False Memories

[cuckoomamma]

Maybe a year or two ago I remember reading a thread about adult kids who remember things that either never happened or don't remember things that did. I tried a search and wasn't able to find it so figured I'd start a new one. With peers who also have grown children spanning early to mid twenties, we're seeing that some of these adult kids are angry about things that never happened, or are angry because they wanted to experience something and don't remember that they actually did experience it. I think someone brought up in that thread a discussion about attending sports games and either the teen perceived that the parents never came and they actually were there every game or the opposite.

And, while it can be superficial in nature, it also applies to things that are definitely not superficial. So, examples run along the lines from "you never allowed me to X" when not only was X allowed but there were no limitations on how or when, to gross mischaracterizations of family life and treatment when growing up.

There doesn't seem to be anyone who is weighing in and swaying the way things are remembered by these kids to a huge degree, but the change in what's "remembered" now versus previous years and the contrast to what the adults have lived through is dramatic.

I don't remember if there was a biological reason for this or how you all have felt this is best handled. It reminds me of Prince Harry and how he "remembers" never riding a bike as a child and yet we've all seen the numerous photos of him doing so. I know that he has substance abuse effecting his memories and there's none of that in the cases I'm talking about, but it's a similar level of, "wth????!!" not just a little difference in perception like, "I thought the curtains were yellow and you remember them as green".

It's really strange and, to be honest, unsettling. So, is this biological and eventually the more accurate memories return or is this something potentially more serious and more uncommon than what our small sample size indicates?

 

[Katy]

I don’t have enough information to comment on biology vs not, but human memory is so notoriously unreliable that police detectives assume it’s a lie if witness statements are too similar. 

[Starr]

My mom and sister and I remember the same events differently. It became a family joke. It can sadly cause distress. 

[Indigo Blue]

I feel my memories are much more accurate, and my parents seem to grossly forget the awful things they did. Not to sound arrogant, but I strongly believe this is true. 
 

My boys seem to remember things pretty accurately. The way I remember things and the way they remember things are pretty similar. 

[Momof4sweetkids]

I don't remember a lot of my childhood, only the high highs and lows lows. I just had a conversation with my mom about discipline because I never remember her disciplining me, only my dad disciplining too harshly. She told me she was the major disciplinarian and my dad rarely stepped in. 

[Indigo Blue]

I am certain I have never seen my mom hug either of my brothers. She has hugged me as an adult, rarely, and I have no memory of her hugging me when I was young, except for the times when she caused me to burst into tears after she was angry, then later sometimes there might be a hug. If my mom or dad hugged my brothers now, I would do a double take. My dad didn’t hug them, either. Never. My rare hugs from him were just a few side hugs. 
 

There were no I love you’s, either. There have been a few written in a card and mailed to me after she blew up at me for some reason. It was a Hoover move and a non apology.  I don’t think it’s ever been spoken. My parents never said it to each other or to my brothers. 
 

My dad never, ever hit me. He never disciplined. He couldn’t have been any more hands off as a parent. I remember my mom chasing me in a circle while swatting my legs with a flyswattter, holding me by one arm and swinging with the other. I remember the red marks. I don’t think I have it mixed up.

 

ETA: I have seem my gc brother stand in the kitchen sorta leaning on mom and having one bent arm on her shoulder the way guys sometimes do. She just stands there and makes no effort to do any sort of semblance of hugging in return. It’s sad. 
 

 

Edited March 9, 2023 by Indigo Blue

[Pawz4me]

I think it's normal for people to remember things differently. A big part of that is what any individual focuses on--some notice one thing and not another. It's one reason eyewitness statements often vary. To a certain extent we all really do live in our own little world.

[bolt.]

It's perfectly normal for people to both construct 'memories' and also to modify or discard them.

Children do it more than most. People under stress do it more than most. People lacking sleep do it more than most. (And most people do it plenty, as a baseline!)

