I can remember most things in vivid detail. It’s both a blessing and a curse

I am 13-years-old, and my science teacher, Mr Williams, has taken my class camping. The toasted marshmallows smell delicious, and the gumtrees are backlit by a roaring fire. My best friend and I can’t wait to crawl into our tent and sleep, blanketed by the fragrant bush air.

The scenario above is not a memory I have of an actual event. It’s a memory of a dream I had when I was in Year 7. Confusing? Yes. Normal for me? Also yes.

Having a super memory has it’s perks, but it also comes with drawbacks. Credit: Getty

I can remember being tasked to write a story based on a picture (the silhouettes of a child and an adult, hugging, looking out over an ocean) in high school; talking about kids with a colleague while working at Kmart when I was 18 (she wanted to have three by 25); and the epic tale of going undercover as a journalist in Mexico told by a university tutor when I was 26.

Most people would view having a great memory as a blessing. Total recall means never having to worry about forgetting details or places or faces. But with the obvious good of remembering the name of your childhood neighbour’s dog also comes the bad.

In particular, the memories of my failures burn the brightest and rise to the surface faster than any others: coming last in a maths exam when I was 14; treating an ex-boyfriend badly when I was 20; not getting the job of my dreams when I was 24. Whenever I’m feeling down or anxious, these memories resurface and beat me down further. I remember most of the fights I’ve ever had with my parents, partners and friends, and can clearly remember all the different ways I hurt them, and they hurt me, instantly.

Basketball star LeBron James is also known for his ability to remember things in intricate detail. In his case, it’s almost every moment from every game he has played in recent years. This includes the successes and the failures.

According to researchers, our tendency to skew towards negativity bias and process negative emotional signals such as anger, sadness or fear more intensely than positive signals is rooted in our evolution. Threats or dangers have historically had more immediate survival consequences, which could explain why our brains are wired to prioritise them over positive experiences and memories in which we feel totally relaxed and safe.

“The ability to attend to and store negative events can increase one’s ability to avoid similar events in the future, and hence be adaptive in the grand happiness equation,” says Australian National University memory researcher, Dr Paul Marshall tells me.

Studies also show that negative memories light up areas of the brain related to emotional processing and fear, and that retrieving negative memories tends to influence our current mood and emotions more than positive memories.

Researchers have also found that people with excellent memory skills tend to have both a strong working memory (retaining information immediately after learning it) and long-term memory (recalling information more than a day after memorising it).

But memory is a tricky beast, and its link to happiness is ultimately tied to factors such as individual personality traits, mental health conditions, cognitive processing styles and even epigenetics, Marshall says.

“Like with anything, there is a bell curve for memory … and those towards the upper end of that bell curve do have a correlation towards higher rates of anxiety, depression, etc,” he says, explaining that people who skew to the extreme end have to work harder to filter memories because even if they happened 10 years ago, “can be remembered as though they are happening now, which can be disturbing if negative.”

But, crucially, Marshall warns against automatically assigning causation to the equation.

“Just because the capacity to remember more events is higher, does not doom one to unhappiness,” he tells me. “As humans, we are as much what we choose to inhibit as what we choose to action, and this includes the filters we apply to our memories either consciously or unconsciously.”

Despite how they can make me feel, and what I know, I don’t ever find myself wishing I had a bad, or at least worse, memory. As I get older, I am becoming better at contextualising the memories of my younger self and learning to forgive myself for the things I did and said.

And, as my daughter grows, knowing that I will be able to remember everyday moments with clarity gives me something to look forward to. Because when she asks about taking her first steps, or what her first day of school was like, I’ll be able to tell her everything in picture-perfect detail.

Caroline Zielinski is a freelance writer based in Melbourne.

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