How accurate are childhood memories?
I was listening to the radio the other day and the commentary brought up a flash in my mind of a situation that I may have been in when i was a child and did something wrong. I am 25 now and i believe the memory is from when i as 10-11 years old. . I consider myself a person of very high moral values and have held memories of all of my transgressions varying in severity all of my life since i was about 6 with me and can describe each event in great detail. This flash or thought is different because its more of a possiblity than a definite, I can't visualize or describe it without my imagination jumping in and influencing. I've tried hypnosis with no luck. I have never once had this memory or though my entire life.
How can parents teach self-discipline to their children?
Leading by example is a good way. Setting limits for you, for your family with and understanding and reasoning behind those limits, helps kids understand why it is important to have self discipline.Also, letting them experience the natural consequences of lack of self discipline. When they go to bed too late in spite of your warning, they still have to get up and go to school at the normal time. When they eat too much candy, they will experience what it feels like.Gradually, as they grow up, allow them to have more control over the limits, so they can experience what imposing self-discipline looks like at their age and their level.“If you think you can get up at 6:00 am even though you stayed up till midnight, go ahead, but you still have to get up.” Then discuss with them how they feel the next day - how important it is to get the right amount of sleep so they don’t feel so horrible.Consistently, linking back to why we do these things, will help children learn the fundamental importance as well as have the ability to impose self-discipline.
I remember everything from my childhood even as little as under 2 years. I know all these things that happened that my siblings (I am the youngest) and parents find shocking. Is this normal?
I think it is normal but many people disagree. I don’t agree with the current beliefs that children’s memories of things before age 3.5 are inaccurate or made up. Though this is certainly possible, I have enough memories of things dating back before age two to convince me that these should not just be discounted. Granted, most of those early memories are visual, don’t include remembered conversation and are often accompanied by strong emotions. But this seems to track with what an infant or toddler probably experiences: emotions, visual and other stimuli, but doesn’t make them false or even inaccurate. More recent studies are finding that the cut-off for memories of age 3.5 is probably wrong:“Theories on…autobiographical memory development have been based on the assumption that the age estimates of earliest childhood memories are generally accurate, with an average age of 3.5 years among adults. It is also commonly believed that early memories will by default become inaccessible later on and this eventually results in childhood amnesia. These assumptions were examined in 2 prospective studies, in which children recalled and dated their earliest memories at an initial interview and did it again 1 year (Study 1) and 2 years later (Study 2). Systematic telescoping errors emerged: Children substantially postdated their memories for the same events at the follow-up interview, particularly for memories initially dated from earlier ages.” (1)1, Your earliest memory may be earlier than you think: prospective studies of children's dating of earliest childhood memories.The fact that children placed their memories later than initially thought leads me to believe that parents and others such as siblings (as in your case) tell young children they are wrong, when in fact they are remembering accurately.Another study found that children accurately remembered things as young as age 2:“What's your earliest accurate memory? Chances are, it occurred after your third birthday, and until recently, scientists assumed that this was because children do not form accurate memories until the ages of three or four. But a new study from New Zealand suggests that children can correctly recall experiences from when they were two years old.” (2)2. New evidence that children start forming solid memories when they are 2 years oldThis is an area that obviously needs much more research and far less assumption that kids have lousy memories!
How do you remember repressed memories?
I'm trying to remember my past so I can deal with everything that happened, and a lot of it I've remembered and it's shocking me. I feel I have one large suppressed memory left, and I know the gist of what happened, and I can remember emotions and tie current actions I do as a result of it, but I can't actually remember the event. I can't see anything, I don't hear anything, there's no sensory memories tied to it, I just have the emotion and knowledge of what it had to have been. I know that's really vague, I don't want to go into a lot of detail, but it was forms of sexual abuse (I know I was never raped) that I remembered, but I just feel like something else had to have happened and I know I can't remember a certain age, but I can remember before and after it. If anyone can give maybe a little testimony, I don't know where I'm at, but I think I'm getting better. It's like my mind wants to tell me so it gives me little hints by using memories that were a result of whatever happened, but I just can't remember that life-changing event. Thanks in advance, I just hope you all are decent enough not to troll me. It's taking quite a bit to just post this here.
