your brain is hoarding your worst memories on purpose

why you can remember the time you got laughed at in public with 100% accuracy, but can barely recall any time YOU made everyone laugh

I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but I can tell you with crystal clarity every humiliating detail of the time I threw up in front of my ex boyfriend in my dorm room after a date. I've forgotten the names of people I've gone to school with for years, but I remember the day my high school had a bomb threat like it was yesterday.

My brain is apparently running some twisted version of Marie Kondo's organization method, except instead of asking "does this spark joy?" it's asking "does this spark existential dread?" And if the answer is yes, congratulations—you get premium storage space in the vault of memories I'll replay when I can’t sleep for the rest of my life.

The Unfair Filing System

I find it genuinely offensive how my memory works. I can watch a beautiful sunset and forget it by Thursday, but one awkward interaction with a cute cashier will live rent-free in my head for decades. I've lost entire conversations with people I love, whole afternoons of laughter, countless moments of peace and contentment—but that time I accidentally said "love you too" to the uber driver? Of course THAT is the interaction I can replay word for word, pause for pause, cringe for cringe.

My brain has apparently decided that the most important thing to remember about my senior prom wasn’t that I was slow dancing with who I thought was the love of my life, but that I almost choked giving him head later that night. The dancing and screaming at the top of my lungs for hours? Barely recoverable. But the thirty seconds of overwhelming anxiety and nausea? Permanently stored in the back of my brain.

It's like having a personal assistant whose only job is to document your failures and ignore your successes. "Oh, you had a lovely dinner with friends? Let me just delete that to make room for more storage of that time you mispronounced 'lychee' in front of the boba store employee."

And the thing is these memories are insanely vivid. I can remember the exact scent of the library where I’d spend all my lunches alone junior year. I can still feel the texture of the table I was gripping when I found out I got rejected from my dream college.

But ask me about the day I got accepted to the school I actually attended and loved? The day I got my first job? The day I met my closest friends from college? I’d have to rack my brain to remember, and even then, it wouldn’t be a complete picture.

I can barely remember my childhood, but can recite every criticism I’ve ever received word for word. It’s like we're all walking around with these detailed archives of our worst moments, carrying them like emotional hoarding situations that we can't seem to clean out.

"Remember when you were fifteen and you thought that your crush was waving at you so you waved back but he was actually waving at the person behind you?" my brain asks. "Let's examine that moment from every possible angle for the next hour and consider how it shaped your entire sense of self-worth."

It's seriously like having a sadistic museum curator living in my head who only gives tours of the lowest moments of your life. "And here we have the time you said 'thanks, you too' when the waiter said 'enjoy your meal.' Note how this memory has been perfectly preserved with all the supplementing details—the color of the tablecloth, the sound of your friends’ laughter, the exact temperature of your embarrassment."

The Evolutionary Betrayal

After doing some deep diving frustratedly, apparently, this isn't some mistake in my brain’s wiring. It’s intentional. My brain is hoarding these awful memories on purpose because, evolutionarily speaking, remembering dangerous or embarrassing situations was supposed to keep me alive. The idea was that if I could vividly recall every social mistake, every moment of rejection, every time I was hurt, I'd be better equipped to avoid similar situations in the future.

Thanks, evolution. Really helpful in the modern world where most of my "dangers" are social awkwardness and the possibility of looking stupid in front of strangers at Target :).

My ancient brain hasn't figured out that remembering every embarrassing interaction isn't actually protecting me from the saber-toothed tigers and cannibal cavemen—it's just making me too anxious to try new things or meet new people. The memory of bombing that presentation in high school isn't keeping me safe; it's keeping me from taking risks that could lead to growth.

How these Memories Shape Us

The most insidious part of this memory hoarding is how it shapes the story I tell myself about who I am. When your brain's greatest hits are all lowlights, it starts to feel like that's all you are—a collection of mistakes, awkward moments, and rejections.

I know logically that I've had thousands of successful interactions, moments of connection, times when I was funny or kind or impressive. But those memories slip away almost immediately. It’s only the failures that stick like superglue.

Lately, I've been trying to do some archaeological work on my memory vault, digging around for the good stuff that my brain apparently deemed "not important enough to remember." It requires actual effort—like forcing myself to recall the details of compliments I've received, moments when I felt proud, times when I made someone laugh.

It's harder than it should be. These positive memories feel slippery, insubstantial, like I'm trying to hold onto water. But they're there, buried under layers of archived embarrassments and preserved heartbreaks.

I'm learning to actively collect these moments now, to pay attention when something good happens and consciously file it away with the same intensity my brain automatically applies to disasters. It's like being a memory archivist for my own life, fighting against my brain's natural hoarding tendencies.

What I’m slowly realizing is that maybe the solution isn't to forget the bad memories—maybe it's to remember them differently. These preserved disasters aren't just evidence of my failures; they're proof that I survived. Every embarrassing moment in my mental museum is actually a testament to my resilience, evidence that I can endure awkwardness and rejection and still show up the next day.

That throw-up incident in front of my ex? It taught me that I can recover from humiliation in front of those whose opinions matter most to me. All those social mishaps and professional stumbles? Taught me that it’s okay to laugh at myself, and sometimes it’s really not that deep.

My brain might be hoarding my worst memories, but maybe that's not entirely a bad thing…? Maybe it's just keeping receipts of everything I've overcome, building a collage of my own durability. Every preserved disaster is also preserved proof that I'm stronger than I think.

Maybe the trick isn't to stop my brain from being a memory hoarder—it's to become a better curator of what those hoarded memories actually mean. Not just "here's every way you've failed," but "here's every way you've failed and kept going anyway."

And honestly, that’s enough of a reframe for me to treat myself with more kindness next time I remember something else embarrassing from the last decade.