Therefore I'd be shocked if *anyone's* young adult children's recollections of their childhoods matched the memories of the parents who were also there. And I'd be equally surprised to find that *either* set of memories accurately represented objective events.

This is simply a perfectly normal and healthy way that human cognition functions. Memory draws itself into alignment with narrative and meaning-making efforts. It's not something that anybody has control over. In order to keep it healthy, it's a good idea to keep the 'narrative' and 'meaning' elements of the story a person tells themself about themself on the healthy side. Once the narrative becomes darker as a whole, you can't count on memories to 'hold the fort' against that sort of thing.

Edited March 10, 2023 by bolt.

[Not_a_Number]

I'd encourage you to think of the memories as saying something. A kid who says "you never went to my games" probably feels like their sport wasn't important to you. A kid who says something wasn't allowed probably feels like it was discouraged. Or maybe that something else important wasn't allowed. 

Statements like these need to be inspected for emotional and not factual content. Talk about the feelings, not the facts. 

Plus, like people are saying, there's no reason to assume your memories are fully objective, either. 

Edited March 10, 2023 by Not_a_Number

[maize]

Memories tie to emotion; if, for example, a person is feeling depressed or sad or angry or lonely, they will recall memories that match those emotions and may be incapable of accessing memories that do not. So for example a person who is feeling lonely may only remember other times when they felt lonely, and think that their entire life they only experienced lonesomeness.

[Brittany1116]

My older boy has a false memory of getting in trouble in preK for something, and us disciplining him further at home. My husband and I vaguely recall his "yellow card day" and the other kids involved, and know that we didn't have the reaction he claims we had. We actually laughed at the absurdity of the situation as he presented it to us recently, until he dissolved into tears, swearing we reacted in a way that husband and I both deny. 

[LucyStoner]

I have a sibling who maintains that many things that were specific details of my childhood are actually his experiences.  Not stuff that we both experienced in different ways, actually cribbing from my life stuff that in no way happened to him. He also confabulated a lot of stuff about his childhood that is definitely not true.  

[Guest]

I remember that thread because I had a specific example of this with my son. He took a music minor in college and, upon hearing about all the rich musical family background his classmates had, he declared that he was so bothered that “we didn’t really emphasize music in our house.” I’m like, are you mad??? I had my kids in Kindermusik and similar classes from early toddlerhood. They had many thousands of dollars in individual instrument lessons over years and years of homeschooling. I played all kinds of cassette tapes in the car for “car-schooling”, including Songs in Spanish (*I* can still remember this songs!), Wee Sing tapes, patriotic songs, holiday songs, songs around the world, and How to Sing tapes. I was in choir; dh plays guitar. 
 

It was honestly mind-boggling to me that he remembered us “not really emphasizing music”. I was like, “Would you like to see my expense sheet for all the checks I paid to Mr. Rob (our instrument teacher)?” 

[Navymom]

I am interested in this. So how do we know what the actual truth is? How do we know if we have false memories? 

Most things are of little consequence, but certainly there can be times where the truth really matters.

Is therapy the only way to tease out the truth? Especially when one person remembers an event one way and another remembers something totally different? 

Edited to add-I think my memories are true, but there are some things that are so outlandish that I question myself....

Edited March 10, 2023 by Navymom

[cuckoomamma]

Thank you all for weighing in. The instances I’m referring to are just like what Quill or Brittany1116 is referencing - just really mind boggling absolutely-didn’t-happen stuff. And, there’s definitely anger involved at what the adult child perceives did/didn’t happen. 
 

I’m going to think about and pass on what Not_a_Number has mentioned regarding it being more about feelings than fact. It’s just been unsettling to experience when some if not many of the instances involve things/events that were very consciously done (like Quill’s music example) and now is angrily “remembered” by the adult child as not having happened. So, these are more factual events like, “ I was never allowed to see people outside the family and always kept home away from others” and the child was involved in extra curriculars that were hours per day outside the home and summers away from the family for the extra curricular activity.
 

