Significant events of which you have absolutely no memory.

[JemAppelleLafayette]

Has anybody else experienced this (barring brain injury etc)?

I’m in my mid thirties. Both my parents have recently described something that happened when I would have been 18.
Apparently I became very very sick with a strep infection, so unwell that hospital was seriously considered. Happily, I didn’t need to be hospitalised and recovered at home over the uni holidays. My dad mentioned it today and spoke of choking up at a concert because they were so worried about me before the infection was diagnosed. I work with lymphoma patients now so can well understand the terror of having a teenage daughter describing unusual lumps at her lymph sites.

I do not remember any of this!! I remember the concert and large portions of the year in question (first break up- sob!) but absolutely nothing of this incident.
Curious to hear if any body else has had a similar experience.

Yes I get this, for example when the fire happened at Notre Dame I remember thinking oh what a shame I never went in (recently went to Paris but didn’t go inside). Parents told me we went in when I was 11, fair enough I don’t remember. Then browsing my Facebook and I find pictures I took of inside Notre Dame from about 8 years ago 😂 I’m early 30s..god knows what else I’ve forgotten it’s annoying. But then I remember random parts of my childhood very clearly.

Both my parents don’t remember significant chunks of my childhood - and both have ‘altered’ things over time regarding both their relationship and my childhood . I think that’s subconscious and done to fit their own narrative of events , ie to convince themselves that they’re both passive victims of each other .

But if you suggest to either you get - nope , you’re wrong , that definitely happened ... I suspect they genuinely believe it .

I’ve been told the thing about blocking memories out too - I don’t know how much I believe that and am worried it’s damaging , a HCP suggested to me I was sexually assaulted as a child and blocked it out , which concerns me - no idea if it’s true !

I don't have clear, linear or cohesive memories of much of my childhood. I remember some overall feelings and impressions of places; I don't remember much at all about my brother, who is 6 years younger than me, being born at all. However I remember the humiliation I felt when I misspelt his name on the Welcome Home card (teacher said I was ridiculous for not knowing how to spell "your own brother's name" and made me write it out in front of the class.) I can remember looking out of my grandad's windscreen (he had a Rover with a blue tinted section at the top) but nothing about the actual holiday we were on. I am good at conversations and names and faces but rubbish at places or chronology.

I don't really remember many things and have instead learnt that they happened through family lore and photos. It is getting worse even though I'm only 30 - I think because I am so often distracted that even the details and conversations I would have usually remembered pass me by.

There's only two things I remember from childhood. Almost drowning at about 6/7, wasn't remotely scary and I didn't tell my mum but the folks on holiday who rescued me knocked on every door along our towns beachfront til they found me got in big shit from mum.

And age 3 ish meeting andrew and fergie who were opening the business my dad was manager at. Have a photo of them both holding me looking deliriously happy. They would have been pregnant with eugenie at the time.

How interesting this thread is.

I used to remember everything, photo and audio perfect memory, 90% plus exam scores without revising etc. Then I had a long period of illness in my 20s and became depressed. Great glaring gaps appeared in my memory from then onwards. I think it's to do with the depression throwing things out somehow, although 25 years have passed since then. I overheard my sister discretely telling my BIL 'she forgets things' when he was being amazed that I didnt remember some recent shared event.

If you think of it, we spend our lives trying to create a great childhood and life for out kids, saving up for experiences etc etc.... Whilst they'll probably forget most of it, like we have.

I think that and it makes me a bit sad! All the things I do with my daughter, the fun we have, nice days out etc etc and she won’t remember a thing. I don’t have any memories before around 3ish I think..

Giving birth to baby number 3, so much gas and air and so little midwife care. I barely remember any of it, it makes me very sad.

I can't remember any of ds2s first year but I think I had PND

Oh yes, dd’s birth. I remember the nurse saying “we’ll put a canula in just in case.....” and the clock saying 9pm. They’d pressed the emergency button before they’d finished the canula. DD’s birth certificate says she was born just before midnight. No idea what happened in those 3 hours.

Aside from my DD starting Nursery and the following year school.
I've got no memory of the years 2002 or 2003.

I was 11 when Live Aid happened but I have no memories of it being on TV at the time.

I have a good memory, but my memories tend to be fragmented snapshots rather than coherent stories. I can describe the interior of my mum's car from when I was at primary school or the bathroom at my grandparents' house down to smells and noises as if I was there ten seconds ago.

My mum has always mixed up things that happened to me and my brother, often attributing them to only one of us when it happened to both of us. I know for a fact that I had multiple strep infections as a child as I've discussed it with GPs in relation to some adult health problems. My mum swears blind that it was only my brother who had them. It was both of us. (Partly this could be some guilt about smoking around us as children - we both had tonsillitis a lot). On the other hand, she has also claimed that I had rubella at some point, which happened to my brother not me.

Interesting thread, op!

