78 - Exploring Hyperthymesia with Frank Healy

Connect with Frank:

Website: https://www.healyshealing.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Memoryhealing/

Connect with Samantha Foote!

Website: www.everybrainisdifferent.com

Email: [email protected]

TRANSCRIPT

 This podcast is for parents like you, navigating the world of neurodiversity with love and compassion. I'm a neurodivergent mother of three amazing neurodivergent children and a board certified music therapist. Our mission is to create a supportive space where you feel understood, connected, and inspired.

With practical tips, strategies, and resources, we'll help you and your child thrive in your unique way. Join us as we dive deep into the diverse world of neurodivergent individuals exploring topics like ADHD, autism, dyslexia, sensory processing challenges, and more. We'll cover it all to empower, educate, and uplift both neurodivergent individuals and those who walk alongside them.

Together, we'll create a world where every brain is valued and celebrated. We're excited to embark on this enlightening journey with you. We are your hosts, Samantha Foote and Lauren Ross, and this is the Every Brain is Different podcast.

Welcome to the Every Brain is Different podcast. Today, I am here with Frank Healy. Uh, Frank, he, he remembers every day of his life since he was five years old. He remembers the day of the week, the weather in his area, news events, and personal experiences. In 2011, Frank was a research subject at the University of California and is one of about 90 people who may have classified as having highly superior autobiographical memory.

You can ask him any day in the past 49 years, and he will tell you the day of the week, the weather, and what he was doing. Frank works as a licensed professional counselor, helping people heal the emotions from past trauma, and he's a life coach who helps people improve their memory skills. Welcome to the show, Frank.

We're so happy to have you. Yes, it's a pleasure to be here. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you are involved in the neurodivergent community? Well, I, I keep in touch regularly with, with someone in my area who is also, she has the NLVD that's become popularized in recent years and a possibility I might get more involved with my local neurodivergent community after I retire, probably about three years from now.

Because since I was five and I'm now 64, I think what I sent, when I sent you and Samantha was It's an old autobiography. So it's now 58 years of daily memories. And I also keep in touch with a few of the other subjects who were studied at University of California who also have what I have. And the technical term is hyperthymesia.

And I had to, I'm not going to lie, and there was a couple of words I had to Google how to pronounce that because I was like, I've never, you don't hear those words often. Yes, well, I think, and ironically, as a writer, I've also written books on healing your past. I wrote a novel, The Unquiet Sea, and they're all available.

On my website and on Amazon and as a writer, I would have preferred the popular name of my gift to just be called superior autobiographical memory. It's more grammatically correct. I like that one was easier for me to say than the hyper. Whatever. That's okay. Um, can you, can you talk us more about like what that is?

Yes. Well, what it is, is it's a memory that has more to do with the autobiographical than sit down and memorize a poem or, or you have a bunch of faces with names on them and then take it away and then you recite the, match the names to the faces. It has, it's not really that. It's more to do with remembering episodic events in our lives.

So of course, most of us. Remember days and events that were of high emotional significance, either for better or for worse, like happy days, like wedding or birth of a child. Most of the days a loved one died or maybe get a romantic breakup or getting fired from a job. But for me, it's like every day of my life is like one of those really good or really bad days.

Cause I remember even the day when not much happens out of my ordinary routine, I'll remember something about it. Okay, it's very interesting. When did you kind of realize that that wasn't the norm for most people? It was kind of early on, like, like it started one week when I was homesick from kindergarten with this disease that I hope has been eradicated by this time, chicken pox.

And I, and I was too sick to really even be up playing with toys. And it happened that my uncle Billy down the street had just given me a calendar for that year, 1966. So what I did was I looked at each block in the whole calendar and pictured in my head and played the tune in my head of what would be on Prime TV that night.

And so that's how I Wow. By the end of the week I realized, hey, I know what day of the week, every day of this year is gonna fall on, and that particular year, 66, then I knew, ah, my birthday, May 21st, will be a Saturday, Thanksgiving will be the 24th, and Christmas will be a Sunday, and so then from that week on, as every day of my life went by, I'd make mental notes about what date it is, when something would happen, So, and it just developed, and I've never gotten out of that thinking habit.

Did your parents notice anything, or were they just like, that's cool, or like, what was that like for them? Well, they noticed it, but, and it wasn't really, they didn't think of it as anything bad. They just got the idea that I had better be a good student in school if I can do that. A few months later, uh, I was telling this man, a friend of the family, that on Thursday, August 4th, we were in the bay, near the beach, and my dad took my brother and I rowing on a boat, and he, he, he was not too experienced with rowing, and he dropped an oar at one point, and the guy said, Do you know that's different?

