess emoji?!) it's an interesting subject, never heard it discussed before!

Yes I can do that, OP.
Or something bubbles up that I do need to know, is useful to remember just then, but I have no idea how my brain fetched it just then or how I can possibly remember that (might be something that happened 20 yrs earlier).

Other times I forget the most basic things I've known for ages or someone told me 3 minutes earlier.

Yes I get this! I was telling dp about this recently and asking if he gets the same thing. He doesn’t.

The other day, mid conversation about work schedules over the next couple of weeks my brain flashed back to a snapshot of a memory of boarding a tour boat on holiday in Florida age 9. Something I don’t remember ever thinking about since the actual holiday! Glad I’m not the only one

I know that I have really strange thought processes and I can't usually explain why. The only one I can vaguely explain was a quiz answer.
The question was what is the name of the ruined church in the little hamlet we lived in, in fact our house was next door to the graveyard of the church. I was never aware of it's name. So my mind sorted floated off and the title of a book I read maybe 25 years earlier popped into my head. I remembered the name of the author so I said it's St authors name I was right.
Floated off and a link will pop up in my mind is the only way I can explain.

Does anyone have the thing that when you are reading a book, you have images of one or two places in your mind, like a particular room of a house you used to live in, or a friend's house, or a particular garden? Hard to explain - sometimes it's linked to a description of somewhere in the book but usually it's already in my head almost as I start reading. Anyone?!

No BuggaLugga
Mine is not visual. I don't see pictures in my mind. I don't see anything in my mind, although I can visualise how a room will look when its furnished. I'm converting a barn atm and I have a certainty about what the space needs and I know absolutely what will fit and look right. For me it's more of a feeling than an image in my head.

Do people see pictures in their minds?

No eastmids.I'm right! I'm also an extrovert. Not methodical either, things just come together quickly

Do people think in pictures? I know I don't. I don't hear a voice in my head either. And when I read I don't read it out in my head I just see the sentence and understand it, I think that's how I can speed read. This might be normal but DP and my friends say they don't do it

Yes, BuggaLugga, I have that. It's usually somewhere quite random like the playground at my infant school, or a bit of my grandma's garden. As you say, it's not always prompted by any description in the book, but can be from a sort of feeling I get from the book. Sometimes I chase this feeling by reading certain things when I need comfort. (My brain often "casts" the film of the book as well, unprovoked.)

I was told at university that my writing (English Literature essays) was "elliptical" - that tutors couldn't always see how I'd got to the point I was making. And I often jump ahead in conversations because I've realised what someone will say five minutes ago. Probably a bit enraging.

And yes, I remember an awful amount of trivia. Often I make a connection and know things I didn't know I knew because I've randomly remembered the typeface I saw a piece of information written in.

Funny beast, the brain.

Ah! Timely thread. Recently I’ve been more aware of my brain doing this - usually place-related memories as Bugga describes, totally unrelated to my task but usually when I’m in a state of ‘flow’ I.e. absorbed in a deep concentration task doing something and then I become aware that my brain is also sort of simultaneously thinking of being elsewhere, in a place/time from my memory, it’s odd. Once I concentrate on the thought of the place it goes away.

I also catch myself thinking/doing this sometimes in other ‘flow’ tasks like reading aloud a book I’m not terrifically interested in to my DC- my brain is processing and I’m reading ahead and all the words are coming out appropriately and with expression, so I’m confident they can’t tell by listening but I’ll often snap back to and think shit - what did I miss even though I’m the one “telling the story”.

Brains are weird.

Yes I definitely do this. Sometimes it's happening multiple times a day and sometimes not much at all.

Things just pop into my head- eg. yesterday I was going about my day (not doing anything out of the ordinary) and suddenly get a really vivid memory from when I was about 8 of us having a family picnic to break up a long drive on holiday in France. This will usually be a memory that I wouldn't be able to consciously search my brain for, but it's obviously hidden in there somewhere.

I theorise that something- maybe the words someone uses, maybe the feel of a wooden bench or the particular way I'm making my sandwich- trigger a similar memory from long ago? I actually quite like it though.

I will often remember the answer to something several days later. So for example, DH may ask me the name of someone that we used to know. I won’t be able to remember at the time and then I will forget all about it. Then, several days later, it will just pop into my brain out of nowhere - usually in the middle of the night when I get up to use the toilet!
It’s like my subconscious brain is working on trying to remember the answer without me realising it, and all of a sudden it just comes to me.
I think I must be really slow at processing things!

I don't think in pictures. I am hopeless at the relaxation techniques and tapes where you are told to imagine walking through a garden or laying on a beach. So I become anything but relaxed.
Quiet background music that allows my thoughts to just gather together is far better.