But she has some ideas.įor one, even memories that seem out-of-the-blue may be in fact triggered by something in the environment. So far no one has yet studied specific emotions attached to mind pops, so she can’t tell me exactly why embarrassing memories come back to us in this way. She has made a name for herself by studying what she calls “mind pops,” those thoughts that seem to come to you out of the clear blue sky. But Lia Kvavilashvili, a psychology researcher at the University of Hertfordshire, believes that memory is more orderly than that. Imagine, he says, “a computer that kept opening your more personal and embarrassing files, like the ones containing all your erotic Care Bears fanfiction, without being asked, and at random times.” In his book The Idiot Brain, the neuroscientist Dean Burnett describes the brain not as a supercomputer that should be revered but as a dotty, irrational thing. How could it be possible that I can’t stop remembering embarrassing episodes from my past when these two guys - who supposedly remember everything they’ve ever said or done - struggle to think of even one?Ī persistent memory is often associated with traumatic experiences, that’s not always the case. Isn’t this your whole thing?! I shouted inwardly. But neither he nor Veiseh seemed to be able to use their superpower to summon an awkward moment from their past. So what’s causing them to rush back at random times?Įarlier, I spoke with Joey DeGrandis, who also has HSAM. The more I thought about it, the more I was dying to know: What would it be like to remember your embarrassing moments when you remember everything that’s ever happened to you? These memories are embarrassing, but they’re not traumatic. He remembers nearly every day of his life in vivid detail. Veiseh is one of just 60 or so people in the world who is thought to have a highly superior autobiographical memory, or HSAM, a condition discovered in 2006 by scientists at the University of California at Irvine. He’s had time to think about it, too, because I asked the same question in the email I sent several days ago to schedule the chat we’re having now. I have asked Nima Veiseh a simple question: I want him to tell me about an embarrassing memory from his past. The second is less so: Learn how to forget yourself. The first step is somewhat obvious: Learn how to be nicer to yourself. I didn’t get the answer I was expecting, but what I found instead was so much more interesting. So what’s causing them to rush back at seemingly random times? And is there any way to prevent them, or at least make them hurt a little less? They’re the little humiliations from your past that come back unbidden, sometimes years after they first occurred.īut why? These memories may be embarrassing, but they’re not necessarily traumatic. “For me, if I’m alone, I just start shouting, ‘ NO! No no no no no no no.’” I recently came across a name for these memories that I quite like: cringe attacks. “You’re just sitting there and your brain decides to throw it in your face for no reason,” one of my interviewees told me. So many people I interviewed for my new book, Cringeworthy, confess to reacting to old embarrassments in the same way. “How embarrassing,” I whisper, out loud, to no one. In my apartment ten years later, I know I’m far away in space and time from this moment, and yet it still makes me wince. My skirt is tucked into the back of my tights. I look toward the sound, and see three people staring back, one of whom is literally pointing and laughing at me. And then I hear a shriek of laughter to my right, coming from down the hall. I leave the restroom, preoccupied by all of the obscure medical terms I need to look up later, and walk toward the newsroom. I started copying my roommate, who at 25 seemed infinitely wiser than me, and who on weekdays favored mid-length jersey skirts in dark, office-approved neutrals.īut in this memory, the skirt betrays me. The newspapers where I’d interned throughout college were very come-as-you-are, but people dressed better here, or at least my boss sure did. Lately, though, I’d been worrying about my clothes. There were so many things to worry about. All day I would nod along in meetings while the rest of the editors discussed things like hormone replacement therapy or hospital-acquired infections, and then, back at my desk, I would conduct quiet, frantic Google searches to figure out what on earth they’d been talking about. I was an intern in the health section at, and in retrospect, I suspect I was terrifically underqualified for the role. What more do you want from me? My mind was wandering this way and that when, out of nowhere, a memory pulled me back to the summer of 2007. The other day I was putting away laundry, my least favorite chore.
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