# No childhood memories



## Credo (Jul 26, 2005)

I don't have any childhood memories before the age of 8 or 9. Before that age I was a very outgoing child (so I have been told). But then I changed and became more introvert and more insecure. I wonder a lot about this loss of memory and what might have caused it. My doctor thinks something might have happened to me to cause me to block all memories... I do too...


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## soma (Nov 10, 2003)

Maybe it _is_ for the better.

I'm not saying I had the worst childhood ever, but I do have a lot of not so great childhood memories I wish I could forget.


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## Drella (Dec 4, 2004)

I don't have a lot of memories from my childhood either. I don't think I've repressed any; I'm not really sure how that works. I can actually remember things from my childhood, but there's a lot I _don't_ remember. My mom was telling me the other day about a woman who beat the living hell out of me when I was four.. I don't have any memory of that whatsoever. I can't remember any of the times I was hospitalized (I was several times, apparently. I went into antiphilactic shock, which I don't remember anything about except what I've been told). I don't remember breaking all of my teeth on a counter top, but they were capped in pictures of me as a little kid. My family members tell me what happened. A lot of the "memories" I have are things I've been told that happened. I guess I can understand why I would have blocked those out, but I still remember a lot of bad things that happened... Don't know why those weren't forgotten, but the others have been.


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## mserychic (Oct 2, 2004)

Yea could be yr repressing em. I hardly remember anything from middle and highschool. My therapist chic says that's a common defense mechanism for kids in tramatic situations.


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## Hannah Sesstein (Jul 30, 2005)

I don't really have any childhood memories from before my dad got ill when i was about 7 or 8. Sometimes i remember really small things like a man who used to work near my mum & dad's shop when i was 1/2, but then i don't remember the big stuff, for example: my mum told me last year that when i was a baby i had a bad cough and managed to drink most of the cough mixture.
Maybe some people just manage to block things out without really meaning too. 

xXx


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## ghostgurl (Sep 20, 2004)

I'm sure I'm repressing a lot of memories too. I don't remember too much from my childhood either.


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## Scrub-Zero (Feb 9, 2004)

Id rather not remember anything from my childhood.


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## Credo (Jul 26, 2005)

A lot of you say you'd rather not remember. But I believe it is key to remember to be able to deal with whatever might have happened.

I believe that as long as I don't remember I will stay the way I am, trapped in anxiety...


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## ThinkerGuy (Nov 13, 2003)

Weird, you can't remember any birthdays?


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## Credo (Jul 26, 2005)

No.


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## gemma (Jun 17, 2005)

I don't have many memories of my childhood either. I do believe something happen because my Mom told me that I used to sleep walk and have horrible nightmares. Also my dad was drinking during my early childhood years, which caused a lot of instability in the home I would suspect. So I do believe I've must have internalized to where I've blocked it out altogether, which was my way of coping with it at such a young age.


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## PeekABoo (Oct 23, 2004)

I have little bits and pieces of my life... memories... but nothing like what my mother or father can remember about theirs. And it doesn't just relate to my childhood memories. 

I was very concerned about it one time when I was having testing after a car accident to see if there was brain damage, and what the doctor told me was that if there was a lot of stress in my life (at that point I wasn't able to remember anything for more than 5 minutes after it happened) that the brain, being overstressed was releasing a lot of hormones and other chemicals, and that was short circuiting the short term memories. But that stress or trauma could cause short circuiting of long term memory as well.

During the last year and a half, I've been a member of another forum for abuse survivors and I find with a large number of them, their brains have blanked out the memories because they were too traumatic for the child to deal with at the time... and it's only now... at whatever age they are, that the memories are starting to return. With some, the horrors of their childhood caused them to become DID (what used to be called multiple personalities) so that various separate personalities hold the memories dealing with the various abuses, and the 'host' has no memory of the situations whatsoever, so can carry on and deal with everything else in life without having to deal with the trauma. 

Trauma and severe stress effects everyone differently, but quite often it does effect our memories. Although, I've been told the memories are still there... they're just blocked because of the stress. Something really interesting happened a couple of months back not long after I started counseling. I think it was because of all the talking I was doing and getting rid of some of the stress (so was calmer and more relaxed)... some of my childhood memories came back. It was amazing after all these years. Now I'm stressed again so the memories have stopped coming for the time being. I honestly don't remember large segments of my life... whether it's my childhood or my adult years.


