Can’t Remember My Childhood in an Orphanage

Reader’s Question

I am 50+ years old and as a child I was put into an orphanage — but the thing is, I don’t remember this. They told me I was 7 years old at the time. I have also blocked out the life I had before I went there. I don’t have a clue what my life was like and no one to tell me either as I was left there and no one had come back for me. Can you please tell me how I can remember things that happened so I know who I am? It’s such a long time not to know and to live with this frustration.

Our Consulting Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

I doubt that your search will produce positive results. You can do document/court searches but that won’t tell you about who you were. Your memory won’t be of much help as well. Childhood memories are actually very sparse, even when we have a happy childhood. We don’t remember much below age 4 because the brain has difficulty cataloging/sorting our experiences. Under stress, the brain doesn’t record very well. People often try to elicit memories by looking at pictures, newspapers, or listening to music of that time. I suspect whatever you find, it won’t be what you’re looking for… From a memory standpoint, we rarely “block out” memories — athough that makes great movies and stories. It’s more likely that you made few memories of those very stressful years.

Psychologists have theories about everything… I would suspect you’re having identity or depression issues and are looking for some information in your history/past/childhood that may shed some light on your current situation. Depression causes us to go on a life review — to play our mental video back and second-guess our past decisions. Depression also focuses on the worst aspects of our past, especially (as in your case) “unfinished business” — events with no closure, things that happened but we don’t know why, people we never said goodbye to, etc.

You are who you are now, not who you were then. Rather than take on an impossible mission to find something that probably isn’t there, I’d focus on your current situation. Counseling would also be helpful as you determine what is creating who you are now rather than in the past.