Dreams are common for all humans across the world. Sometimes we have nightmares and at other times we have wonderful and exciting dreams. Then there are there are times that the dreams are so vivid that we have to really channel our minds into keeping the dream and reality separate. It scares me to think that in my thirty-two-years of life, I may have implanted these dreams and made them my own reality. The mind is overwhelmingly powerful and false memories have been a common occurrence in numerous circumstances that can last for a lifetime. Are you getting scared yet?
The topic is unknown to most everyone that is around me, but when I talk about it, it usually gives them a startle and then they become intrigued. Who wants to think that they have created some of their memories based on false information? When recalling memories, we are reconstructing information (not playing it back like a recorded video) from more than just the actual events and that can influence how we actually remember that memory. When we are awake, errors due to attention, familiarity, suggestion, and post-event questioning can all impact the creation of a false memory (Goldstein, 2011).
Dreams could also be distorting what we believe is a true memory. There have been numerous studies involving dreams and false memories. Empirical data shows that we do in fact have a hard time distinguishing certain dreams because they are intrinsically similar which causes source misattributions. Needless to say, our unconscious mind is once again manipulating our conscious. In a funny kind of way, we’re all living in a real-life Matrix movie, minus the fighting skills and no choice on whether to pick the blue or red pill.
“It is very common for memories to be incorporated into the first night after they were initially experienced (Lewis, 2014 ). ” You can see how this would present a problem. If we’re dreaming about events that we just did, then the dream can be so vivid and real that if the dream manifests into something that didn’t actually happen, we could wind up adding or deleting the actual memory itself. In a study done by Beaulieu-Prevost and Antonio, they study the impact of dreams on memories and have concluded that dreams are actually more susceptible at creating false memories than are real-life events (2015).
Unfortunately there isn’t really a cure for the misinformation effect caused by dreams or just errors of recall in our daily lives. If we really want to make sure we mentally record everything correctly, we might need to hire a film crew to follow us around in our daily lives. We have to accept that our mind is always trying to fill the gaps and give us the fastest route to recall, even if it does make slight errors. There are plenty of studies continuing to study false memories and dreams and I urge you to look into it yourself. It’s simply amazing.
Beaulieu-Prévost, D., & Zadra, A. (2015). When people remember dreams they never experienced: A study of the malleability of dream recall over time. Dreaming, 25(1), 18-31. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1037/a0038788
Goldstein, E. B., (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, And Everyday Experience. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
Lewis, P. (2014, July 18). Dreams may play a role in memory incorporation and influence our long-term moods, physiology and creativity. Retrieved from www.scientificamerican.com
I just awoke from a dream that wasn’t particularly vivid. Me and some friends went to a place to do some activities. The thing is that my stupid mind pretty that sure me and my friends actually went to that place “some time” ago and the dream felt like a dream about the second time we went, but I knew that this “second time” was a dream. I even remember some events that happened the first time we were there and some photo’s we took with our phones but then again, my consciousness tells me that there is no way this could be true: I can’t for the life of me recall when that would’ve been and why some of those friends would even come along in the first place! Also, the landscapes (mountains and a large open mine, which are both essential for the events in the dream) don’t even exist near where we actually live. We’d have to drive hundreds of kilometers to the nearest mountains and hundreds of kilometers in the opposite direction for the only large open mine that I know of.
Still, when I woke up, I browsed through the photo’s on my phone to find the pictures that I remember taking the “first time” my stupid mind thinks we were there…
So on occasions something will trigger a memory / dream to be recalled and the entire memory / dream seems to spill into my consciousness, and be completely recalled from start to ending and now I can basically save this memory/dream. The problem is I can’t discern if it was a dream from 20-30 years ago or an actual memory of an event that I had forgotten. Now I have asked people who were in these if the events actually happened and sometimes they say yes the event actually occurred but some others they swear the event never took place.
I have has a reoccurring problem regarding memories and dreams. An example is when I believed a friend of mine had lost a game of chess to a specific person; this never happened. I believed a friend was smoking cigarettes in some ones basement; she had not smoked in ten years. This happens quite often. I have found myself having to ask various people if my memory is real or from a dream. Why does this happen
I am not alone, I have memories, that I know for a fact, did not happen. And they could not have happened.. this has F#$@ed up my life in a way I can not describe, is there a solution. Or help for this s#@& or am I stuck endlessly trying to sort it out.
I have a very disturbing dream that occurred some time ago and from which I woke up with the certainty that it was a memory that I had kept hidden and came back. With all rationality, it’s not possible. Because it just doesn’t fit in any time-line or whatever, and it’s just too messed up. It happened again last night. I know it’s just a dream, but somehow, a part of my brain still believes it to be true. I can’t get rid of it and it’s really messing me up. I’m glad to discover it’s not that uncommon. I wish it was with something more normal though, like drinking tea with the Queen of England or whatever.
What if the dreams became established as false memories decades ago? And these memories provided closure on accepting the person that you dearly loved, your perceived soulmate….would never be the one you would spend your life with? Over the years, when you would find yourself thinking of that person, these memories would surface and reinforce the closure established in your heart and mind so many years ago.
Then suppose a lifetime later, you find yourself sitting across the table from this person and you find out the memories that kept you from pursuing any chance at a life with her were demonstrably false. How tragic would that be? It is a rhetorical question…as I already know the answer.
I had a recurring dream that I had been married four times, I had great difficulty in making my mind understand that it was a dream memory. I had to slowly go back over my life in my mind to convince myself.