I mean, I don't know what I did on August 4th, and that's when I started realizing that I'm unique that way. Can you talk about maybe the cool things about being able to do this and kind of maybe the detrimental or things that you've struggled with because you have this skill? Well, it's often when people first hear about the skill that I have, they immediately think, Oh, that's pretty cool.

You can remember all the fun you've had in your life. And well, that is true. But the downside is I remember even a little bad days, like maybe a bad day I had at work. Like Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006, I remember running a drug and alcohol group and during the break, one of the clients went outside to his car and smoked some weed and then came back into group.

And I was also in charge of running the place that night because the supervisor had left. And then there was a raccoon on the ceiling that looked like it was going to jump off at somebody of the building. So remembering the bad. things and all of that actually led to my becoming interested in psychology because I thought, well, since I'm never going to let go of any of these memories, I would like to at least be able to let go of the feelings and emotions from the bad memories.

So I learned about CBT, cognitive behavioral, how changing your thoughts, and I've even learned some help, self help techniques about releasing unwanted feelings, such as the tapping. tapping and a couple of others. And now, but for three of my books, I've written over 20 and I. I, I teach people how to let go of so that people with post traumatic stress, especially how to let go of the feelings from the bad memories because they're not likely to let go of the memory, but help them get to a point where if the memory pops up in their head, they'll just be like, Oh, so what?

No real emotion attached behind it, but yeah, retain the feelings from the good memories. How do you help someone who maybe has, like, repressed memories? Like, they know they've been through something traumatic, but they've, like, completely blocked it out. Well, what I do is I'm not certified in hypnotherapy or anything, and hypnotists have had limited success with bringing up the memories, but I think the important thing with that is what I do is really Have the client journal and think about what beliefs they might have developed from, uh, a bad memory.

For instance, if they're victims of rape or incest, it might be, uh, a fear of sex, a mistrust in people. But then some rape victims actually go to the extreme, and the other extreme, they become a daredevil and have it with anybody. And, which is, which of course, as we all know, isn't good either. Or looking at how somebody will, uh, you know, their beliefs as well as phobias, like what their feelings are when they encounter certain things, like maybe somebody who might just happen to look like someone who they had a bad experience with.

There's that, and then Or maybe if somebody saw, somebody saw some, a dog attacking some kittens, they might develop a fear of dogs. So, or if they got bit themselves. So it's, so it's important to, the beliefs and the feelings are usually enough to help people without them having to recall the actual memory.

Because, usually when, when a past memory pops up. The feelings and emotions surface long before the details of what went on and what the memory actually was. In recent decades, even the field of counseling and psychology has recognized that you don't have to get to the exact memory. You can just deal with the feelings and beliefs and change them around.

Okay, I like that. I think it's always important to like focus on how things made you feel and then especially if that leads to beliefs and things that kind of hinder you, hinder you, the future, yes. Yes, and it can even be such things as you mentioned hinder you. So I immediately thought of procrastination and people who, they can get excited about their goals, but somehow procrastinate or maybe have trouble finishing something or else trouble even getting started.

So I can work on that too. And there are techniques in my books, like, like some visualizations where you overpower the feelings from a bad memory with the feelings from a good memory, you kind of go back and forth. Think of the bad memory and all its details, sight, sounds, how your body felt, if there were any scents, or if you were tasting anything, and then let that go, and then the good memory for a longer period of time, like maybe if I had them visualize the bad memory for two minutes, then have them visualize the good memory for five minutes, and then go back and forth between the two until it gets to where you want Okay, bad memory doesn't matter to them anymore.

They don't feel anything for it. Do you have any tips on how to improve your memory just in general? Well, a lot of these have been, like, these techniques have been popularized by Harry Lorraine, Dominic O'Brien, and the former basketball player, Jerry Lucas, who once memorized, he was played for the New York Knickerbockers, and in the early 70s, he memorized the entire New York City phone directory.

And like a lot of it, it's creating a so pictorial associations and, uh. I'll give an example, uh, you want to remember somebody whose name is Pete, Peter Burns, and he has a son named Pat and a son named Jake. So, what you could imagine, and maybe if you're lucky, he happens to be a redhead, so that can help with associating it with fire, so, and burning.

So, you might, you might, when you see him, don't tell him you're doing this unless you become friends, but imagine him with rabbit ears for Peter. And then his red hair could be a fire. And then you could also imagine two boys watching the house burn down from a distance. One's holding a cat. So that's Pat and another one's holding a snake and he's Jake.

So rhyming. Rhyming, just like word association, things like that. Awesome. Yeah, that's it. And, um, so that's, uh, So that's the way, that's the way a lot of people do it, and people, in fact, I was just talking to someone about this earlier today, people often have trouble remembering names, because a lot of times when you're introduced to somebody, you're thinking, all these thoughts going on in your head, what shall I say, how do I look, and all that, so, so when they say their name, you're actually not paying attention, so it's not that you forgot it, it's like you didn't remember in the first place, Yeah.