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## glittergaze (May 4, 2005)

I think there might be some things that I can't remember too. My whole life, I've had these feelings...but I can't really remember anything that could've caused them. Well, I remember some things that might've caused them, but it doesn't seem like enough. That probably doesn't make sense.


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## Bon1 (Jan 17, 2005)

Yes it does, I've done that......Had this "feeling" no literal memories.


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## living in darkness (Apr 17, 2005)

Yes, this is painfull for me to talk about, but I hardly have _any_ memories of my life. Childhood, adolescensce, being a young adult...literally huge gaps of my life missing that I will probably never be able to remember. For instance, at the age of 7, I may have on or two memories, the age of 12, one or two memories, high school I have a few memories, and college...but mostly it's nothing, just a blank.

The scary part is that I can no longer remember if this is the way it always was, but I suspect that it's always been this way. I do know of one other person, a good friend of mine who has the exact same condition. He barely has any memories of his life. We both have dysthamia (sp?), which is a constant, low-grade depression, but I have also read that anxiety produces a hormone called cortisol (sp?) in your body that has been proven to destroy short term memory. Basically, it never gets encoded into long term memory because you are so anxious when events around you are happening. Well, that's the theory that I read on the internet anyway. All I can say is that it sucks to not be able to remember your life. My memory is really so poor if you paid me $10,000 I could not tell you what I had for lunch yesterday. I really do not remember one day from the next.


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## Ms Deer (May 30, 2004)

I found this website last night about memory. Haven't read all of it but what I did read is pretty interesting.

Remembering and Forgetting - How Memory Works - The Brain From Top To Bottom

http://www.thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/a/a ... _p_tra.htm

At the top left of the page you can choose the Level of Explanation - Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced. Top Right Hand side you can choose different levels of Orientation.


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## PeekABoo (Oct 23, 2004)

I'm afraid I'm like that too, living in darkness. 

But something I noticed... lunch from yesterday (whether I had it or not, and what I had, if I had it) is a routine, daily thing that's not really important to me. But if it's something really, really important or something really different from the norm, I have a better chance of remembering it then I would something as mundane as lunch... unless the lunch was something that fell into that 'drastically different' catagory also. 

Routine, monotonous things no longer stay in my memory very long... and my days are routine and monotonous almost every day. 

I don't think most people remember mundane, routine things beyond 24 or 48 hours... there's just no need to. But I could be wrong simply because I can't do that.


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## Nicole (Aug 29, 2005)

I thought it was just me. I can remember a few flashes of things from when I was younger, but I can't really go back much before high school. I might have one or two memories per age and they get dimmer the further back I go to the point where all I recall is a certain feature of a room or something. I know memories are made tof ade over time, but my friends and relatives can remember much more about their childhood than I can. The weird thing is that I do not beleive anything beyond teasing and/or being outcast by my peers occured. I was not abused or neglected by my family, I as just a weird little girl that would rather have read a bookduring recess than played kickball or four square or... whatever.

You know, all that stuff about kids being kids... the little taunts that parents don't deem important enough to discipline, that they tell you to just ignore and move on... I think it does a lot more damage to certain type's of people than most realize.


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## nothing to fear (Mar 23, 2005)

I can remember very few things. Often someone one from my family will say "Hey remember that time..." and I would have no idea what they are talking about. I kind of wonder if something tramautic did happen to me to cause me to suppress a lot of memories. I'm not sure though. I find it weird how I have no memories before age 7 (not including very small insignificant things) when my parents divorced...actually I have no memory of much anything to do with my parents being together.


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## Amelia (Nov 24, 2003)

You're not the only one with a poor memory, Credo. I can honestly say that I remember almost nothing about what I did as a child when I was at home. But I do remember school: how classrooms were laid out, what we did at break times, what food we ate at lunchtime, etc.

I reckon that I have forgotten the times when I was mostly alone (i.e. at home/on weekends/vacations) but do remember the times when I was interacting with other kids (i.e. school).


