Why is it that horrific images remained burned into your memory but normal/wholesome images you forget over a much shorter period of time?
In: Other
They both degrade in your memory almost the moment after they take place.
It only seems like they are burned in because you don’t like them. As the details fade away, your brain attempts to rebuild the missing parts. Since you think of the memory in a bad manner and your brain has to reimagine the missing details, your brain creates them as horrific as you remember them being, sometimes resulting in a worse memory than the actual event.
This can sometimes even lead to people having “suppressed” childhood memories that didn’t even happen.
Example: I went the majority of my 30+ years remembering hitting my head on my parents old oak console TV. I had a huge hole in my head and there was blood everywhere. A couple years ago I was going through some old pictures with my mom and found the pictures of the injury but it was my little brother’s head. It was so scary (we were really young) that as time went on I imagined and “remembered” it as me.
Latest Answers