As I wrote in another thread it’s hard to tease out false memories from delusions/false beliefs.
The ones I have had include (1) Voting in a referendum I couldn’t have done because I was on a locked ward at the time (2) losing many teeth(has come true many years later) (3) Writing a minor pop hit (4) going back to school for many years after I had actually left (5) having levitated my feet off the ground (6) My wife having left me for several months and then got back with me.
The first one I have only recently proved to be wrong after 40 years thanks to google but still a part of me clings to it being true . In my mind I can actually picture myself going into the voting booth and the ballot paper saying to stay or leave.
All of them I have challenged and put aside only for them to resurface at intervals.
There is an obsessive persistence to delusions/false memories that allows them to surface,disappear and resurface.
Sometimes reality and unreality seem blurred round the edges and yet often I consider myself never to have this problem that what I think has happened has really happened.
Do you ever have a hard time determining if something was a dream or not? I find that when real life feels like a dream (and not in a good way), it makes it harder to distinguish dreams from reality. Especially because I tend to have extremely vivid and detailed dreams that feel very real.
I have had that a few times.
So how do you tell the difference between a delusion in regards to a false memory, and a dream you actually had?
Good question but not one I can easily answer.
Me neither. I wonder if it’s a mix of both, though.