When Our Memories Lie to Us

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Image by Mary Long - Getty Images

Rain from umbrella

Wendy wasn’t just someone with low self-esteem. She had no self-esteem. She regarded herself as a deeply flawed human being and didn’t hesitate to express her self-loathing.

“When I look back on my life, I feel like I should never have been born,” she confided in me.

As a forty-something single mother, she had her only child because “I thought it would make me feel better about my life.” Even though she proved to be a good mom, she failed to give herself credit, instead insisting, “My daughter is exceptional, so the way she’s turned out is about her, not me.”

“How do you know you’re a failed person?” I asked.

“Just look at my past,” she insisted. “You’ll find all the proof you need.”

Memories of Miscues

And looking back at her past was exactly what she did, and often. Like many who think poorly of themselves, Wendy ran a persistent loop of “movie clips” in her mind, mostly memories of prior miscues, dashed opportunities and moral failures, which repeatedly reinforced her “I’m no good” conclusion.

“Frankly, your memories are not to be trusted,” I told her.

It’s well established that we use our memories to define ourselves, believing that who we have been in the past has created who we are in the present. There’s some truth to that. However, when the focus of our remembering is almost exclusively self-critical, excluding or minimizing positive happenings, this generates a built-in negative cognitive bias that runs on autopilot. 

What folks like Wendy often fail to realize is that memory can be an unreliable source of information and, therefore, of self-assessment. When she recollected negative moments from her past, she was not, in fact, recalling these events as they actually occurred. Nor are any of us when we repeatedly replay our memories.

Rewrite the Past

As one neuroscientist put it, “When we retrieve a memory, we also rewrite it to some degree, so the next time we go to remember it, we don’t retrieve the original memory but the last one we recollected.” Instinctively, we believe in the accuracy of these revised memories, treating them as entirely factual when they may be far from it. Simply put, for those who demean themselves, memories can be both inaccurate and unfair.

But don’t we need to retrieve memories to define ourselves, to see how we emerged from a series of past events? To a point, yes. Most memories contain a kernel of truth. However, some prove entirely fabricated via a process called “confabulation.” Research shows false memories can be implanted by others or us. Even recollections that are correct can be distorted by that aforementioned negative cognitive bias. 

Factual or not, each time we access a memory, we can inadvertently make subtle changes in the narrative. Despite these ongoing and usually subconscious edits, after sufficient revisions and repetitions, the mind treats it as true. Research shows if we hear a lie repeatedly, we are more likely to believe it. That includes lies or distortions we tell ourselves when remembering our past.

“Using your memories, you’re telling yourself a story about who you are that you believe to be true, but it’s based on a mental process that distorts the facts of your life as much as it illuminates them,” I told her. 

Meaning that whenever we reach a conclusion about our worth based solely on our recollection of past miscues, we are probably misrepresenting the truth about ourselves. So, at my urging, Wendy began writing down some of her more gnarly memories. When we reviewed these together, she gradually realized that, while her remembrances contained an element of truth, they also harbored lots of distortions and negative exaggerations. This exercise left her skeptical about the veracity of her downcast self-image.

We sometimes hear people say, “I can’t trust my memory.”  

And when it comes to defining ourselves, maybe we shouldn’t. 

For more, visit philipchard.com.