Autism and Memory

I find memory to be a fascinating topic. I have a very visual memory, at school I would remember where things were on a page and when I though back to it, I would see the page in my head, the images only last a day or so though so it's not an ideal way to learn. I have managed to use it in addition to rote repetition in my mind in order to memorise things like the Tom Lehrer element song. But then thought I could use this visual mind thing to try and memorise things i want by using a known mnemonics method called the journey method and I memorised the first 100 digits of pi very quickly and that was over a year ago and I still remember the first 53 I must have rushed the images from then on because a few of them have disappeared. I also memorised the periodic table in order and know their chemical numbers using the same method.

Back to the original post, the down side to this means I do also re-experience things as though they're happening again and feel those emotions very vividly too. It causes a lot of stress and anxiety and wish i could turn it off. I always thought everyone else thought like this too, I remember going to a prayer meeting with a friend and I said I wouldn't be able to join in saying prayers because of talking in a group, and then explained that I don't always think in words, I often think in pictures and she found that bizarre. I never thought of it being unusual, but I don't think other people necessarily think like that because they can be so articulate about a topic so quickly, whereas it takes me a while to convert my thoughts into words. 

I find memory to be a fascinating topic. I have a very visual memory, at school I would remember where things were on a page and when I though back to it, I would see the page in my head, the images only last a day or so though so it's not an ideal way to learn. I have managed to use it in addition to rote repetition in my mind in order to memorise things like the Tom Lehrer element song. But then thought I could use this visual mind thing to try and memorise things i want by using a known mnemonics method called the journey method and I memorised the first 100 digits of pi very quickly and that was over a year ago and I still remember the first 53 I must have rushed the images from then on because a few of them have disappeared. I also memorised the periodic table in order and know their chemical numbers using the same method.

Back to the original post, the down side to this means I do also re-experience things as though they're happening again and feel those emotions very vividly too. It causes a lot of stress and anxiety and wish i could turn it off. I always thought everyone else thought like this too, I remember going to a prayer meeting with a friend and I said I wouldn't be able to join in saying prayers because of talking in a group, and then explained that I don't always think in words, I often think in pictures and she found that bizarre. I never thought of it being unusual, but I don't think other people necessarily think like that because they can be so articulate about a topic so quickly, whereas it takes me a while to convert my thoughts into words.