Reflection#2 – Memory

For this reflection, imagine that you were unexpectedly struck by a falling object, which caused you to experience retrograde amnesia. As we learned, retrograde amnesia is the loss of memories which occurred before the brain injury. In this case, imagine this accident has caused you to forget all your explicit memories from childhood up until you were struck by the falling object.

Luckily, a medication has been developed to help you recover your memories, but it’s up to you to guide the recovery process.

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?
-I would begin the process of recovering my memory by asking my parents, family, relatives, and friends the places I visit the most before having the injury. Hoping to start from the places that I should familiar to. Looking at pictures and videos should help too since episodic memories includes events that happen ealier in my life. As I have said, I would turn to my family, friends, and relatives because they know about my past and they can tell me stories of my past. I would also start to search objects around me to see whether I can think of something that happens to me in the past.

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.
-I think my emotion will be very angry and complicated since it is difficult for a person to live without his or her memory. Also, I’ll think that I’m very stupid because I can’t memorize the things that I learned in school too. Without knowing what had happened and the things that I previously learned, I can’t imagine how my rest of the life will be. Even if I accepted to treat by hypnosis, there will still be a chance of failure.

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.
– For me, I would choose to remember everything that happened and learned earlier in my life. I think most people will choose to forget the unhappy memories and keep the delightful memories to themselves. However, if I choose only to remember the happy ones, then my life will not be awesome. I think that every person’s life should be full of different kinds of memories, so that when we get older, we can get a taste of what had happened to ourselves earlier in life. Also, most human beings make mistakes, and if they choose to forget what kind of mistakes they make, they’ll probably repeat those mistakes again. Without previously memories, I will not be the person I am today.