<center> # Emotion and Memory *Originally published 2018-06-10 on [docs.sweeting.me](https://docs.sweeting.me/s/blog).* <img src="https://i.imgur.com/wGjm2L7.png" style="width: 40%; border-radius: 14px; box-shadow: 4px 4px 4px rgba(0,0,0,0.04);"> </center> <br/> I wonder if there's any correlation between how strongly a person feels emotion and how well they remember other people and past interactions with them. I feel like I'm almost never sad or angry, I can only think of one time in the last year when I was sad or angry (both because it happens infrequently and the memories don't stick). I feel like I have no trouble being happy, but is my happiness as strong as other people's? I could just have a milder experience of emotions across the board, or it could be skewed only in one direction, I have no idea because I don't have much a frame of reference, I've only lived from my own perspective. I'm not some perfect rational robot though, my reasoning is often flawed. Empathy is also essential to good communication, so maybe I have to work harder to listen to my sense of empathy than other people. Empathy is often more important in human interaction than reason, so maybe I shouldn't even be optimizing for improving my reasoning above all else. In unrelated personal flaws, I also feel like I have an unusually bad memory for interpersonal experiences, people, and names. On the other hand, I feel like my spatial memory is extremely rich. I have huge, colorful dreams with expansive landscapes that often focus on me exploring a new area of the map or new laws of physics. Some of the dream world maps reccurr and connect across multiple months and years worths of dreams. I can remember detailed layouts of the landscapes and buildings even years after having the last dream in a particular world. Aside from dreams, in the real world I feel like I have a pretty good sense of directions, maps, and layout of cities. My self-reported, subjective experience of my own memory is probably inaccurate due to confirmation bias though. As I notice deficiencies in some kind of memory, I tell myself "wow, I'm bad at remembering names", then the next time I have any trouble remembering a name I'll think back and just reinforce my own idea that it's a physical flaw and not just a normal forget. I feel like languages are harder to learn, I pick up grammar quickly but hate learning vocabulary because it's time intensive and I forget it rapidly. I've read that some kids who learn multiple languages early-on struggle with word recall speeds later in life (possibly due to having a bigger dictionary of words to look into), but I'm not sure if that's since been debunked. <center> <img src="https://i.imgur.com/5pj1YD2.jpg" style="width: 50%; border-radius: 14px; box-shadow: 4px 4px 4px rgba(0,0,0,0.04);"> </center> <br/> Maybe my bad memory is *caused* by stuffing my head full of half-reluctantly-learned English, Spanish, and Chinese early in life, I've corrupted my mental dictionary, leaving less room for real memories later on. I doubt this is true though, this is not really how memory works, and many kids pick up 2 or even 3 languages natively in childhood without having decreased memory for names and people. It's more likely to be caused me never doing this properly: > "new research suggests that we should aim for “minimal interference” during these breaks – deliberately avoiding any activity that could tamper with the delicate task of memory formation. So no running errands, checking your emails, or surfing the web on your smartphone. You really need to give your brain the chance for a complete recharge with no distractions." [BBC - Future - An effortless way to improve your memory](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180208-an-effortless-way-to-strengthen-your-memory) --- <br/> ## *Update* (2024) Sooo... it's 6 years later and this all ^^^ makes much more sense now. It turns out I'm probably just midly autistic lol (+ maybe had some [avoidant attachment](https://www.simplypsychology.org/attachment-styles.html)). Am happily married now but still constantly trying to grow here + stretch my empathy muscles.