Why do some people not remember their sexual abuse for 30 years?
Being sexually abused when you are a child, perticularly by a family member or someone you have to live with, is, literally, unthinkable. It's so horrifying, that it's impossible for most children to deal with, psychologically, so they block it out. There are different ways you can do this - dissociation, anesthesia, fantasy, overwriting or reworking memories, sleep, etc.When the abuse is happening on a regular basis, these “forgetting” techniques become so ingrained in our thinking that they become automatic, and happen at a subconscious level. Just like learning to ride a bike - at first you have to think about what you are doing, but with practice bike riding becomes what we call an overlearned skill, and it happens at a subconscious level, so you no longer need to think about it, and can actually loose the memory of how you learned to ride in the first place.So people who have been chronically abused not only “forget” the abuse, but also “forget” learning how to forget. It's a bit complicated, so I hope my explanation makes sense.Later in life, something may happen to trigger off some of these memories, and the person will start to remember again. Usually in bits and pieces, because that's how the brain stores traumatic memories. It can be a frightening and confusing time for people, and some people get so upset and scared that they try to block out the emerging memories with drugs or alcohol or sex or busyness or lack of sleep, etc. People can be very creative when they are coming up with ways to not think about and remember abuse.If they can face it and start to deal with what happened to them, then more and more memories come back into conscious awareness. But we only remember what we need to remember. We don't need to remember everything, just enough to deal with all the issues.I also believe that we only remember when we have the psychological resources to deal with it. For many people in my practice, this seems to be around the 40 year mark. Before that, if memories emerge, they can only be partially dealt with, since younger people don't have the maturity to deal with everything.Reprocessing and retrieving memories of abuse is hard, painful, scarey work. It's not to be undertaken by the faint of heart. And it's tricky sorting out what is true and what has been confabulated. I think it takes an experienced professional to do this, you can only go so far on your own. It can be done, but it can take years.
Does a person know they have dementia?
Can you suffer from dementia and not know it?Absolutely, yes.I’m not an expert, but everyone I’ve known with dementia was aware something was not quite right, but it was with other people, not them.In my mother’s early stages of dementia, she was in complete denial. For instance, I took her to her favorite mall to shop. At lunch, she wanted a McDonald’s hamburger, while I grabbed a slice of pizza from the neighboring kiosk. We sat in the food court to eat. She would nibble at her burger, look around, and then converse with me. She was eating so slowly, I bought and ate another piece of pizza. She suddenly looked at me and said, “aren’t you going to have anything to eat?” I responded, “Mom, I just ate 2 slices of pizza. See these paper plates?” She got enraged, and said, “Melissa Jeswald, your nose is growing! You are a liar!”It was like this for months. She burned a plastic tray on a hot stove burner: “no I didn’t!” She hit a parked truck: “it was his fault!” She forgot how to use her cell phone: “it’s broken!” She forgot how her house keys worked: “I have the wrong key!”These incidents just got worse and worse, and her excuses were coming just as fast until she had a stroke, which put her in a nursing home. She would only accept the reason for being there (instead of at home) was “I broke my back,” which was not true.At the nursing home, she was finally tested for dementia. She failed miserably, and flew into a rage. She blamed the doctor, me, the nurses and caseworker: all of us were trying to “trick” her. In addition, she told all of her friends and relatives that I was plotting against her. I got phone calls from her friends telling me that I was wrong about her dementia, and they began actively fighting me. (Too bad, I was her health care proxy and following the doctor’s instructions.) Nothing the medical professionals or I could say would convince my mother that she needed assisted living. In her words: “sometimes I’m a little forgetful, but I’m 85; what do you expect?”Now, 3 years from her diagnosis and in a memory unit, she doesn’t understand where she is, or even when she is. The passage of time doesn’t register. She talks about her parents, siblings, and my father, all as if they were still alive and nearby. The concept of “dementia” is not there, just as she couldn’t name the inanimate objects on the dementia test.