False memories: What's real and how bad are they?

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 through emotion, through what you believe at that moment, and you leave out many things that were already there but weren’t important at the time. You also generalize—you lump everything together. All little boys want to attack you, when in fact it was just one little boy. Maybe it was even an accident, and suddenly you’re afraid of all the little 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 recall it, you’ll be 7 years old. You won’t remember the situation in the sandbox, but rather the last time you recalled that memory. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem so bad after all. It’s not that you actually see the streamers hanging there, but emotionally, it does feel different.

If you keep thinking about these kinds of memories during pleasant situations, at some point they’ll simply stop being a problem . For example, you might laugh about them or not remember them 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 over time. So, in essence, all your memories are false—stored incorrectly and further distorted over time. So the more often you’ve recalled it, the more distorted it has become.

So time does not heal all wounds, you do.

How false memories can be encouraged

The question is whether a memory can actually get worse. Yes. An experience that doesn’t seem very traumatic at first can become a terrible trauma when you remember it. Suddenly, that memory—which was actually okay—is distorted into a trauma, for example, due to suggestive questioning or because you feel bad every time you recall it.

With hypnosis, you can do this much faster. Take regression, for example. Through suggestive questioning, hypnosis can be used to create false memories or distort them in such a way that they begin to 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 arises when you go into regression and are presented with leading questions and false suggestions. That’s when you create strange things. They did this because they went in 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 isn’t necessarily a real memory either, but it’s less false than when you go looking for something 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 the topic of false memories: if you had a bad childhood, that, too, is a false memory. Because your childhood wasn’t all bad. There were also parts of it that were good. If you start to generalize those parts, you suddenly have a good childhood. That’s a completely 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.

Be sure to listen to this podcast as well

https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/1321117-jouw-leven-is-een-valse-herinnering

When hypnotherapy is applied correctly, it makes you less susceptible to negative thoughts and memories. This can be achieved by helping you think about the memory in a different way. One method involves using visualizations to alter memories[2].

During such a regression, you can actually do all sorts of things with a memory that makes you feel bad. You can consciously reshape the memory—for example, by looking at that memory through the lens of your current knowledge, or by using visualization to change how you see it. You can have yourself do something different, you can have others do something different, and you can even place your adult self in the situation to calm things down. You do all of this while under 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.

Would you like to see how regression can be applied correctly? Then come to a seminar where I’ll demonstrate this technique.

Want to get started right away learning how to help people with regression? Then 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