Not sure where to put this exactly…
Do you think back much on better times? Do you doubt your memory of them, or feel you don’t have them? I guess this will depend a lot on whether you had a happy life before your illness. But if you did, do you feel that it helps you in your journey forward or just makes it worse not going back to exactly like how it was?
I think back to how things were at a much better time in my life and honestly it depends on my mood for how those thoughts make me feel. Sometimes I get very upset…
I’ve been ill since I was 13 and remember nothing prior, so I have nothing to look back on. 
I don’t remember most of my entire life because most of my life was traumatic. So, I’ve forgotten just about everything. I live very much in the NOW.
Sometimes I can remember snippets of my very early life and I remember being held as a child and taken care of, and that is good. But none of us, even if we weren’t ill, can really go back to that.
Them who?
Not trying to be funny, just need clarification of ‘them’. Is “them” the same as “they?”
By them, I mean the good times. Do you know they were real or are you not sure if they were a dream?
My memory is too good. I remember a lot of stuff I’d just as soon forget, good and bad. Hard to explain, so I won’t.
Do I think they were real, yes, of course.
Is it important to remember this stuff?
Well, sure, if it makes you happy, then what is the harm.
Quite honestly, how can you prove anything from the past was ‘real’ if your talking about how you felt, and what good would it do to try to prove otherwise?
i have a lot of fond memories of my life before i got sick, i was a college student going into electrical engineering. i had my partner. and most important I DIDN’T LIVE WITH MY IN LAWS! anyway not that my parent’s place was much better
It’s not really about proving it. Sometimes I see old home video and it triggers a memory which can be very detailed, and other times I randomly think of weird things on my own. Things that have no context or reason to remember, like putting laundry in the hamper at about the age of 3 or 4. Like why would I recollect that? But it’s neither good nor bad.
I guess it would make more of a difference if I had delusions about my family, which I don’t really. I had some anger at them but I’ve been able to forgive them because they didn’t know what to do, they’re just regular people.
didn’t like school much and the only good times i really look back on is small things to do with childhood and a year of ‘fun’ taking in too many substances which became paranoid very quickly
I didn’t know how to fit in… and had a pretty isolated life before becoming a drug user
I was bullied awfully and extensively. But yet there were good times. Swimming and camping. Grandma’s house. A few times I felt really connected to people.
I think back to 12-13 years ago when I was married and my kids were little. There were happy times. I also think back to about 4-5 years ago. I had a 100K a year job, a great Mercedes, I was insanely fit, I felt beautiful. I had a wonderful apartment in a super neighborhood. We lived right across from my kids schools. My kids lived with me. I took my kids out to eat all the time. It wasn’t perfect because I always worried about my job which I eventually lost but I had a taste of stable for awhile and I wasn’t MI. I never let myself go back then like I do now. I have no energy to shower, do my hair and make-up or go to the gym. I miss my apartment days and I do think about it.
I kinda meant more on the lines of, if you had a good memory of the past, why place any importance on it being factual?
I’m not thinking of out and out fibs kind of stuff, but is there much harm in a good memory if it wasn’t as real as it should be as long as it gave you pleasure?
I’m constantly amazed to hear my older brother recite tales of his childhood that I was part of, and many things were definitely not how I remembered them.
Why do we remember things not so good anyway? What’s the purpose of it if it has no benefit today…especially if it wasn’t as correctly recalled?
just thinking outloud here.