I feel a bit reassured that others can't remember Christmas dinners. I've recently taken ownership of our old family kitchen table and it prompted me to search the archives of my memory for childhood Christmas dinners. I was quite concerned to realise I don't remember a single one until I was about 18/19 and the only reason that was memorable was because there were so many extra people that Christmas that dsis and I got to eat our dinner on the sofa in front of the tv because there wasn't enough room around the table .
I generally have a good memory too and remember all sorts of random stuff.

Oh I’ve managed to remember a Christmas dinner. Only because we had extra family over so the table was moved into the living room and I sat on the settle.
Can’t remember the actual food though.

I can’t remember my middle child’s birth
It was a caesarean, I don’t remember going to the hospital or the operation
I remember visitors the next day
But I can’t remember anything of the actual day, I had an epidural not general anaesthetic as well
No brain injury’s or other memory problems
It’s a bit strange/worrying

How do you remember what you can't remember ?

My childhood was pretty mundane, so I guess only things that were out of the ordinary stick out. Like having nagged for a Halloween dinner of haunted house tinned spaghetti shapes and eating in the dark by pumpkin light !

I have real trouble remembering recent stuff, since having my DS. It's like it's in there, but the brain fog is blocking access. He's not a baby anymore, but it doesn't seem to have improved.

Some days I feel like I lie to people as I forget stuff and then 3 days after they've asked me I remember. Like have you ever been to xxx. I reply no. Few days later the correct answer of yes I have been there pops up in my brain.

How do you remember what you can't remember ?

Well I know that Christmas dinners must have happened.

I forget entirely periods when I’ve been deeply unhappy. People tell me things I said and did, and I have absolutely no memory of them.

The moon landings in 1969,I was old enough to remember them but I have no memory. It was a pretty big thing, my mum stayed up one night to watch something, (could be the actual landing?) It was all over the news, in the papers, everyone talking about it but I can't remember a thing
Regarding Christmas dinners, I can only remember the last one we had at grandma's before we emigrated, can't remember any from before and again, I would have been old enough.
Very strange.

I don’t remember 2 children’s first 6 months due to pnd but my son clearly remembered my mum coming around to my house with his baby sister handing her over and asking if I’d have her-and then asking me for £50!he didn’t remember me being pregnant or coming home with her he clearly remembered nan instead-right down to what we where all wearing-it lasted a year then he just seemed to forget that memory and laughs if I tell him his version xxx

I don't think that sounds as significant to you as it was to them. You weren't actually hospitalised, you recovered... it sounds as if they were the ones who were really worried about it. Presumably at the time you wouldn't have thought it was anything more serious, either? I couldn't honestly remember most of the times I've had strep throat, even badly.

My memory is atrocious. My DH and I were looking through some old photos and found pictures of a holiday that we took about 15 years ago, I can’t remember any of it. I don’t remember the name of any of my lecturers at university and would probably struggle to name more than 5 people on my course (I graduated about 25 years ago). My sister told me the other day that I’d been to see Phantom of the Opera with her (again about 20 years ago) I have no recollection at all. I think for me, unless I regularly talk about something that happened then it’s just discarded.

I have very clear memories and some fleeting impressions from around 2/3 onwards.

However, it was an abusive childhood and I was constantly being told I'd made things up, that I 'got funny ideas' and 'dreamed it' - and if it was something I didn't know, I'd be told 'You did know, but you forgot'. Eventually, the narrative became that I constantly lied and/or was mental.

On the whole, I have a very good memory - I always did really well at school because I remembered lots of information (mostly as images and actions, rather than lists of words). So I think that my memories are more likely to be accurate than the person who did the abusing and her minions others with a vested interest in the other versions. Another relative confirmed a lot of things had happened previously in the way they happened to me, too. The aftereffects of that were, amongst other crap, absolutely no sense of boundaries or healthy relationships, so there are large stretches in my twenties that are an uncomfortable blur partly through the medium of a fuckton of booze at times and sleep deprivation at others

But I still don't trust myself to remember things.

I upset DP today because he got me talking about 'Stuff' (context is bereavement and having to see the abuser and play nicely in order to not be pushed away/loudly and literally violently rejected whilst being made out to be the abusive, mental one) and I asked him to read messages I'd sent to somebody else before I'd met him, not because he disbelieved me, but because I couldn't trust what I'd told him before and thought that reading ones I'd sent at the time would be more accurate or trustworthy than my own memory.

He cried and told me I was damaged, it wasn't my fault and he already believed every word before he read them.

What worries me is Alzheimers. What if I forget him - but remember other things that I have blocked out?

I have vivid memories going right back into my early childhood. I remember my reception teacher. I remember going to preschool/nursery when I was 4. And I remember some things before that too.

I have lots of primary school memories. My sister and a couple of my friends are always amazed I can remember so much and I'm amazed they can't recall anything much at all.

I know I'm a very sentimental person, who always thinks back and remembers things. Maybe I've been like that all my life and revisiting these memories is what's helped me hold on to memories I might otherwise have forgotten.

Hardly have any memories of bringing up my children. They're teenagers now. Its devastating and when people remind me of stuff I sometimes remember but it's like it wasn't me.