[Animal]

What is your earliest memory, or your earliest few memories?

How much detail can you remember? How certain are you that it's 'accurate' rather than filled in?

How old were you?

Was there a certain age after which you remember most of your life and it stops being cloudy? If so, what is it?

 

[sanari]

See http://personalitycafe.com/intj-forum-scientists/152213-what-your-earliest-memory.html for some INTJ answers.

 

[Bluity]

I remember wobbling up to a big door that had a sticker with a smiley face and rainbow on it. I asked my mom what it said and she said "it means that you're three years old." And I remember having an epiphany, as much as a toddler can have one, on how young I was, how small I was compared to her, and simultaneously thinking "That can't be right, I'm not that young, I'm 21 and in college!"

It's the most vivid memory I have, perhaps it was my first complex thought, the idea that I've only lived for three years and at some point I did not exist. I remember the blankness my mind faced at trying to contemplate how it would be if I was not here, how not-here-ness would feel like.

Don't know how I thought I was 21 though.

 

[Monsieur Melancholy]

I don't remember being born. It must have happened during one of my blackouts.

 

[Cossack]

I remember being fed bean tamales when I was ~two years old.

I actually remember the layout of the house I lived in when I was that age.

I hate to sound narcissistic, but I have a really good hippocampus.

 

[Sun Lips]

My earliest memories are of my mother being pregnant with my brother. I was four.

I remember puzzling over how the baby would get out, lol. One night, when she was very pregnant, I was laying in bed and I heard her tell my dad she felt like her belly was going to rip off. I was overcome with the horrifying realization that my mom was going to split in half and the baby would pop out. This was reinforced by the fact that I knew she had to be "sewn up" after I was born (cesarean).

Around the same time, I have a memory of overhearing my uncle jokingly say that "pretty girls don't poop." I have no idea what he was talking about, but I became very upset over the fact that I do indeed poop. I came to the conclusion that it meant I wasn't pretty. My mom caught me crying in the bathroom and asked what happened, and when I told her, she went and smacked my uncle on the head. I only know these two events were close together because my mother was late in pregnancy for both of them.

I feel like I might vaguely remember some things from earlier in my life, but these are my earliest clear memories.

 

[nádej]

I remember sticking a rock up my nose at Wheeler Park by the monkey bars when I was two. At a family reunion. My cousin Annie was playing nearby. I remember my uncle trying to get the rock out with tweezers. I remember everyone freaking out because it was stuck. I remember going to the hospital and sitting in a huge chair while the doctor got it out and I cried.

I have very vague and fuzzy like flash memories from before then, but nothing sequential like this.

 

[brianbsmiley]

My first memory is of me in a bookstore with my dad when I was about two years old. I somehow got separated from him and calmly walked up to the lady at the counter and told her that I was lost and can't find my daddy. About a minute later my dad and I were reunited. I remember just walking around and not being worried because I knew that everything would be okay. I was surprisingly calm as a toddler and rarely got upset or worried from what I was told...just kind of did my own thing haha

Another memory I had when I was about 3 was when my mom was in the hospital because she was giving birth to my brother and I remember what the room looked like too. Also, there was a memory a little after that when I was moved to the downstairs bedroom because my baby brother had to be in my old room closer to my parents upstairs and one night I remember leaving the downstairs bedroom, walking into the living room and looking up the stairs and how dark it looked and I wanted to claim my room back! But the stairs looked way too dark and I decided to sit on the couch and contemplate why my parents didn't love me anymore and why this new "thing" was taking over...haha

 

[heaveninawildflower]

I was three and I drank some charcoal lighter fluid. I only remember not being able to breathe and my mom putting me in the car to take me to the hospital. I don't remember anything else about it.

And my first memories of my parents fighting was around that age (when I was 3)...the fighting, yelling, stuff hitting the walls. It was quite scary but I got used to it as I got older.

 

[mimesis]

I remember sticking a rock up my nose at Wheeler Park by the monkey bars when I was two. At a family reunion. My cousin Annie was playing nearby. I remember my uncle trying to get the rock out with tweezers. I remember everyone freaking out because it was stuck. I remember going to the hospital and sitting in a huge chair while the doctor got it out and I cried.

I have very vague and fuzzy like flash memories from before then, but nothing sequential like this.

I had that with a dime, when I was a bit older. My mother wasn't at home, so completely stressed I knocked the door of the neighbors. He asked what was going on, but I felt so stupid and ashamed that I just started crying pointing at my nose.