 

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by cuckoomamma

[maize]

Human brains are flexible--which is mostly a good thing but can absolutely result in false memories. I have one or two "memories" from childhood that I actually know could not have occurred the way I remember them (times and locations simply don't line up with known facts). My brain thinks they are real though.

My younger sister was recently talking about a French class she thought we were in together in highschool. We weren't --I took the class the year before her, took the IB exam at the end of that year, and didn't take French my senior year when she was in the class. But her brain had inserted me into her memory of the class.

Edited March 10, 2023 by maize

[pinball]

2 hours ago, cuckoomamma said:

Thank you all for weighing in. The instances I’m referring to are just like what Quill or Brittany1116 is referencing - just really mind boggling absolutely-didn’t-happen stuff. And, there’s definitely anger involved at what the adult child perceives did/didn’t happen. 
 

I’m going to think about and pass on what Not_a_Number has mentioned regarding it being more about feelings than fact. It’s just been unsettling to experience when some if not many of the instances involve things/events that were very consciously done (like Quill’s music example) and now is angrily “remembered” by the adult child as not having happened. So, these are more factual events like, “ I was never allowed to see people outside the family and always kept home away from others” and the child was involved in extra curriculars that were hours per day outside the home and summers away from the family for the extra curricular activity.
 

 

 

It being “more about feeling than fact” isn’t helpful when someone’s feelings are based on false facts. 
 

If someone’s feelings are “I didn’t feel supported by Dad” bc “Dad never came to my games” and Dad was the assistant coach and there are pictures and other evidence of Dad being at games…what can Dad do? 
 

Dad can recognize the feelings but he shouldn’t affirm that he didn’t attend the games bc he DID attend the games.

[KSera]

3 hours ago, Navymom said:

Is therapy the only way to tease out the truth? Especially when one person remembers an event one way and another remembers something totally different? 

Therapy unfortunately has a bad history with creating false memories that didn’t happen. There was a particularly big spike in the 90s in therapy for “repressed memories” And it was later found that that kind of therapy was creating all kinds of (often traumatic) memories in people that never actually happened. People went to jail for things that were later determined never to have happened. 

What science tells us about false and repressed memories
 

Forget Me Not: The Persistent Myth of Repressed Memories

[Mrs Tiggywinkle Again]

23 minutes ago, KSera said:

Therapy unfortunately has a bad history with creating false memories that didn’t happen. There was a particularly big spike in the 90s in therapy for “repressed memories” And it was later found that that kind of therapy was creating all kinds of (often traumatic) memories in people that never actually happened. People went to jail for things that were later determined never to have happened. 

What science tells us about false and repressed memories
 

Forget Me Not: The Persistent Myth of Repressed Memories

This happened with one of my siblings.  They went to some kind of “breaking bondage” three day thing at their(cult like) church run by people with no mental health training who specialize in “bringing forth memories of generational curses”.  The results in my family of origin have been devastating. 

There are things I definitely remember differently than my siblings and some memories I have I know cannot be true, because we weren’t living where the memory takes place at the age it takes place or there’s a person in the memory who I didn’t even know at the time, things like that.  and then there are a whole host of things that my parents remember wildly differently than I do.  

[Guest]

2 hours ago, cuckoomamma said:

Thank you all for weighing in. The instances I’m referring to are just like what Quill or Brittany1116 is referencing - just really mind boggling absolutely-didn’t-happen stuff. And, there’s definitely anger involved at what the adult child perceives did/didn’t happen. 
 

I’m going to think about and pass on what Not_a_Number has mentioned regarding it being more about feelings than fact. It’s just been unsettling to experience when some if not many of the instances involve things/events that were very consciously done (like Quill’s music example) and now is angrily “remembered” by the adult child as not having happened. So, these are more factual events like, “ I was never allowed to see people outside the family and always kept home away from others” and the child was involved in extra curriculars that were hours per day outside the home and summers away from the family for the extra curricular activity.
 

