Recover My Memories

Basic story:

If I were unexpectedly struck by a falling object and it caused me to experience retrograde amnesia. I forgot all my experience before the brain injury.  This accident has caused me to forget all my explicit memories from childhood up until I were struck by the falling object.

However, I could maintained how’s the medication going on.

1. How would you begin the process of recovering your memory? Who would you turn to, where would you search, and how would you proceed?

Base on the basic story, I lost my explicit memory which including semantic memory and episodic memory. The semantic memory are about the facts and general knowledge, such as what we learn in school. Depend on the general knowledge, I will try to find the text book in school and read more books in library. Specially reread my note books. I believer it will be helpful, because I am accustomed to writing down my own definition of which I learn in the class.

In addition, episodic memory is another problem I have to handle. Episodic memories are more personal than semantic memories, it is about the experience I had. At first, I will try to review my journal, because it record most of my personal stories and feeling. Secondly, I will try to find my family and friends for all my photos, because the picture may help me to recover some of my memories. I will talk with my family and friends to try to find the my shadow in their memories with me. This will help me to understand my own personality and my interpersonal relationship.

In the end, if I still can’t remember anything before my injure accident, I will go to ask help from hypnosis. Hypnosis may help me to find my memory back.

2. Please describe the emotional journey you imagine you would be going through as you attempt to reconstruct your life. Imagine the feelings you would have.

At the beginning, I believe I will suffer from can’t recover anything. I will be depressive and be angry with myself. Moreover, I will feel hopeless because I don’t know everyone and can’t ask help from them. Later, I will keep myself alone and run away from the people. This is what Karen Horney explain one of the defense against anxiety method, moving away from others.

However, base on the helping with family and the hard working of myself, I may recover a little bit of my loss memory. Then I will build a little bit confidence to myself, believe I could be recover all my memory on one day in the future. Keeping the positive feeling is the major emotion status at this time. Base on this, I will continue to try my best to find my memory back.

3. Suppose you were able to pick and choose the memories you wanted to recover from your life. What types of memories would you choose to retain and what types of memories might you decide to edit out of your remembered experience? Positive, negative, painful, happy, angry, frightened, etc. Please elaborate and explain some your decision making process.

If I could pick and choose the memories I wanted to recover from my life, I hope to get my whole memory back including positive and negative. I believe that a completed life should holding the happy and sad memory, because no matter which you lost , this is not a rich experience and you will feel nothing to the other feeling. For example, you will not feel happy if you have never know what is suffering. Then you will not care any moment when you are holding the happy. That is the same to the say memory. Without the negative memory, you will not know how dear and sweat the happy one is. Therefore, I will not give up any of my memory no matter how it is. I want a completed and rich life.