Don't remember my childhood

I have a very poor episodic memory, which I understand is common in autistic people.

I remember endless facts and figures and whatever I am interested in without effort, but I don't remember my own life.

The amount of times people in my family have recounted something in my own life and I have no idea what they are talking about. There are previous holidays that I supposedly went on and have no memory of.

At work I am sometimes embarrassed when I ask "who is <name>" and it's somebody I have been interacting with for months and was just in a call with. But then someone asks me a technical question and I can tell them every detail of how it works and the exact code it had 2 years ago and why it was changed.

I began writing a diary/journal in 2015 and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I have been consistent with it, and I have an account of almost every day of my life for 9 years. I still don't remember any of it, but I like that I have a record. When I go back to read it, it's like reading someone else's life. I have no recollection of thinking or feeling these things. I don't even remember the people involved.

Being only recently diagnosed, it's interesting to read about the things I struggled with, and now I can say about most of my complaints "that was the autism". In some ways it's also sad though. I tried so hard, and failed so much, and didn't understand why it was so hard.

You're welcome. I wish I'd felt the same way about the waiting time. Instead, after an initial eureka phase, I got progressively more stressed and depressed. Before my assessment, I also struggled with allowing myself the licence to look beyond the outcome (and also felt a bit superstitious about jinxing it), which - in hindsight - wasn't ideal.

I appreciate what you said about having had limited health-related contact. I should perhaps still just mention that, whilst my medical records also predate the electronic era, my GP still has all of the paper-based stuff going back all the way (held in offsite, archive storage, retrieved on request). Out of curiosity, I just checked and found that GPs in England have to keep them until 10 years after death. A cheery thought to end on! :)

Thanks. I appreciate it. Actually, I'm not too bothered about the wait. I accept personally that I am neurodivergent and I am trying to work through what that means for me. Not having a label (yet) won't affect that too much. It should be useful eventually to have a diagnosis, as it may make communication with medical professionals a little easier at times.

With regard to childhood memories, my medical record won't help there. I'm old enough to predate electronic records. I'm pretty sure the paper records don't exist now and they wouldn't help a great deal, as I didn't have much contact with health professionals in my early years.

Me too. My recall of things from early years is not too bad. It seems everybody has the same story, once you get to adulthood, things just aren't fun anymore.

My autobiographical memory is quite poor. The things I remember most clearly, re my childhood and teenage years, are  to do with being bullied, and a psychologically damaging experience with my prep school headmaster.

I HAVE LOTS OF MEMORIES FROM CHILDHOOD. (Am I shouting?) Falling in love. Getting drunk. Smoking. Riding bikes. Trespassing. Knock door run. Vandalism. Shoplifting. Hmn what else. Throwing rocks. Throwing flattened lager cans. Throwing sticks.  (Uhm, seems like I liked throwing.) Throwing my parents Vinyls. I thought they were cool frisbees. Playing in the rain when it was throwing it down. Hiding in bushes when it was throwing it down. Running from adults. Catching buses. Getting into fights and gettin thrown down on the grass. etc etc I could go on and on...but I'll stop here.

The only 'slighter older girls' i can remember from childhood wore kappa, and were promiscuous and gobby

https://www.reddit.com/r/SDAM/comments/17ogkpt/coping_with_sdam_and_aphantasia/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RzVSc7U09w

aphantasia.com/.../

I remember my childhood well going off exploring I made friends with a bunch of neurotypical girls on my street they were good and kind to me sadly we grew apart as our interests changed. I also remember this was a very early memory that I was over my grandparents house watching my favourite cartoon my parents were in work and the cartoon had finished. My grandfather that I called bamps got the push chair out and the dogs lead and we go for a walk and pick blackberries I’d be in the pushchair and the dog Sian was with us. 

Inactive account said:

currently on a long waiting list

I'm sorry if you've already had this suggested to you before, but - depending on where you're located - you could opt for a shorter waiting time by using Right to Choose.

This allows you to have your referral changed (or made originally) to an NHS-approved external provider of your choice (eg Psychiatry UK, Clinical Partners and others) rather than typically waiting for much longer by staying on the NHS waiting list. A description of the option as it applies in England is provided here, for example:

https://www.calderdaleccg.nhs.uk/patient-choice/your-right-to-choose-a-clinically-appropriate-provider-of-neurodevelopmental-services/ 

Please also see my earlier reply to Metalmumma in respect of your childhood memories, in case it's of any help.

Metalmumma said:

It's really frustrating when I'm trying to piece everything together.

Funnily enough, I've just posted about this on another thread - to hopefully help someone with gathering assessment-related evidence (I appreciate that you're already diagnosed - woohoo!):

I have similarly limited memories of my childhood. One thing that helped me enormously in preparing for my assessment was requesting a copy of my full medical records from my GP. After some initial miscommunication, they eventually provided me with photocopies of all of it, including everything from my old, archived paper records.

This helped in two ways. Firstly, it prompted various forgotten - and relevant - memories to resurface. Secondly, it provided hard, third-party evidence from various stages of my childhood. To share just one example: there was clear evidence of sensory sensitivities that had proved an issue during physical examinations.

Might be of help for Inactive account, too?

I don't have many early memories either. I'm concerned that this will make it hard to get a definite diagnosis (currently on a long waiting list). I do however remember some meltdowns in pre-teens but not knowing why.

I wouldn't particularly worry about not remembering.

I'm lucky in a way because I tend to mostly only remember the good things (which makes me dangerously nostalgic).

Holidays are fun memories, when in reality I was a ball of anxiety prior to all the travel and when my wife will say "Oh, we should go on a day trip somewhere else!"

Some people remember little and some loads, I remember almost to much, but what gets to me is when therapists and people ask for a memory and I giv them one, like a group of slightly older girls, refering to me as 'the weird girl', they ask me why that was. How on earth would I know? It's them that need to answer that question not me, similarly I've been asked questions about the actions of my parents, when I was a child, I don't know, why should my childhood self know the motivations of adults?

I have no childhood friends or family other than my Mum to ask and my Mum remembers so little.

I had no one to ask about my childhood. The only thing I remember was being controlled by a so called best friend in that not being allowed my own friends but always felt an outsider. 

Do not worry about not remembering you have been diagnosed that is all that matters. Once the grief phase passes you will start to move forwards.