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## Josh (Apr 26, 2005)

I would like nothing better then to forget the entire 13 years I spent in the public education system. I still have nightmares and flashbacks about middle school and high school. I can't remember much from grades k-5 which is probably for the best.


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## El Conquistador (Sep 7, 2005)

I kind of have blank spaces.

For example, in kindergarten, I can remember myself and my childhood friend being Batman and Robin and having play fights with Penguin and Joker.

But say something about high school (maybe middle school) and you'll get a lot of blank stares from me. I don't remember much at all.


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## scarpia (Nov 23, 2009)

I hope you don't mind me bringing this thread back up after all these years. But this is one of the only threads I could find on repressed memories. This kind of thing happened to me. Suddenly about 12 years after I graduated from high school a lot of memories from it came back to me. I was not in any therapy. They just came back all on their own. After about 9 - 10 months stuff stopped coming back. It was very strange. I went to a therapist. He told me to just forget about that stuff. I said 'how and I supposed to do that?" He said "You did it before." Never went back to him or any therapist.


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## shadowmask (Jun 22, 2009)

I only have about two or three memories I can recall from before the age of seven. High school is pretty much a blur too. My memory is poor for the most part anyways. I've always wondered what it would be like to have all those memories suddenly come rushing back.


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## leonardess (Jun 30, 2009)

just my own take on this sort of thing:

I had a miserable childhood. I don't say this because I think of these things as a contest, but simply to point out that it was the remembering, in a safe environment with a person I could trust, that permanently freed me from that childhood's effects. I think these things always affect a person in ways they are not always aware of.


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## SilentWitness (Dec 27, 2009)

scarpia said:


> I hope you don't mind me bringing this thread back up after all these years. But this is one of the only threads I could find on repressed memories. This kind of thing happened to me. Suddenly about 12 years after I graduated from high school a lot of memories from it came back to me. I was not in any therapy. They just came back all on their own. After about 9 - 10 months stuff stopped coming back. It was very strange. I went to a therapist. He told me to just forget about that stuff. I said 'how and I supposed to do that?" He said "You did it before." Never went back to him or any therapist.


What a *beep* therapist! :mum :mum :mum :mum

Usually, a good therapist will help you talk about childhood memories and what relevance they may have to what's happening now. Then, and only then, can you leave them behind.


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## contranigma (Jun 24, 2009)

I don't have many childhood memories or they are very vague. Personally, I just think that is just the way it is, I don't think I am repressing them.


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## scarpia (Nov 23, 2009)

shadowmask said:


> I only have about two or three memories I can recall from before the age of seven. High school is pretty much a blur too. My memory is poor for the most part anyways. I've always wondered what it would be like to have all those memories suddenly come rushing back.


You don't want that to happen. That stuff runs through my head over and over like a broken record. It can get me pretty agitated sometimes.


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## Bouffon (May 18, 2008)

I am the same way, I had a crappy childhood but no traumatic events that I can remember. I think it comes down to this, http://www.google.com/search?q=selective+memory


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## Havalina (Dec 18, 2004)

Aww I saw abunch of old names at the beginning of the thread and was like "whoa they're back!"...then noticed the dates lol

I have early memories but only negative ones. All embarassing or sad situations.


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## scarpia (Nov 23, 2009)

Havalina said:


> Aww I saw abunch of old names at the beginning of the thread and was like "whoa they're back!"...then noticed the dates lol
> 
> I have early memories but only negative ones. All embarassing or sad situations.


I wasn't sure whether to start a new thread or add to this one. I saw how old it was. It was very odd how my memories came flooding back. I was wondring if anyone else had that happen to them.


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## modellalibertas (Feb 24, 2014)

I can identify with your problem. i'm 16 years old now but i have no memories before about 10 or 11. i keep trying and trying really hard to remember something about that period in my life but nothing comes. it's wierd and whenever i really think about it it creeps me out. i think your doctor may be right.. i don't know any other explanation for it. i just wish i could remember all the good bits of my life i don't really care about remembering the bad bits  i wish i could help you too but i don't really know much about it... i just wanted to say that i have it too


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