So it's important to just pay attention. Generally, people will, you'll come across better to people if you're focusing on them than if you're thinking about, Oh, how am I doing? What kind of impression am I making? Being a little bit more mindful and you're interacting with, right? Yeah. That's right. Do you have any tips for parents or just other people who may be interacting?

With children or others who have this interesting skill set. Yeah, so I would say, I would say that encourage it, but I would say on the one hand encourage them to develop that and don't ridicule them that they're weird or anything, but I would also say encourage them, the kids to be well rounded if the kid seems to be like so obsessed with this that maybe They don't make friends and don't pressure them real hard to do well in school, just encourage them to do their best in school.

Because like, for me, it was like a, I mean, you, you might, you asked me about good and bad aspects of it before. Well, when it came to school, well, the good part, of course, kind of a captain obvious that I was good at memorizing information, but the downside to is that sometimes my head would be so flooding with Memories and going over facts that it was hard to like pay attention to what was right in front.

So, I mean, when I, when I was a kid, they didn't yet diagnose kids with ADHD, but I think because of my hyperthymesia, I think I might've had a mild form of that. Oh, absolutely. Do you ever find that it's just too much? Like memories happen, like. All at once, and how do you cope with that, or like tame the memories back down?

Well, I've learned over the years to not only, as I said, that I teach people to let go of the feelings, and sometimes some self talk can help me to think, uh, I don't want to think about that. I, I, I want to, and then deliberately come up with a better thought to think. Because. The longer you think about anything, the, the bigger the emotions that you have about that will grow inside you.

So in having a, a negative, even whether it's a negative memory or a negative thought about yourself, your job, your environment, people, it's good to immediately try and replace it. And sometimes that can, and often that can involve some self talk to be able to do. Like you might say to yourself. I've got to stop thinking about this.

It's only going to get me angry or maybe depressed or anxious, unless you're either dead asleep or in a deep meditative state. When you let go of a thought, a new one pops up right away. So, so it's important to make a deliberate effort to make the new thought something better than the thought that you were just thinking, like a better feeling thought.

Okay. I like that. I do a lot of self talk for myself, so. Well, it's good for you, Lauren. Yeah. Do you, I know you mentioned a few of your books and stuff, but do you have any other resources or things for our listeners that might interest them? Well, I think, well, right now my, my, my website is being revamped and tomorrow I'll visit my stepson for a birthday party and I'm going to maybe, uh, heckle him a little bit.

Come on, how much longer this is going to take? I paid you to have it done by the end of October. Uh, and my website is healishealing. com. And, uh, one of my books I wrote was Who Could Forget. which is a memoir of what it was like to have this memory and some of the interesting situations I got into, but it also includes tips on how to remember things better.

So, how to remember events in your life better. Okay, cool. Definitely check those out and we'll make sure that we get links and stuff in our show notes, the correct links. And then are you on any social media or is there anywhere that people can follow you? Healy's Healing is my Facebook page. I'll get that for you.

And well, I'm sort of on and off with Instagram. Perfect. And then our last question that we have for you is what do you do for fun? Well, I live in the New Jersey shore area. It's um, sort of south of Atlantic City, but north of Cape May. I live about 15 miles inland, but My mother in law lives right, right on the bay in the, in the resort of Stone Harbor.

So we go, we go there a lot, like, well, swimming season ended a couple of weeks ago, but I, I'll swim in the bay and I'll swim in the ocean, take walks on the beach. And, and it's probably very easy for you all to imagine that I enjoy playing quizzo in clubs. So I don't think I've ever heard of Quizzo. Oh, maybe they don't have it out in Idaho, but it's very big on the East Coast.

It's where you, you get with the team, like you can come with friends and you're given questions with categories to answer. It might be sports, entertainment, music. Get local history and even presidential history. And so you'll get together and ask questions. And well, I used to play, I used to play it a lot more when the friends that were on my team were still alive.

It was a lot of older people. Do you feel like you have a slight advantage to. Things like that, or trivia or, yes, I would say in the, well, we often won, in fact, in 2016 our team, uh, came in first or second, almost every week, the whole year. So, uh, I'm a big help with that of course. And, uh, yeah, I've brought you on my team,

Yeah. So, well, awesome. Yeah, and I also, well, I also enjoy singing karaoke and I'm on the praise team in my church. I was never much for playing the instruments, but I, I do, I do enjoy singing and, uh. Love it. Love to hear it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and I have found this very interesting because it's not something that we hear about often.

So it was very educational for me. So we'll, we'll make sure we have stuff in the show notes. Listeners go check it out and we'll see y'all next time. Thank you for listening to this episode. We hope the discussion on neurodiversity has provided you with. support, understanding, and inspiration. If you found our podcast valuable, please share it with others who may benefit from our insights and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

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