Once Upon A Time, We Told Ourselves A Story...
Why we might be unreliable narrators of our own memories.
I have a memory as clear as day.
I’m in the living room of the house I grew up in, and I’m with my Mum. She’s looking out the window and I’m bouncing up and down to a song on the radio; Happy to be Stuck with You, by Huey Lewis and The News. (You’ll be relieved to hear that the reason for this is because it’s the 1980’s and I’m a baby).
This memory is crystal clear in my mind.
I can see our misjudged, overly-patterned curtains. I can smell the familiar daytime scents of lingering morning toast and syrupy cereal remains, leftover by teenage boys rushing off to school. I can even taste the varnished pine-wood of my cot, which I would slobber my curious baby-mouth against when on a break from bouncing.
The problem with this memory is that it can’t possibly have happened.
I wasn’t living in the house I’m remembering until I was two-and-a-half, by which time I was no longer slobbering on cots - and hopefully over my Huey Lewis phase!
My cot was never in the living room, so the bars of my little pine prison have been added in for cinematic effect. (But whatever, maybe it’s a metaphor, yeah?!?)
It’s incredible that false memories can feel so real. I’d previously thought this innocuous; the mind playing tricks, or me just getting caught up in the phantasy of nostalgia.
In fact, what I’m learning is that we often mould, or hold onto part-memories because they serve a key purpose in our narratives.
My Mum had recounted that time so often that my mind recreated it as a memory, using artistic license to pad out the extra details.
I find this both fascinating and ..disturbing.
Perspective and associated emotion is crucial in memory recollection. They show this in the TV series, The Affair, repeating events via separate experiences of the characters, showing the viewer how vastly different the recollections were for each, and leaving us wondering which account, if any, accurately represented what happened.
We can have a judgement bias when we look back on events (he was wrong, she can’t be trusted, they don’t care about me, etc. etc. etc.) which can distort the memory itself, as over time, the event becomes more distant but the attached emotion holds its potency.
The Pixar movie, Inside Out (yes, it’s a kid’s film, no I’m not sorry, yes you should watch it) depicts the personified parts of the mind, and shows memories being generated then stored as either joyful, sad, angry or fearful.
I’ve often spoken to siblings (I have many many of them) who remember a shared experience totally differently. Is anyone inaccurate here, or do all memories hold a kind-of truth by the way in which they manifest in us?
Over time, the event becomes more distant but the attached emotion holds its potency.
I’m currently studying Trauma and the subsequent developmental behaviour of the psyche. A common result of Trauma is memory loss and/or a subsequent reconfiguring of events in order to cope with the experience.
Yet again, that primal instinct in us will do whatever it takes to make us feel safe.
We tell ourselves a story about past events, and you might have heard people (or me) talking about ‘scripts’ that dominate our personal narratives.
In the case of Trauma, this might manifest as part-amnesia, editing out traumatic occurrences and re-narrating a happy and calm childhood, for example. Another script might be that you’re not good enough, so you hold onto the memories that support that theme, and are likely to discount the ones that don’t. Your script might be that you’re a total winner! - so you only recognise the instances that reinforce that.
What gets more tricky, is when we become entangled with someone else’s scripts.
Parents are often (unknowingly) guilty of projecting a script onto their children. An anxious caregiver might repeat memories of how happy their child was, more to convince themselves that they did a good job. An avoidant parent might persistently tell the child they’re strong and brave; not the type to get upset or cry.
This could cause a splitting in the child’s psyche, whereby their felt emotions don’t tally with what they’re being told about themselves, which then might distort into shame; I shouldn’t be feeling like this, what’s wrong with me?
Memories are not so much jigsaw pieces, as pieces of a Lego set. We fit them together to build something that makes sense to us - but different people might construct the set differently - especially if following a manual written by a parent (or abuser).
In order to look after our mental health and heal the psyche where needed, we might choose not to attach too much importance to the details of memory, but focus on how experiences made us feel, and how that may have informed subsequent actions or behaviours.
We can view memories as a storybook for us to explore and find meaning (a cautionary tale, one of adventure, a story of redemption, one of loss or reinvention) whilst understanding that its interpretation can be fluid rather than set in stone.
It may seem whimsical (I just wanted to get that word in there), but by understanding that ‘Memory-Lane’ will inevitably be part-fairytale, we can celebrate the magic, name the witches and goblins, and hopefully find peace in the idea that it’s a book we can close, when we’re ready to start a new one.
(N.B. This is not to diminish the multi-faceted and lasting effects of Trauma, which is not touched on here. This simply offers a perspective on the link between memory and personal scripts).
…Anyway, enough for now, I have client calls with a talking wolf and a mermaid who’s trying to walk. Laters!
The Spin
Memories take the shape and form of whatever emotion you associate with them.
We very rarely remember every detail of an event, but will remember the parts that held significance for us, or served to tell us something about ourselves/others.
Our minds might deliberately distort or erase certain memories in order to keep us safe OR in order for us to hold on to a narrative that don’t want to let go of.
We shouldn’t see memory as a factual history book, but an embellished memoir that’s been written to communicate key themes. It’s important to recognise what your own themes are.
Adding More Weight
Article: A Surprising Link Between Creativity and False Memory
Article: Can Dreams Cause False Memories?
This awesome book on Trauma and Recovery
Option To Go Deeper
How would your own fairytale read?
Take some time to properly reflect on your own life experiences. Imagine your life written up as a fairytale. Who would the main characters be (good, bad, evil, hero?) What would the main themes be? How would it end?
The Wind Down
Season one of The Sinner is a brilliant watch and very much on-message this week
Watch (or re-watch, as I often do) Christopher Nolan’s Inception - still never sure I quite get it 😂
And go on, dive into fairytale with Snow White and the Huntsmen
I wonder whether, following trauma, some of us don’t rewrite our memories with a negative bias. Which is self-destructive, I suppose. Really interesting read, Hannah, and thought-provoking as always.
This is really interesting. I teach a part of behavioural economics where we explore memory biases. I found this article on how we shape our own narratives really interesting as well; https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/400796/