FREE BRILLIANT MEMORY TRAINING: STOP WORRYING ABOUT YOUR MEMORY AND START USING IT - TO THE FULL! PDF Jonathan Hancock | 256 pages | 08 Aug 2011 | Pearson Education Limited | 9780273745815 | English | Harlow, United Kingdom 6 simple steps to keep your mind sharp at any age - Harvard Health Follow ocdla. Armies hoard weapons to ensure they never run out. Some people hoard various items of little or no real value for fear that they may need them some day, or fear that they may not be disposing of these items correctly and could cause unwanted consequences. Not all people with OCD hoard. In fact, not all hoarders even have OCD. However, many people who suffer from OCD appear to engage in a form of mental compulsion I have come to call memory hoarding. Memory hoarding is a mental compulsion to over-attend to the details of an event, person, or object in an attempt to mentally store it for safekeeping. This is generally done under the belief that the event, person, or object carries a special significance and will be important to recall exactly as-is at a later date. The memory serves the same function for the mental hoarder that the old newspaper serves for the physical hoarder. People with memory hoarding OCD exhibit two major errors in information processing. Second, people with memory hoarding also have the distorted belief that memories can be treated the same way as inanimate objects. The value of a newspaper article can be debated, but the contents of that article will remain constant. But memories do not obey the same properties. Not only is a memory a complex amalgam of all of your senses sight, hearing, smell, and so onbut it is also a function of the emotional state and cognitive processes of the person forming the memory, both at the time the memory is being formed, and when it is being recalled. Therefore the very act of forming or recalling a memory must, by definition, distort it. When you reflect upon an event, you are necessarily filtering the stored data of the initial memory through the present state you are in. So the belief that a memory can be hoarded makes the memory hoarding compulsion a guaranteed disappointment for the individual with OCD. In general, the clients we have seen who engage in memory hoarding compulsions are concerned that moments in time will pass without them fully understanding, remembering, and appreciating them. The uncertainty surrounding whether or not they will be able to adequately reflect upon and evaluate the significance of specific events, people, or objects causes discomfort which they hope to avoid. You stop, you consider that this is the last time you will be this person in this place, and then you move on to the next chapter in life. Someone with OCD who is engaging in memory hoarding symptoms is likely to feel trapped in a state of never fully being able to take in the true value of this moment. The twisted irony of memory hoarding is that the person trying to perfectly remember things frequently misses out on those very things because they are caught up in the mental compulsion trying not to miss anything. This irony is consistent throughout the OCD spectrum. The compulsive hand washer scrubs furiously over and over and yet Brilliant Memory Training: Stop Worrying About Your Memory and Start Using it - To the Full! spends most of their time feeling dirty, no matter how much they wash. The washing actually informs the brain that dirt is on the offensive. The memory hoarder similarly feels a perpetual state of incomplete memory formation, despite all of the time-consuming and emotionally draining work they put into trying to form memories perfectly. As in other manifestations of OCD, the form may change but the function remains the same. Here are some forms of memory hoarding we have noticed in our clients:. Treatment for memory hoarding is obviously not going to look the same as treatment for physical hoarding. Rather, the goal is to be able to accept memories as they are and choose their value willingly, not compulsively. Thus, the practice of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy should be employed in the order of its name. The trick is to draw a distinction between enjoying a moment, and mentally seeking reassurance by asking yourself if you are completely enjoying and remembering a moment for sure. In any case, if the ultimate objective is to value and enjoy experiences in your life, then your best bet is to let those experiences happen without OCD telling you how to enjoy and remember them. In addition to individual therapy, the center offers six weekly therapy groups, as well as online therapy, telephone therapy, and intensive outpatient treatment. I tend to replay it at the back of my head. Memory hoarding occurs when a person purposely and compulsively tries to remember something for fear that must remember it perfectly and forever. That is not what you are doing. You are having involuntary thoughts about past events that were upsetting to you. We all have these types of memories. My problem is that when I hear certain words that were used by a bully when I was being bullied when I was young that I have a flashback to the event where he used those words. Is there any treatment for this? It is driving me insane. I am just inundated with flashbacks. I encourage you to seek treatment with a PTSD specialist. There is no reason to continue suffering. Take care. Obsessing about someone else not remembering things perfectly is pretty much the same obsessing about your own memory. I encourage you to allow your friend to remember whatever he remembers, without viewing the quality of his memories as being important. They are his memories, and it is not catastrophic if he forgets something, or remembers other things with greater clarity than you would like. Forgetting things is a normal part of the human experience. My son memory hoards wwe every move, every wrestler every logo totally obsessed with it, but why is memory so bad at homework? Maybe he just likes wrestling stuff. It would only be Memory Hoarding if he felt compelled to remember everything about wrestling with perfect detail, and if this was causing him distress. Sometimes the memories are not even mine. Some important detail? This is really frustrating and has affected my grades in college as well. My answer to that is quite simple — if your memory of a conversation is imperfect, and you mess up telling about it later, absolutely nothing bad will happen. There is no great catastrophe in not re-telling a story perfectly. It is simply not important. The bottom line is that nobody needs to remember conversations or events perfectly. And if anyone tries to force themselves to do so, they will make themselves miserable. Hi Melissa, good question! Despite it seeming to be irrational, this is definitely something people do when they memory hoard. All hoarding behaviors come down to a belief that the thing being hoarded has some unique value that cannot or should not be let go of. It is not uncommon to see someone put great effort into capturing the essence of an event they see as negative so that they may be able to recall exactly how painful the event was later. There is often a kind of compulsive justification that takes place. In other words, something causes someone a great deal of pain and they tie this to a mental ritual such as memory hoarding in attempt to make the extreme pain seem legitimate or Brilliant Memory Training: Stop Worrying About Your Memory and Start Using it - To the Full! it. Always mostly about my loved ones please help me understand as I sit here with Brilliant Memory Training: Stop Worrying About Your Memory and Start Using it - To the Full! trying to live like I used to without ocd which I believe is pure o…the last sentence in the second paragraph about trying to recall how painful an event is in an attempt to make the pain Brilliant Memory Training: Stop Worrying About Your Memory and Start Using it - To the Full! or worth it is actually opposite I relive my thoughts and memories good or bad to RULE out and reassure myself the bad thoughts do not mean anything of importance. I know it is not in the DSM, even though hoarding is. But, then I get extremely uncomfortable if I start to forget details of an event, person, place, emotion. When I have any down time like driving or trying to sleep for example its like its all I think about… there are some days that I dont do this but I find more often than not this is what I do. Its more prominant with bad memories but if a memory is profoundly good I do a simmilar thing… I try to catch it and scolled myself from doing it but I find it just goes to a different memory. I also reherse conversatons that never happened or never will happen in conection to perticular moments. Im woundering if this is an OCD that Im doing and if there is anything I can do on my own to help it, I dont have money to go to a dr. I also see some of the signs in my 12 child and I want to help him before it get as bad as mine. Sinserely, Hilda. Marie, sorry for the delayed response, this one slipped under my radar.