Anyway he got it out with a tool, and so strange, it had turned into a quarter!

My oldest memory was when I was two. I had walked alone to the school where my sisters went, and knowing the route already from going there with my mother every day. And one time I decided to do it on my own and I found my sister on the playground. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to join class, but I remember my sister asking the headmaster, so I understood the language also, although from scientific research I know (parts of) memory, in this case their words, could have been filled in later.

 

[Judis]

I remember the dim orange light, not really about to do anything but enjoy the tranquility and occasionally listening to the muffled noises... And then being summoned.

Age: unknown.

 

[Thalassa]

I remember being fed bean tamales when I was ~two years old.

I actually remember the layout of the house I lived in when I was that age.

I hate to sound narcissistic, but I have a really good hippocampus.

You may just have good Se. I have seen Ni doms say things like their earliest memories are hazy, generalized and symbolic.

I'm not completely questioning your type, but I've had someone call me an INFJ from another web site, and I am an ISFP and I remember my entire childhood home in vivid sensory detail.

Clearly the more you're "present" with your senses the more vividly you remember the details of the thing. I read somewhere that in an official MBTI survey of types, ESFPs are actually very good with History, despite stereotypes about ISTJs.

I remember the way our laundry hamper smelled, the spots in the grain of the natural wood in the hall (we lived in a log cabin), our old olive green princess phone (everything was burnt orange, olive green and brown before age 7, my grandmother was probably an ISFJ and I was born at the right time to have grandparents with 70s furniture in my formative years, before it got replaced with 80s frilly pinks and blues and faux "rich" things like candle sticks on the electric fire place and blah blah, my high school friends in the 90s said my grandparents house looked like a hotel).

I also remember having dreams of being born. How trippy is that, to remember dreaming as a three year old child? I had to be two or three I was in my "little bed" (I got a bigger bed at three or four and my pink-walled bedroom with shelves for my numerous stuffed animals, I wasn't a doll kid). I remember waking up terrified in my little bed from my nightmare of being crushed by what I associated with the pink raw hamburger I saw in the kitchen sometimes before dinner time.

 

[Snow]

Vaguely remember what the apartment buildings my family lived in looked like, when I was somewhere between 3 and 6. I have a poor memory though and don't remember a whole lot from my earliest years.

Scratch that, I distinctly remember stealing a butter knife from the dishwasher, putting it in my overall pocket, and trying to walk out the kitchen with it. (I was caught and laughed at I think, lol. I had to be around 3 or something.)

 

[monemi]

I remember playing hide and seek when I was 2/3 in my Grandparents pub and I wasn't supposed to hide out front. I remember the air was blue and made my eyes sore and my throat tickle. I remember the big, big men with tattoo's winking at me hiding under the table waiting for the big kids to find me. I had a toy rubber tarantula that I carried around with me everywhere. I liked the rubber texture and it looked real enough that it freaked the grown ups out. It was as big as a man's hand and I liked making grown ups scream. I got distracted by the darts board and watched for a long time before I was found. They didn't know I was playing hide and seek and thought I'd left the house and when they didn't see me in the pub, they had called the police. The policeman let me try on his bobby helmet.

 

[Thalassa]

See I don't think a poor long term memory is a sign of anything. My sister who SWEARS she's an ENFP (maybe she is, what the fuck do I know, but she seems an awful like an ESTP or an unbalanced ESFP with Te from hell) says she doesn't anything before the age of eight. My mother, an ESFP, thought my sister was lying. "Yes, you do." My mother insisted. My mother is a lot like me. "Remember that time Daddy blah blah blah...and this one time your aunt Donna...ha ha isn't that funny?"

But my sister swears she doesn't remember anything before the age of 8. And I saw another ENFP say he'll probably forget his own son's birth, it's just something he knows about himself. WTF.

Being me, I noticed that before the age of 6-7 EVERYTHING was important (most shrinks will confirm this), then after 7 or 8, selectively, then things were intense during my teens and early 20s, but now I feel like I've been alive so long that I have to let unimportant things go.

I am pretty sure now that this is what John Melloncamp meant in "Jack and Diane" when he says "long after the thrill of living is gone." That line used to make me angry. Hell, I am still thrilled to be alive. But seriously when you're 8 or 16 you really do place a hell of a lot more importance on every single second that happens to you!! And philosophies like Buddhism attempt to "re-teach" us this kind of presence as adults, because you begin to take life for granted at some point in your twenties or thirties, even if you're still doing new things and thrilled to be alive.

