As I think about how to write this now I realize lately I’ve had a lot of cognitive troubles recently so it may make sense, but I hope not. My question is, how close to the present can false memories be developed?
Immediately. (Anyone who has observed paranoid delusionality as many times as I have – including in the mirror – knows this from repeated experience.)
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I do have a problem with false memories…
I have some from distant past that have never happened…
But for recent memories…
It’s like that waking up after a hard nights drinking and the pieces of the previous evening come back to you in scrambled bits.
I’ve had a few come on like that. They hit quick and would stick pretty deep.
I’ve had some that just sort of came from nowhere and I couldn’t shake them… and then they wove deeper into the gray matter.
It took a while for me to figure it out and untangle it all from my life.
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That’s scary as ■■■■, but at least I can prepare myself. Thank you guys. So much. This site and everyone here makes coping for me so much easier.
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Which is exactly what happens in PTSD… and in PTSD-induced sz.
Ditto the above.
You’re blessed. Most people with sz will never get there (without a lot of help and personal commitment).
Lots of therapy… lots of family therapy… and the false memories were so dark and sick… I don’t really have a word to describe how twisted they were…
I was getting memories of harming people I cared about. No matter how much those people told me I never laid a hand on them… the memory was so solid.
I needed to get that ugliness out of my mind if I had any hope of not getting worse.
Oh, boy; yes. This can be Dylan Klebold / James Holmes / Charlie Manson stuff when left untreated. (Eeek.) Damned happy to hear you marched up to the plate on this.
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Thanks for this thread.
I’m still trying to sort out what is real, what is not, and what was forgotten.
It’s terrifying to be honest.
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Oh, how I know. But it was the One Path up out of the swamp. And I had to take it.
Same with me. But one is from way before I was diagnosed, so maybe everybody has it at some point in their lives.
Like when you’re told a really good story by someone else, and over time you forget that it was a story told by someone else. I think a good imagination can cause it.
As for short term false memories, that sounds more serious.
I’ve had other peoples stories weave into my own… my mind just picked them up and put them in there.
I have one… It’s just silly… I have this vague memory of the time our family vacationed in Spain… (only we’ve never been there) But I was reading a lot of travel books and I was in a very unstable time… so my brain will sometimes believe I’ve been there.