Why does the brain mostly remember tragic, bad or embarassing memories instead of the happy ones
In: 4262
Ancient Proverb:
The tree remembers what the axe forgets.
For the axe, this was a normal day and recalling said day will provide little benefit.
For the tree, this day changed their life. Life as they knew it is over. The tree will recall that axe vividly.
In order to avoid mistakes with dire consequences our brains are wired to recall traumatic events in stark detail. Only upon looking back at such events do we see clearly how to avoid them in the future.
A smell or taste may remind us of that single bout of food poisoning. A visual or auditory cue may alert us to danger before our conscious minds pick it out.
Embarrassment is similar. Such things may not kill us or make us sick, but embarrassment can prevent social interaction from occurring. Humans are, at our core, social beings.
If you’re also having trouble being ruled by your negative thoughts like I do you could try this. Try sitting down and planning out exactly how you want your future to look in about 5 years. Finances, love life, career anything you deem important to you. Get super specific and detail oriented with your answer. Instead of trying to base what you’re currently going through on your past experiences, you can start to build backward from your ideal future instead. Keep thinking if what you’re currently doing is facilitating that future idea of how you want your life to be. If it’s not, don’t dwell on it but correct that behavior. All the best!
Strong emotions are linked to more recallable memories. This does work for positive memories too; people are unlikely to forget the birth of their first child, for example. However, negative emotions tend to be stronger (have more energy), especially in an untrained mind. Building the skill of equanimity lowers this effect.
I’m not seeing this in the comments, so I’ll add this:
Adrenaline, the chemical your body makes when under stress (and causes most of the things we call stress), temporarily makes your brain focus more on memorizing things.
As a side effect, your ability to memorize things WITHOUT adrenaline gets a tiiiiiny bit worse each time you make a dose. For a person with a plain life and an “average brain” (if such a thing exists) the side-effect will be something you can easily adapt to. If you spend most of your childhood heavily stressed or have a brain naturally wired to feel a little stressed, however, it can easily become a self-feeding cycle of bad.
So you are not only wired to memorize stressful things, but your ability to memorize things that aren’t stressful will get worse the longer you are stressed. Since happiness tends to not be stressful, it gets forgotten.
Yes to all the negativity bias things others have mentioned and evolutionary theory that attempt to explain that bias.
I also want to point out that people tend to remember things they have recalled more often. If you want your happy memories to stick with you, reflect on them often, write them down, and share them with others. This literally allows your brain to strengthen the natural pathway, and you will be less likely to forget that memory.
What use are good memories in a survival situation?
What people have said above about evolutionary advantage and negative bias, but this might also help:
Think of our genes as little people. And these guys are selfish as fuck. They basically just want to make more of themselves, to have their glorious selves cover more of the planet and take more of the resources. They want to fight every other gene to be more successful, but you can’t really blame them for that, since lots of other genes out there are exactly the same way. Bastards.
Remember this viewpoint, and the answer feels more intuitive. Do they care whether you feel anxious every time you walk on a rainy day since you fell that one time? They could not give less of a fuck. Do they care whether you think badly when you remember all the bad things? Do they care whether you’re sad? Like hell. As long as they can still keep you craving sex and reproduction enough, nothing you care about effects their bottom line. They are basically scummy CEOs.
In moments like this I think to the times I don’t immediately recall and take comfort that in those times, I was happy.
Your brain is trying to help you learn the most important things in the world: what can hurt you.
Less ELI5, but holding up well after after a couple of millennia:
All those who learn must suffer
And even in our sleep
Pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until
In our despair, against our will
Comes wisdom from the awful grace of god
-Aeschylus
You remember stuff that sticks out. So if you had mostly a good life, you could remember all those bad moments vividly because they were out of the norm. If you had a constantly bad life, you could remember all the good, albeit few, moments.
Example about stuff sticking out: if you were driving to work and saw a car flip and crash, that would stick I’m your mond because it’s so out of the ordinary.
People also remember (or think they remember) important events, like 9/11 or the announcement that Osama had been killed.
Latest Answers