 

 

I think sometimes, these mythical memories of what we as parents did/didn’t do grow out of some aspect of frustration with the young adult’s life. So, for my son, maybe the college music class brought to his attention that his musical ability to that point was very average. So he created an “explanation” in his mind that these other kids must have had much more musical exposure than he did. 
 

I also think when some things are just the background noise of childhood, nothing in particular stands out. So, because my son went to numerous childhood music classes and had, along with his siblings, years of Mr. Rob’s piano and guitar lessons, those memories don’t stand out. It was just something that went on for so many years it was tuned out. 

[cuckoomamma]

27 minutes ago, pinball said:

It being “more about feeling than fact” isn’t helpful when someone’s feelings are based on false facts. 
 

If someone’s feelings are “I didn’t feel supported by Dad” bc “Dad never came to my games” and Dad was the assistant coach and there are pictures and other evidence of Dad being at games…what can Dad do? 
 

Dad can recognize the feelings but he shouldn’t affirm that he didn’t attend the games bc he DID attend the games.

Yes, that’s the predicament. It’s hard to be super receptive to the anger because for sure it’s wrapped up with other things the adult child is either accurately remembering or is less “provable”. For example, one can feel they would have wanted more support or more music lessons but when the anger is in some way founded on these false memories it’s hard to manage as a parent. It shakes the foundation of the relationship in some ways and we were wondering if these memories ever right themselves or not.

[bolt.]

3 hours ago, Navymom said:

I am interested in this. So how do we know what the actual truth is? How do we know if we have false memories? 

Most things are of little consequence, but certainly there can be times where the truth really matters.

Is therapy the only way to tease out the truth? Especially when one person remembers an event one way and another remembers something totally different? 

Edited to add-I think my memories are true, but there are some things that are so outlandish that I question myself....

There is no method to find out the objective truth of events that we only have memories of. (Objective truth could be obtained if there were photos, videos, written journals, etc.) However, there is also no reason that we would need to find out objective truth around most events in our lives. What we remember is sufficient -- as long as sensible people (who know how memory works) also keep in mind that it is not sensible to consider one's memories to be factual.

[Ann.without.an.e]

I think memories can be altered a lot by trauma and feelings (whether the feelings are justified or not). 

Have y'all ever seen Locke and Key? Sprinkled in that little show are some pretty deep themes. Her fear, for instance, but also when she didn't remember any of the positive things about her childhood with her mom because a shadow was cast over it all by her mom's alcoholism. 

Sometimes kid's memories can be really screwed up but also sometimes the parent trauma is so strong that it casts a shadow over any good. 

Younger DSIL has a lot of mom trauma. She is extremely narcissistic and manipulative. She is the parent who tries to create memories through conversation that never happened or tries to change the story on things that happened. Something very traumatic was retold again and again differently in hopes to retrain the memory. That also happens.

So, yea, it is complicated. 

[kbutton]

I think there is a range of ability to correctly encode memory just like many other facets of human cognition. People have varying levels of ability to think about their thinking as well. 

15 hours ago, bolt. said:

It's perfectly normal for people to both construct 'memories' and also to modify or discard them.

Children do it more than most. People under stress do it more than most. People lacking sleep do it more than most. (And most people do it plenty, as a baseline!)

Therefore I'd be shocked if *anyone's* young adult children's recollections of their childhoods matched the memories of the parents who were also there. And I'd be equally surprised to find that *either* set of memories accurately represented objective events.

This is simply a perfectly normal and healthy way that human cognition functions. Memory draws itself into alignment with narrative and meaning-making efforts. It's not something that anybody has control over. In order to keep it healthy, it's a good idea to keep the 'narrative' and 'meaning' elements of the story a person tells themself about themself on the healthy side. Once the narrative becomes darker as a whole, you can't count on memories to 'hold the fort' against that sort of thing.

