Memories and Depression: Part Two

Memories and depression. You may be thinking that there are some things you don't want to remember, maybe things which you believed led to this old depression.

But that is not the point I am trying to make this week. Apparently we depressed folks tend to overgeneralize when we remember. This overgeneralizing works against us. At least that is what this Oxford study suggests.


The study is about a phenomenon they call 'overgeneral memory', which is a tendency to recall past events in a broad, vague manner. The study suggests that by recalling past events in a vague way, we miss the opportunity to remember why something good was so good.

Without detailed memories to draw upon, dispelling a black mood can seem impossible. Patients may remember once having felt happy, but cannot recall specific things that contributed to their happiness, like visiting friends or a favorite restaurant.


Does this ring true for you? Do you recall happier times in detail? Go ahead. Try it. Try to remember a happy time in detail. I will too. Let me see....

I will recall the first time I held my first child, Tammy, in my arms.  In those days you did not have the baby in the hospital room with you, the nurses brought the baby to you every four hours. She was swaddled in pink striped blankets. She was chubby,  jaundiced, with lots of black hair. She kind of looked like a little Eskimo. But I thought she was the most beautiful sight in the whole wide world.

What love I felt, what pride, what thankfulness for such a healthy baby (despite the jaundice). And I was  thrilled to have survived a difficult labour and delivery. I was elated, too excited to even sleep. (Didn't know I was bipolar yet) I wanted to tell the whole world that I had just given birth to the most beautiful baby in the world. I felt like there was nothing I couldn't do now that I had done this great thing. Even the annoying woman in the bed next to me could not rob my joy. I wanted to stare at my baby until I memorized every detail. I can still see her now.

I can see the hospital room, pretty standard, two beds and mine was not the one near the window. I had never spent much time in a hospital before that so I was quite surprised at how noisy they were. 

This was a small town hospital, and so anyone who was visiting the hospital for any reason often stopped by the maternity ward to look in the window of the nursery and see who had a baby recently. You could hear them talking from my room. I could hear comments like 'who had that dark little Eskimo baby there?' She really was jaundiced and so with that and then the dark hair and the fat little face, she did look different.

Now there is a flip side to this story which I am not going to share. It was a difficult labour and delivery which went on for 36 hours. I could recall those details too but that is not going to cheer me up. We are talking about recalling good memories and recalling them in detail.

So, that is my recall. How did yours go? Do you think there is any validity in practising detail recollections of good memories?

This study also indicates that they think there might be a connection between people who over-generalize in their remembering and a tendency towards depression.

What do you think?

There is one more interesting aspect of this theory about memory and depression that I would like to discuss with you next time in part three.

WHAT ABOUT YOU? How are you feeling today? Do you have trouble recalling memories in a positive way? Go ahead, practice!