Why Do I Regularly Lose My Belongings?
Some people constantly lose their belongings. They are specialists in the field. Sometimes they just don’t know where they left their keys, phones or glasses…. They leave the umbrella anywhere and they never know who they have loaned their things to.
At other times, the situation is a little more serious. Some of them lose money, credit cards, identity documents or even some really valuable possessions. Why is this happening?
If one examines the available literature, there does not seem to be agreement in this regard. The explanation of the phenomenon depends on the concentration or perspective with which we view these cases.
Some give a cognitive explanation that mixes memory and attention. Others point out that it is a condition determined by genetics.
On the other hand, there is the psychoanalytic explanation in which the unconscious will of the person matters a lot. She argues that this situation is due to the unconscious desire to lose things for some unreasonable reason.
There are also those who argue that forgetting is linked to intelligence. How then to understand this problem?
Losing your things, a question of genes?
A study was carried out at the University of Bonn among people who used to lose their property. The researchers wanted to establish common biological models between them. They found that 75% of the participants had a variation in the dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2) gene.
The researchers then concluded that it made them more likely to lose things. As usual, the existence of these biological markers does not in itself explain a behavior. A predisposition or a potentiality is not a guarantee of success.
The director of the survey, Sebastián Markett, also pointed out that at least half of an oversight could be explained by a genetic predisposition. This would correspond to at least 10 gene variations.
A lack of attention and intelligence?
The most common explanation for this tendency to frequently lose business has to do with a cognitive factor: attention. We are not fully focused on what we are doing and that is why these oversights happen.
This lack of attention is usually due to our minds working on an issue that they are prioritizing. Either we are executing one task while thinking of another, or we are in multitasking mode. This dispersion is an obstacle to the storage, preservation and retrieval of information.
It has been argued that when a person is highly intelligent, they tend to soak up their own thoughts, to the point of forgetting the outside world (stereotype of the distracted genius). In short, she does not pay attention to minor matters and therefore often loses their property.
Losing your things, an unconscious desire?
From a psychoanalytic point of view, these losses would be the expression of an unconscious desire. In other words, the unconscious would trump the rational mind because of a desire that is not consciously recognized. The business you want to lose is lost. It is a way of expressing, fundamentally, the rejection of their meaning.
So losing your keys would be one way of expressing the desire not to come home. Losing your glasses would involve the unconscious desire not to want to see a situation. It is also possible that things are left in a specific place, because you subconsciously want to compensate those who live or work there.
Sometimes more complex forces are involved: we subconsciously want to punish ourselves. Maybe in the past few days you’ve refused to buy something your family needs or feel guilty about the financial misfortune of someone you love.
Either way, a systematic and repeated loss over time is a really annoying phenomenon, both for the person who suffers from it and for those around him. When the latter entrust a task to the person who loses everything, they have to deal with considerable uncertainty, the same uncertainty that the person suffers from.
Thus, against this genetic basis which predisposes us to oblivion, we can deploy a systematic adaptation strategy. This strategy includes good organization (agenda, notes, alarms, callback requests from others, etc.).
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