I think your brain can only handle so much though like you have to prioritize the "important" things, and "important" things get more and more filtered as you become an adult.

So like I could have dementia at 80 and still be talking to you about my olive green princess phone and the Colgate pump Madness jingle from the mid-1980s and asking you if you'd seen my high school bff.

My grandfather was a fucking brilliant man, and in his final days, sometimes he got up at 5 am and put his work boots to go to work at a job he'd retired from like 15 years earlier.

Of course he was an Si dom, but with me or my mom, I think it would be more like story-telling. I know a semi-senile 82 year old ESTP and he tells the most MAGNIFICENT stories about things that happened 20, 50, 70 years ago. I think I know now at least how SJs and SPs lose their shit...SJs repeat familiar old patterns and SPs tell stories about things that happened 728 years ago.

 

[Sara Torailles]

My first memory was asking my mother what my name was when I was around 3 or 4.

 

[FacePalm]

I am a highly visual driven person and I barely have any visual memories from the past...only very fragmented and vague visual impressions is all I've got...which requires a lot of focus and energy to bring them up on my mental screen...audio is my least used intelligence (Visual > Kinesthetic > Audio)...but oddly enough I can remember my favorite music in much better clarity and able to play them back on demand in pretty good fidelity...which sucks cuz I'm a designer...wut the hell do I need good audio memory for?

Anyone else in the same situation? Visual driven but has better audio memory than visual?

 

[stillakidatheart]

I don't know how old I was, probably when I couldn't walk, but when I think of my earliest memory I think of looking somewhat up at the structure of city buildings and the lights at night. I don't even know if it is an accurate memory, it is so faint. And could be a false memory, lol.

 

[Cossack]

You may just have good Se. I have seen Ni doms say things like their earliest memories are hazy, generalized and symbolic.

I'm not completely questioning your type, but I've had someone call me an INFJ from another web site, and I am an ISFP and I remember my entire childhood home in vivid sensory detail.

Clearly the more you're "present" with your senses the more vividly you remember the details of the thing. I read somewhere that in an official MBTI survey of types, ESFPs are actually very good with History, despite stereotypes about ISTJs.

I remember the way our laundry hamper smelled, the spots in the grain of the natural wood in the hall (we lived in a log cabin), our old olive green princess phone (everything was burnt orange, olive green and brown before age 7, my grandmother was probably an ISFJ and I was born at the right time to have grandparents with 70s furniture in my formative years, before it got replaced with 80s frilly pinks and blues and faux "rich" things like candle sticks on the electric fire place and blah blah, my high school friends in the 90s said my grandparents house looked like a hotel).

I also remember having dreams of being born. How trippy is that, to remember dreaming as a three year old child? I had to be two or three I was in my "little bed" (I got a bigger bed at three or four and my pink-walled bedroom with shelves for my numerous stuffed animals, I wasn't a doll kid). I remember waking up terrified in my little bed from my nightmare of being crushed by what I associated with the pink raw hamburger I saw in the kitchen sometimes before dinner time.

I get what you're trying to say, but I my memories aren't NEARLY as vivid and detailed as yours. It my just be that my Se is more developed than the average INFJ? I've watched TONS of videos explaining the different subtypes and I've related to the INFJ the most put of all of them.

PM me if you'd like.

 

[Animal]

Anyone else in the same situation? Visual driven but has better audio memory than visual?

Oddly enough, I am auditory all the way.. EXTREMELY auditory all my life, it's crazy. Music was my first language and I recognize people I haven't seen in a while by their voice. I can remember songs easily. But when I look back at other memories, the things I remember are less auditory and extremely visual. How strange.

Here is something odd. Sometimes I have a long conversation with an old friend on the phone. I tend to pace and do chores or take walks on the phone. When that topic comes up again, I remember exactly where I was standing and what I was doing with my body while this topic came up. My kinesthetic memory is the best out of any of the 'senses' and my conceptual memory is key - once I understand a concept, I can remember most details with accuracy, as long as I can place them somewhere on that 'map' spawning from the conceptual center. Once I remember the concept & where my body was, I can picture all of the visuals that were around me (even if I barely seemed to be paying attention to them at the time) and I can remember some of the specific words that were said.