The Woman Who Remembers Everything: What it's like to live with the memories of your best days and your worst nightmares
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The Woman Who Remembers Everything: What it’s like to live with the memories of your best days and your worst nightmares

By Mix9p
October 18, 2026 2 Min Read
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Rebecca Sharrock remembers almost every day of her life.

The 36-year-old suffers from a rare condition called highly superior autobiographical memory, or HSAM, which means she can remember vivid details from her past, even when she was a young child.

“I live with constant random flashbacks of a jumble of experiences – negative, positive, mundane – and they run through my head all the time from random ages, for example, they can go from three years old to 20 years old, then seven years old to 16 years old, and it’s very difficult for me to fall asleep at night,” Rebecca said. The Independent from her home in Brisbane, Australia.

For Rebecca, who also suffers from autism, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, it can be difficult to let go of troubling memories. She said HSAM and OCD “get along like a house on fire” and the two conditions feed off each other.

“I have a hard time letting go of my emotions, my thoughts, and with HSAM that extends to more and more memories that I can’t get rid of,” Rebecca said.

Rebecca Sharrock, a 36-year-old from Brisbane, Australia, suffers from a rare condition called highly superior autobiographical memory, or HSAM, which means she can remember vivid details from her past, even when she was a young child.
Rebecca Sharrock, a 36-year-old from Brisbane, Australia, suffers from a rare condition called highly superior autobiographical memory, or HSAM, which means she can remember vivid details from her past, even when she was a young child. (Rebecca Sharrock)
Rebecca remembers the day Princess Diana died in 1997, when she was just seven years old.
Rebecca remembers the day Princess Diana died in 1997, when she was just seven years old. “My sister and I were taking a bath, and mum was washing our hair, and then my aunt just called and she said, ‘Oh, the Princess of Wales is dead.’ (Rebecca Sharrock)

While many people have a hazy memory of a day when a world event occurred, Rebecca can recount it with extraordinary precision.

When asked about August 31, 1997, the day Princess Diana died, Rebecca recalled in detail her family’s reaction to the tragic news.

“I was seven. I wasn’t allowed to watch the news until I was 11 because mum said it might be a bit scary for me, but I heard a news report because my mum and my aunt were over, and my sister and I were taking a bath, and mum was washing our hair, and then my aunt just called and she said, ‘Oh, the Princess of Wales is dead,'” Rebecca said.

Dr. Craig Stark is a professor of neurobiology and behavior and principal investigator of the Stark Lab at the University of California, Irvine. Her team studied HSAM and diagnosed Rebecca with the disease in 2013, when she was 23, after two years of testing.

Stark says he and his team validated the memories of people with HSAM by asking questions about public and private events.

“For a number of these people … we can check against things that are actually public,” he said. The Independent. “Some of them kept a journal, and it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, they could go back and study their journal.’ Yes, they could, and then they come with several boxes of newspapers and you’re like, “Oh.”

For someone like Rebecca, who also suffers from autism, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, disturbing memories can be harder to forget. She said HSAM and TOC 'get along like a house on fire'
For someone like Rebecca, who also suffers from autism, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, disturbing memories can be harder to forget. She said HSAM and TOC ‘get along like a house on fire’ (Rebecca Sharrock)

HSAM is a rare condition in which people have an exceptional ability to recall autobiographical memories. Although Stark says it’s impossible to know exactly how many people have HSAM, researchers have identified about 100 people worldwide with the condition.

A famous example is actress Marilu Henner, best known for the sitcomTaxi which took place from 1978 to 1983.

Henner offered a positive outlook on HSAM to students at the University of California, Davis, during a visit to one of psychology professor Charan Ranganath’s classes last February.

“Developing a better autobiographical memory is the best defense we have against absurdity. Because then our lives count for something,” she said, according to the university magazine.

A famous example is actress Marilu Henner (pictured right), best known for the sitcom Taxi, which aired from 1978 to 1983.
A famous example is actress Marilu Henner (pictured right), best known for the sitcom Taxi, which aired from 1978 to 1983. (Getty Images for Hallmark Media)

Stark said he and his team found that people with HSAM have elevated obsessive-compulsive tendencies. The professor explained the process that people he studied with HSAM go through to remember the days of their lives.

“They turn the day into a diary or a version of the day posted on social media,” Stark said. “And that’s what they remember very, very well. They think about it many times – repetition over time, repeated practice. They have a structure and all that. They relate it to other events.”

“We’ve known for thousands of years that these things improve your memory. And Marilu Henner is sort of right that the rest of us just don’t do it. (People with HSAM) do it, which improves their memory for autobiographical events,” Stark explained.

Dr. Craig Stark said he and his team found that people with HSAM had elevated obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
Dr. Craig Stark said he and his team found that people with HSAM had elevated obsessive-compulsive tendencies. (Craig Stark)

Rebecca said she enjoys organizing her memories, which she attributes to her OCD.

“It’s like in my head, hypothetically, I have a binder and I like to organize them by months and years and days,” she said. “When I was a kid, with my obsessive-compulsive disorder, I was afraid of forgetting things. So when mom said to me, ‘You just have to put your memories in a box,’ I would say, ‘But I’m afraid of forgetting them and missing a part of my life.'”

Rebecca is a lover of classical music and foreign languages, using her passions to distract herself from the unwanted memories that constantly come to mind.

She said that when she has trouble falling asleep at night, she listens to classical music. “I anchor my mind in relaxation by simply imagining that my thoughts and feelings are the notes of the music, and that helps me a lot,” she said.

Rebecca has been taking medication to manage her OCD since she was 16, but stress can make some days more difficult than others.

The Woman Who Remembers Everything: What it's like to live with the memories of your best days and your worst nightmares
“I live with constant random flashbacks of a jumble of experiences – negative, positive, mundane – and they run through my head all the time from random ages, for example, they can go from three years old to 20 years old, then seven years old to 16 years old, and it’s very difficult for me to fall asleep at night,” Rebecca said. (Rebecca Sharrock)

Rebecca cannot drive or pursue a traditional career due to her health.

“If I were to just stay in one place all day and do what I have to do, I would have to constantly ground my mind because of the flashbacks,” Rebecca said. “I had to choose a job that involves writing and doing creative work that relaxes my mind. So it still keeps me busy, but relaxes me. And learning languages ​​takes my mind away from flashbacks because I have to focus on either learning the instrument or learning the language.”

She has been taking classical guitar lessons for three years and will start violin lessons next year. She also learned to speak Spanish and French and almost finished her Italian lessons.

Rebecca released her first book, My life is a puzzlein 2024, which provides a chronological account of his experiences from birth to age 30. She is working on her next book titled My life in sketches.

“For many years I wished I was like most others. I wished I didn’t have OCD, I wished I didn’t have these HSAM experiences, I didn’t have my autism issues, and that mainly causes my anxiety,” Rebecca said. “I’ve been thinking over the last five years that because I’ve never experienced life differently…it would be disruptive to suddenly have to adjust to a different life.”

Rebecca hopes that more research into HSAM can help better understand the brain. “We need to learn a lot more about what exists in our world rather than what exists outside our world,” she said.

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