I mostly agree, but I disagree on the bolded. I have vivid childhood memories that have been proven to be factually accurate nearly 100% of the time. My son does as well. I don't always immediately remember things my son remembers (though I will often recall it if we talk about it a bit), but I was tired and stressed a lot of the time. But he and I are both able to reflect on what makes sense and doesn't, so if something is "off" in one of the memories, we often know why and know which parts are still true. It's weird, but it's true. My adult memories that are less distinct are probably because I had responsibilities at the time they happened, and children are often just doing their thing while being along for the ride. 

I have quite a lot of clear memories from 3+ and distinct "composite" memories from 2+ that have true elements but that I recognize can't all work out--what works and doesn't work makes sense and why I remember it that way makes sense.

My most striking story is remembering something from when I was 3 or less that no one else remembered but was validated about 40 years later when cousins visited that we hadn't seen in that amount of time. I remembered a specific style of house. Our family didn't travel a lot, and I was certain I'd seen this house at a family event. Lots of times, people said I was remembering a different house (a relative later built a house that was this style, but I knew it wasn't the same house because that's why I was excited about the house being built--it was really cool to my 3 y.o. self to see two unusual houses like this in a short time). I kept my eyes open for this house every time we'd be on a drive, etc. because I knew it couldn't be that far away. I even once thought that maybe a house with partially similar architecture was it when I lost hope of finding "the house." Well, when our distant cousins visited, people got out old photos of the last time we were together. I saw one of those photos, which did not contain the house (it was mostly people in the picture that I don't remember meeting and an outbuilding I don't consciously remember being around), and I *knew* when I saw the picture that I'd seen the house at that specific get together. The cousins got a funny look on their face, and they said, "We rented a house like that just up the road [from the event] for a short time, just before we moved." They moved just after that event. We must've parked at their house or turned around in the driveway or something. I was not more than 3, and I was probably barely 3. This is the most dramatic "I told you so moment of my life" in the genre of memories, but I have this happen to me all.the.time. What I remember is always verified very factually later, or else the person I'm talking to just didn't remember it until I mentioned it, and then they are stunned that I was old enough to recall it so factually. They don't remember it differently from me, they just hadn't thought about it in years. 

I have some memories that have slightly changed details, but there is always a reason that makes sense. For instance, as part of a larger memory, I remember eating pasties at a specific time and place, but I had no idea what they were called. Everything about the event was something very cool to a small child but relatively mundane to adults (there were other things about it that might've gotten them excited but bored a kid), and there are other factual pieces I remember that the adults had long forgotten about until I brought it up. I don't think I had another pastie after that, but I did have a pot pie a couple of times, and I assumed later on (as a teen) that what I really had was a pot pie even though the pot pies I had were soupier than what I remember eating when I had the pastie. Well, when I related the original memory to adults, they told me it was a pastie--a relative who was known for making them had moved away in the meantime, and she verified that she'd made it. So, I think that people do latch onto things to make sense of something that is a one-time experience, but some of us can often even troubleshoot the hazier parts of memory. That said, I have consciously curated, tested, and verified my memories for as long as I can remember, as has my son. We are likely weird that way. 

I also thinks it makes a difference that I lived in the same house until leaving for college, we frequently looked at family pictures, and we have a lot of people (large extended family) experiencing the same things to reinforce factual memories. It doesn't mean that we're all always in lockstep, but it's very clear who has and who does not have more fact-based memories. I think if we had moved a lot, my memory would be swiss cheese.

2 hours ago, cuckoomamma said:

Thank you all for weighing in. The instances I’m referring to are just like what Quill or Brittany1116 is referencing - just really mind boggling absolutely-didn’t-happen stuff. And, there’s definitely anger involved at what the adult child perceives did/didn’t happen. 

