Your whole life is one big false memory. In science, they already agree that memories are changeable and they don't exist. This means that if you experience something when you are five and you are going to remember it later, you will think of a situation that you have already distorted at that time, leaving out many things.
You distort it by emotion, by what you believe at that moment, and you leave out many things that were already there but were not important at that moment. You also do the generalizing, lumping everything together. All the little boys want to attack you, when it was just one little boy. Maybe it was even accidental and suddenly you are afraid of all the boys in the sandbox.
How memories can distort themselves
This doesn't just happen, it happens over time. For example, you're six and you remember. For example, you have your birthday and suddenly the conversation turns to the sandbox and that little boy. But there are streamers, there's cake, there's a cheerful mood and your grandmother jokes about it and you burst out laughing. That is then carried into your memory.
The next time you remember him you will be 7 years old. You then remember not the situation in the sandbox, but the last time you remembered that memory. Suddenly it's not so bad again. It's not that you see your garlands hanging, but emotionally it's different.
If you keep thinking about these kinds of memories in fine situations, at some point it becomes something that just isn't a problem anymore. You can laugh about it, for example, or you don't remember it at all.
This is also a kind of evolution. For example, you used to be afraid of something, but not anymore because of all the distortions. This is also because you have matured and can look at that moment (and all the distortions) with your current knowledge. Your memory distorts into the person you are now.
That real moment no longer exists; it has been distorted by time. So essentially all your memories are false. Falsely stored and then distorted over time. So the more often you have remembered it, the more distorted it is.
So time does not heal all wounds, you do.
How false memories can be encouraged
The question is whether a memory can also get worse. Yes. A seemingly not very traumatic experience can become a terrible trauma if you remember it. Suddenly that memory that was okay is distorted into a trauma by suggestive questioning, for example, or when you feel bad every time you remember it.
With hypnosis, you can do this even faster. With regression, for example. Through suggestive questioning, you can use hypnosis to create false memories or distort them so that they feel worse. This happened in the 1980s and 1990s.
Then they started looking for cases of abuse. They also found those in hypnosis with psychotherapy. A lot of men were then innocently arrested and detained. Years later they were released, because it turned out not to be true after all, but those daughters still had the idea that their father had abused them. Because that was what they remembered, so then it is so.
Only that memory was created.
So at the time, regression was seen as something very dangerous[1].
Only that is not dangerous at all. Incompetent psychotherapists are very dangerous. Our memories exist anyway and regressions are actually done every day. If someone asks you what you ate yesterday you also go into regression.
It's not a dangerous thing to do. It might depend on what you ate and with whom. But basically, it's not dangerous because you're already doing it daily. Your memories are not the problem either, because you already distort those too.
The problem is when you go into regression and you get all leading questions and false suggestions. Then you create crazy things. They did this because they went into regression with a preconceived plan. When you don't have a preconceived plan, you can't ask leading questions and then something just comes up. This is not necessarily a true memory either, but it is less false than when you search with a preconceived plan.
For example, when you are in hypnosis and you do a regression. Then the therapist can say:
"When you were little, you used to sit on your father's lap." "Yes."
"Did he ever touch you, too?" "Yes."
"Also your knee?" "Yes."
"Any higher?" "I don't remember that."
"Then you probably suppressed that."
If you do it that way, you can imagine getting caught up in it and getting memories that don't exist and didn't happen. That, of course, is very bad.
To then blame technology for your own incompetence. That's interesting, I guess.
This came from Freud's idea that everything is repressed trauma.
How to make something right with a false memory
This exists, of course, but people know when they are suppressing trauma. Personally, I don't believe in suppressed trauma that doesn't bother you. Because then there is no problem. If someone is feeling fine, then it is very unusual when you start talking about suppressed trauma.
People who know what happened in the past, feel bad about it and suppress it, who know they are doing that. They dare not let go of that. Then regression can help them let go and you get healing effects.
Then you can completely positively change someone's entire life in two or three sessions.
But looking for something that doesn't exist goes nowhere.
To return to false memories: if you had a bad childhood, that is also a false memory. Because your childhood was not all bad. There were also parts of it that were good. If you start generalizing those, then suddenly you have a good childhood. That's a whole different foundation on which to build your life.
I used to have a good childhood. But did I? Then if I start remembering all the bad things, suddenly I had a bad childhood. I'm not going to do this, because I feel fine with my childhood.
But you can look at it that way and vice versa. Things have actually happened, but how you store and remember them is not a fact in itself. Over time, this can be so distorted that you can question how real that memory is.
With regression, you are not going to find out the truth. After all, this is not doable. What we do know for sure is that if you feel very bad about an event and you are still suffering from it now, with regression you can change your view of that event, so that it no longer bothers you.
We can do this because we have false memories and because we can distort them.
Because of this, therapy works well, otherwise you would always suffer.
With hypnosis you can reform things quickly, and with regression you can look for where the distortion started. Then you can fix the problem so that you now have only positive feelings.
Also listen to this podcast
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/1321117-jouw-leven-is-een-valse-herinnering
When hypnotherapy is applied properly, it makes you less susceptible to negative thoughts and memories. It can do this by helping you think about the memory in a different way. One way this is done is by using visualizations to change memory[2].
In fact, in such a regression, you can do all sorts of things with a memory that makes you feel bad. You can consciously distort the memory. For example, by looking at that memory with your knowledge of now, or you can use a visualization to change the memory of how you see it before you. You can make yourself do something different, you can make others do something different, you can even put your adult self in the situation to calm things down. You do all this while in hypnosis and the hypnotherapist helps you change that memory.
Would you also like to know how to help people (or yourself) with false memories so they suffer less from them? Come to the free online master class for an introduction.
Want to see how regression can be properly applied? Then come to a seminar where I demonstrate this technique.
If you want to get started right away learning how to help people with regression, enroll in one of our training courses.
Also pin this handy infographic:
Sources:
[1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rstb.1997.0155
[2] https://www.intechopen.com/online-first/cognitive-hypnotherapy
