Good Memories? Bad Memories? A Bias...?

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Long time no post... Do you think we who are on the spectrum have a bias in only remembering the bad things that have happened to us? Or is it just the way our lives have progressed that the majority of things that we experience we perceive in a negative way?

Tonight it struck me that this fall it will be 25 years since I began school. For me my memories of grade school is like a library full of books. As I paged through them I realized that I can't remember a single fully positive thing that happened during that seven year period of my life. From the early intervention sessions that I had with counselors in kindergarten to head bashing in second grade and episodes of incontinence in third grade all the way up to sixth grade and Tim Rozoff; the first of many bullies I would encounter. Even the memories that I should have experienced as positive have some kind of negative twist to them... Such as KMO where I would get praise at school for achieving the highest score in the team tryouts, but getting yelled at home by mom and dad because I had the worst grades in class. I know this sounds leading, but I find it hard to believe that our lives have been a 100% negative experience.

I have some memories of my school years. Most of them were horrible. I remember getting picked on, by my regular peers, from grades 1, until 6. I remember the nasty teacher's aid that I had to deal with. She dragged me into the washroom and yelled at me, to go to the bathroom, when I didn't have to go, grabbing me by the arm, and trying to shove me into the stall, that had the smallest toilet, because of one accident that I had, in Grade 2. That continued through the rest of Grade 2 and all through Grade 3. None of the regular kids liked me. I was happy to get out of the cesspool, called Elementary School.

I seem to remember mostly the bad things that happen to me....I've been reading through my old diaries from the 1990s and I was quite surprised at some of the happy times I'd forgotten. The stuff I'd written about one particular relationship was quite an re-education for me - all I'd recalled was the problems we'd had together and the harm we'd done to each other, but from my notes it's clear that we also spend loads of happy times together....we'd see each other almost every day and I never once felt like it was too much company for me. Similarly I tend to remember my performance as a father to my son as a catalogue of disaster, with me never having time for him - yet my diaries show the opposite.

I suspect that in my case, part of the reason is the way I think - if I get something wrong, I need to stay aware of it and to try and work out how I could have performed better, but if I get something right, there's no need to work on it, as it's already satisfactory........I see myself rather like a conscientious repair man sees a TV set - he only has eyes for its problems. In a way it's a bad state to be in, because it means that I miss out on a lot of the joy of happy thoughts, but I'm sure I still have stuff inside that needs fixing, and it's not going to get fixed if I just rest on my laurels. Quite a conundrum.

I remember the bad things pretty clearly. The good experiences have been there, but are really difficult to recall. That's how it's always been for me, but it's become much more pronounced since I suffered PTSD two years ago.

On the contrary, my mind seems to have glossed over a lot of the bad stuff that happened to me. I'm much more likely to remember the good things about my past and experience nostalgia. This is a cognitive bias called "rosy retrospection": link

I had a rough childhood (uh, who didn't?) and I had a lot of trouble with not sleeping and ruminating on bad thoughts.
I really loved to read the encyclopedia so I learned everything I could about how memory works and went to the library so I could figure out how to stop thinking about bad things that had happened. By the time I was in high school, I had become extremely good at immediately putting something out of my mind and practiced changing the topic in my head as quickly as possible. Essentially, I learned how to reduce the chance of bad memories entering my long-term memory. I think I'm an expert at blocking bad things out!
I used to worry that they would eventually come back to haunt me. And in a way, just in the last year or so, they have. I'm starting to open up and remember so many things I haven't thought about in 20-30 years!
It is not nearly as bad as I would have expected. Now that I'm a grown-ass woman, I have the perspective and emotional maturity to process those bad thoughts/memories in a healthy way.
I have always been a glass half full person though - as a very logical, rational person, I see that historically, things have tended to work out as they were supposed to. How I feel about them is completely up to me so it might as well be optimistic and compassionate.

it's a human tendency to have a stronger response, including memory, to negative events.

I find I recall both good and bad things that have happened in my life. But lately it feels mostly bad. I've been recalling a lot of old memories that are still painful. Like when I was a teenager I had to go and get ear surgery several times, and one time when they inserted the IV it was very painful. It was like the surgeon had just shoved it right up an artery, and I cried out in pain. Then I had to go back not long after to have the packing removed from my ear, which they (unnecessarily) put me to sleep to do, and I was terrified the IV was going to hurt very badly again. One of the surgeons used the old cliche that it would feel like "just a little pinch". I told her last time it felt like a BIG pinch!

I hope I'll never need surgery for anything ever again, but I know I most likely will someday. Maybe when I least expect it, like that time my mom had to get her appendix out just before Easter a few years ago.

I've tried to remember the good things. I've also worked on forgetting the bad things over the past 5 years since I've first posted in this thread.

No. I think this is typical of anyone. It is not exclusive to ASD. Memories that stand out for any given person will tend to be those that made a major impression. Obviously, abuse is going to make such a huge impression that it may even have the capacity to dwarf and crowd out the good memories.

Even when we have a memory that might be very random and might not seem to be enough to make a measurable impression may be linked to things we don't consciously realize. Say you remember being four and eating an apple and your sister fell off her chair and you were both laughing. That wouldn't seem to be big-impression-worthy, but it may be linked to other things that happened to you at that time. Maybe the apple tree you picked the apple from later burned down and you have that in your subconscious somewhere. Maybe it was the last apple you ate at the kitchen table before you moved house. Or what-have-you.

But abuse memories are very obvious in why they made an impression. There can be little doubt. We also tend to ruminate on them more. They can crowd out better memories simply because they are so at the forefront, as they had so much of an impact on shaping us.

JMO.

No, I know I have plenty of good memories too. I have very strong recall of all kinds of memories of my life, good, bad, and even completely meaningless, neutral things.

But the good memories are often of things that don't outweigh the real-life consequences of the bad things that have happened. For instance, good memories may be just of "a fun time," while a bad memory may be "I got made homeless". I don't think there's a bias there, it's pretty clear the fun time is just a fun time but the homeless crisis is rightfully remembered as life-changing.

No, I remember the good and the bad, even including the same people.

I remember more bad events than good ones but as others have said I think that's just a human trait. We learn more from mistakes than successes. I do anyway.

I don't know about the bias being specific to Autism, but depressed people tend to have a negative filter on what goes through their mind and think in terms of "good" or "bad" and no in-between, black/white thinking, no gray, when in reality, there are plenty of options in-between the two. I think it would be beneficial for not just those with Autism but for anybody to open their mind to think in shades of gray instead of all-or-nothing.

Its hard for me to recall the feelings attached to good memories but if i remember something bad i feel it all over again. I can still remember the terror of when my brother sat on my head when i was maybe 4 and i couldnt get up and thought i was gona die. My mom says i have a complex that everyone hates me. (I say she needs to shut the hell up) Is it really my fault if my brain cant save happiness to long term memory?

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