Is it weird that I can remember things from before I was born?

[NDR2]

I could talk before I was 2, so I do have some vague memories of that time. I actually remember sleeping in a crib.

I definitely know about life before I was born through music, books, movies, reruns of TV shows, photographs, and even magazines and newspapers from that time. There’s no way I could know the experience of life before I was born, but I certainly remember the things I’ve seen and heard and can at least have a feel for it.

 

[Atrapa Almas]

It's weird, whenever I hear certain Christmas songs I get reminded of Christmases in the late 80s when my brother was a baby - and this was before I was even born. I wasn't born until 1990.
My parents didn't even live in the house I grew up in, they lived in an apartment where I spent the first year of my life but don't remember the apartment. Yet I get a clear picture in my mind of my parents at Christmas in the 80s, with my brother as a baby, and the environment in the typical 80s style.

Can this happen? Can you get memories of life before you were born? Or is it that I have a strong imagination where I can only imagine what it was like?

The way people (mostly NTs) do sincronize their brains is amazing and is being researched a lot this days.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-waves-synchronize-when-people-interact/
I think it is entirely possible that from conversations with your family, your own connection with them and your knowledge of that years, your brain has created the scene and stored it in the same place that your direct memories are.

It may even be accurate.

One of the difficult things after my self diagnose has been to take my memories, re-process them with my current autism knowledge and store them again as new memories that I never experienced but are more accurate.

Memories are so influenced by emotions and beliefs that are not that reliable. At least mine.

 

[Crossbreed]

Are you piecing a memory together from old photos or conversations?

On a related note, old recordings...?
Audio/video tape, Super 8...?

 

[MildredHubble]

Memory is quite a strange thing. Lots of experiments have been conducted to see how memory can be influenced by suggestion. One experiment involved telling subjects that they went for a ride with their family in a hot air balloon. They were told that the event had taken place and pretty soon the rest subjects began to "remember" details from the experience and were convinced that the made up event had actually occured.

So we can never be sure if our memory is 100% reliable. My trick to try and be sure is to assess whether or not I can "remember remembering" an event before. In my earlier post I talked about the "hatched pattern" I had often recalled this memory as far back as 3-4 years old and some of the circumstances. What cemented it for me was seeing the photographs that I could remember being taken. Everything slotted into place.

I guess the more you are told about events, the more it can influence you picturing the event and your mind automatically places you within that scene and over iteration after iteration it takes on the qualities of other genuine memories.

I guess when it comes to memories you have to go with your instincts as to what feels most accurate and acknowledge that it could be inaccurate and you can only be so sure.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

View attachment 121868
Meant as an explanation to a previous poster.
I think it is part of imagination based on stories and pictures you have seen. I have the same, but from when I was very little. They do feel like nice 'memories' eventhou I know they cannot be memories. Only difference is I actually know people told me about it, and that is why I created the images around it.

Thank you for the visual explanation. When I was doing research I was always on guard against confirmation bias.

 

[Cryptid]

Setting: a Psychic Faire in the late 1970s, where I was working part-time as general labor . . .

A "psychic" once gave me a short history of an alleged past life of mine. Then she offered perform (note the word) a regressive analysis of my "seven past lives". I declined her offer. Later, as I was sweeping up near her booth, I overheard her give the exact same "reading" to someone else. Even the names she dropped were the same.

That "psychic" was fake, fraudulent, and exploitive of gullible people with money to spend on frivolous things.

 

[AGXStarseed]

Setting: a Psychic Faire in the late 1970s, where I was working part-time as general labor . . .

A "psychic" once gave me a short history of an alleged past life of mine. Then she offered perform (note the word) a regressive analysis of my "seven past lives". I declined her offer. Later, as I was sweeping up near her booth, I overheard her give the exact same "reading" to someone else. Even the names she dropped were the same.

That "psychic" was fake, fraudulent, and exploitive of gullible people with money to spend on frivolous things.

Sadly the case in stuff like this.

When you partake in something that requires belief and provides no scientific proof, it's easy for con-artists to slip into if they're charismatic/believable enough and if the person they're talking to is desperate/gullible enough.

