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How detailed are your false memories?

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How detailed are your false memories?

Postby OCDsauce » Wed Mar 11, 2020 5:35 pm

I have what I believe to be false memory ocd but man is it detailed. Like sensory details, conversations, and little things like washing hands and worries. I can even remember things I've thought of while the supposed act occurred. The only thing I can't find is 1: a reason for the act to occur. 2: a date for the act to occur. 3: a complete lack of reaction after the supposed act from me and the supposed victim. It seems like life went on without an issue. But it is highly detailed. Anyone else?
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Re: How detailed are your false memories?

Postby Bert the Turtle » Thu Mar 19, 2020 1:44 pm

This is only an occasional thing for me, but when it's bad it can really be something. I've never gotten full conversations, but my OCD can replicate sensory details and short fragments of thought, action, and speech in convincing detail. This is more in the line 'you clearly did not lock that door, see, you remember leaving it open because you were distracted by such and such!' But I could definitely see it being much worse.

I'm not very experienced with how to deal with false memories, so grain of salt, but often when I pull mine apart I find they've been constructed from similar but totally innocuous memories of things which actually happened. So, to invent an example, if I have a false memory of telling a loved one something really cruel, if I examine it carefully and without panic I'm likely to find that I did talk with them but what I actually said was completely normal, but maybe it sort of slant rhymed with something really mean and I stuttered a little bit when I said it or spaced out after so the memory of it wasn't solid.

In retrospect, even if what actually happened is very clear, it seems like the smallest uncertainty gives my OCD an in to construct an alternate narrative out of a collage of snapshots and sensory impressions.

Recognizing exactly where and how it happened often diffuses the anxiety. This can have mixed results though. In my experience, you can't really correct a false memory like that after an hour or two. After that it just blurs hopelessly into imagination. And if you can't do it calmly, and get the results you need, it can turn into a form of panicked checking and spike you.

That said, being able to trace smaller fake memories like that to the source and see how they can be formed of real but actually innocuous memories has been a real comfort to me, even when I can't knock a particular one down so easily part of me still knows how my OCD achieves the effect.
Mere "anxiety," as Heidegger says, is at the source of everything.
-Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"
-Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
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