I’m going to think about and pass on what Not_a_Number has mentioned regarding it being more about feelings than fact. It’s just been unsettling to experience when some if not many of the instances involve things/events that were very consciously done (like Quill’s music example) and now is angrily “remembered” by the adult child as not having happened. So, these are more factual events like, “ I was never allowed to see people outside the family and always kept home away from others” and the child was involved in extra curriculars that were hours per day outside the home and summers away from the family for the extra curricular activity.

The people I know who have done this almost always have some element of mental health issue or some kind of trauma. In the case of one family member, there is definitely benign trauma (TBI from having multiple concussions due to major hyperactivity across decades, the injuries are not only from childhood), and there is a possibility of some legit negative circumstances being magnified and smooshed together with other memories. That part of the family, as a whole, has always been chaotic. I would guess that chaos makes a difference. There was a lot of unsupervised childhood play (normal for that time period) where there was bad stuff going on in the neighborhood. I am sure that makes a difference as well--there is a level of hypervigilance due to always expecting a fight, for instance.

We have a range of reliability in memories in our larger family group, and the vast majority of people in the family know how reliable or not their memories are.

We talk to our kids a LOT about stuff. We have one child that is off with the fairies all.the.time, and when he's not, he has the world's worst record for being in the bathroom or indisposed when something distinctly interesting happens. We literally tell him when he thinks his childhood was boring that he'll need to talk to his brother, lol! He also had such a vivid imagination when he was little that he would scare himself to death about things he knew weren't real. And, he had auditory processing issues when he was little that made it hard to catch all that was going on (and also made it hard to stay motivated to pay attention). So, we spend a lot of time talking about memory to avoid hard feelings. 

[gardenmom5]

Elizabeth Loftus has done a lot of research on this subject. 

[Indigo Blue]

I recently told my mom that I remember her selling a litter of collie pups for $75.00 each around 1980, and that the mom dog had an unusually large litter of 13 pups. She looked at me incredulously and denied that we had sold them at that price. I specifically remember it. (Backyard breeding is what it amounted to, although I didn’t know what that was then or that it was a bad thing). I am 100 💯 sure those pups went for $75.00 a piece even though she has absolutely no recollection. 
 

My brother just the other week mentioned how our collies ran loose and got hit by cars. They did. Our parents just let them loose, and we lived right on a highway. Mom just said well, they were terrible dogs. 😡

No. They were not terrible dogs. I remember spending a lot of time outside with them. I taught them things. Trained them. They followed me all through the woods. They were very smart and knew things. How on earth can she not remember that? And no dog deserves to get hit by a car. 

She also claims that our mixed breed collie was never an outdoor dog. False. He was an outdoor dog all the time. He ran off in a bad storm, and we were lucky to get him back. Miraculously, he didn’t get ran over and lived to be 17. I was also 17 when we put him down. 

 

[WildflowerMom]

Memories are so interesting.   Until last year, I had a memory of sitting at a window and watching nursery rhyme scenes circle past in the sky.  Seriously.   I was really convinced this had happened and I remember asking my mom about it when I was little and again as an adult.   It was so strange, but real.  I can still picture it.  Last year, I was looking at vintage toys and had an OMG moment.   This pic below is what I saw but in the sky.  I realized in my 40’s that my weird, very real memory had been a mix of a dream and reality, probably as a 1yo.  

Memories can also be suppressed and you realize in your late 30s you were assaulted by the creepy neighbor boy around age 2-3.    
 

memories are just weird.  

 

 

[GailV]

I was under the impression that our brains don't bother processing huge swaths of the perceptions we're receiving via our senses, mostly because we have no use for that firehose of information. So it would make sense that we remember different things given that we likely bother noticing wildly different things.