 

[Gerontius]

I have a powerful imagination and feel like I could remember flashes of very early infancy. But as far as earlier I used to think I could remember little moments of the way back before my parents' childhood. Grandparents era more like. I feel more at home the way I live which is mostly like the early 20th century. But I don't think I actually remember it. I just have a powerful imagination and I feel nostalgic for this because I grew up hearing from my grandparents and so the life they described almost feels like a comfortable headspace for me.

I'm sitting in a comfortable old wingback chair right now, drinking percolator coffee and listening to the evening news on a cathedral radio by the light of a 1920s Craftsman-era floor lamp. Life is good.

 

[Misty Avich]

If I think deeply I seem to remember being in a fetus my mother's womb, but I don't believe I can actually remember it, it seems more like something my brain has made up.

But with the strong nostalgia from Christmas songs, it's a deeper feeling.
I do have a very good autobiographical memory where I can remember a lot of moments from childhood in colour, and can also remember a lot of toys I had, what all my classrooms looked like, and more.
I trust my memory, because I always remembered what my preschool looked like (along with a few memories I have of being there), and I proved my memory right when I visited there as a teenager when I took my little cousin there. It was just how I'd remembered it, and I only have one photo of me at preschool, and that was taken outside the building, not inside.

 

[The Pandector]

I was 18, at a girlfriend’s house, telling her about a vivid daydream I had. Her mother was into psychic phenomena and dreams, overheard and got very intense. She asked a bunch of questions and decided I had seen ‘the silver cord’. She told me that serious spiritualists and meditation types practiced lifetimes and not attained to that experience, that it was expected to be life changing.

Dunno about all that, but I can still see it in my mind, and yes it was very much like an umbilical cord floating by, although that didn’t occur to me as I was trying to explain it. As I recall her explanation, some experts think it is a memory while others think it’s some metaphysical connection to the universe.

Hunh. That would be the last time I felt connected to the universe.

 

[Suzanne]

Since it is said that mothers and fathers to be, should talk and sing to their unborn child, highly suggests that it is likely that is the unborn child can hear, otherwise, what is the point?

 

[Neonatal RRT]

Since it is said that mothers and fathers to be, should talk and sing to their unborn child, highly suggests that it is likely that is the unborn child can hear, otherwise, what is the point?

Absolutely. Working in the neonatal unit we have to be especially careful with the hearing of our premature babies. Soft voices, speaking in whisper tones, adjusting the volume downward on monitors and alarms on bedside equipment, etc. It's one thing to be inside the womb and rather insulated from normal, everyday noises, but once a premature baby is outside the womb, they don't have that barrier. The premature baby, much like someone with ASD-3 with sensory issues, may not be able to "habituate" (filter out sensory information and prioritize), and can be quickly overwhelmed by seemingly innocuous sensory input like temperature, light, sound, smell, touch, etc.

https://www.healthychildren.org/Eng...At around 18 weeks of,same level as an adult.

 

[Aspychata]

I do remember sitting in a highchair with grapefruit and being squirted in the eye when l inserted my utensil in it. I remember other things also. But womb experiences l don't have. I remember being at my parents party, and they gave me a cigarette to take a puff out of for entertainment value. I doubt l inhaled as a toddler. I am sure my mom would totally deny it.

 

[Crossbreed]

I do remember sitting in a highchair with grapefruit and being squirted in the eye when l inserted my utensil in it.

That sounds like a scene from The Three Stooges...

3Stooges

 

[MROSS]

Might reincarnation be a possibility? The question is asked from open-minded, impartial perspectives - that is the thinking where reincarnation is viewed as inconclusive.

The Forum 'Past Life Forum' prefers to avoid the "new agey nonsense" surrounding past-lives, and offers thoughtful skeptic's points of view:

https://reincarnationforum.com/

 

[Cryptid]

Since there is no way to tell the difference between a baby with a soul that will go to Heaven or Hell, a baby with a soul that has been around before in other bodies, and a baby with no soul at all, it follows that the idea of a soul adds nothing to our concept of a human being. Applying Occam's Razor, both the idea of reincarnation and the idea of an immortal soul that will go to Heaven or Hell are equally unfounded and unnecessary.

 

[UberScout]

..So I'm not the only one.

I knew it. All this time, I knew that there were others like me, who had this... This gift.

Pilot... I was a WWII pilot. Before I was Tyler.

My name was Adolf...

I think I was shot down. I see an artillery shell piercing the wing of my plane.

There goes the parachute...

That's all I can see...