 

[knitgrl]

I have known a man for over 30 years. He was my family's mechanic when I was in high school. He smoked like a chimney. He quit maybe ten or fifteen years ago. You talk to him today, he swears up and down he never ever smoked cigarettes in his life. 🤷‍♀️

[Bambam]

12 hours ago, Quill said:

I remember that thread because I had a specific example of this with my son. He took a music minor in college and, upon hearing about all the rich musical family background his classmates had, he declared that he was so bothered that “we didn’t really emphasize music in our house.” I’m like, are you mad??? I had my kids in Kindermusik and similar classes from early toddlerhood. They had many thousands of dollars in individual instrument lessons over years and years of homeschooling. I played all kinds of cassette tapes in the car for “car-schooling”, including Songs in Spanish (*I* can still remember this songs!), Wee Sing tapes, patriotic songs, holiday songs, songs around the world, and How to Sing tapes. I was in choir; dh plays guitar. 
 

It was honestly mind-boggling to me that he remembered us “not really emphasizing music”. I was like, “Would you like to see my expense sheet for all the checks I paid to Mr. Rob (our instrument teacher)?” 

I had my oldest say the same thing about we never encouraged her in her art. I went to Quicken and pulled a list of the checks I wrote to various schools for art classes, for instructors for art lessons, etc. I couldn't pull any receipts for all the art supplies we purchase through the years, but it was a lot. I guess if you aren't paying for it, maybe you don't remember? It was sometimes a real hardship for the rest of us to drive her to her art classes and then occupy ourselves while she was busy in there. If we counted the hours we spent driving and finding things to do while waiting, oh my. 

[Janeway]

I am wondering if perhaps the immersion in to video games and internet has resulted in a blurred and confused memories. I know there’s a real issue with much older people when they are sundowning to start confusing what they saw on TV for heard on the radio and what really happened. I’m suspecting it’s just such an immersion with technology these days, that these issues have reached down into the younger ages. I actually see this stuff a lot. And I see it in adults who spend a lot of time on the computer too. It leads to a break in reality.

[Janeway]

nm

Edited March 12, 2023 by Janeway

[Janeway]

On 3/10/2023 at 7:38 AM, cuckoomamma said:

Thank you all for weighing in. The instances I’m referring to are just like what Quill or Brittany1116 is referencing - just really mind boggling absolutely-didn’t-happen stuff. And, there’s definitely anger involved at what the adult child perceives did/didn’t happen. 
 

I’m going to think about and pass on what Not_a_Number has mentioned regarding it being more about feelings than fact. It’s just been unsettling to experience when some if not many of the instances involve things/events that were very consciously done (like Quill’s music example) and now is angrily “remembered” by the adult child as not having happened. So, these are more factual events like, “ I was never allowed to see people outside the family and always kept home away from others” and the child was involved in extra curriculars that were hours per day outside the home and summers away from the family for the extra curricular activity.
 

 

 

I know a family that had this happen. I have lost touch now, but they have a daughter, who insisted that she had been withheld from education and kept it home and isolated from the outside world. In reality, she went to public school (they did not homeschool) and had tons of outside activities. She also had a car. It was baffling how off the deep end this girl went trying to tell everyone that she was so isolated and kept as a servant with no contact outside the home. Now I am curious what ever happened to that situation. 

Edited March 12, 2023 by Janeway

[LMD]

Thinking of you @cuckoomamma, you're not alone in dealing with stuff like this. I'm sorry.

part of it is, I think, a kind of narcissism. Maybe a normal teen/young adult kind of narcissism. What I suspect, is that some  highly emotional, narcissist-adjacent type people, feel that their current emotional state must be the truth, because it is so strong and because narcissists expect the world to mirror back their truth. This then gets replayed in their minds, laying down neural pathways with such strong emotional support, that they really believe their lies are true.

I'm not a therapist nor a neuroscientist, so it's just a hunch based on reading + experience. 

If you figure out how to pull them out of such a spiral, preferably without imploding the rest of the family, please do let me know.

Eta - social media exacerbates it, because it gives the illusion of being able to control their world/narrative, curate the people around them to only those they have convinced. And it erodes boundaries, which removes social fences (like, for example respect for parents) so the fairy tale can run completely out of control.

Edited March 12, 2023 by LMD