What if your brain isn’t lying to you but trying to protect you?
Summary by Curators: The author reflects on a personal experience of doubt regarding the reliability of memory, questioning when they stopped trusting his own mind. He recounts a moment of confusion after discovering a childhood memory did not actually happen, prompting a deeper exploration of memory’s accuracy. The narrative discusses how memory is not a perfect archive but rather a creative process where the brain may fabricate or distort events. This phenomenon, supported by neuroscience, highlights the importance of understanding memory’s complexities and the reassurance that it is a shared human experience, encouraging self-compassion amidst uncertainty.
I remember it so clearly, a gentle dawn, the soft light of a new day shimmering through the curtains, and me standing in front of the mirror, wondering.
When did I stop trusting my own mind? It wasn’t dramatic at first. Just a sense that something I had always relied on the quiet inner voice of memory, of certainty had grown shaky.
The thought hovered: “What if I can’t trust what I remember?” That question felt like a betrayal of the one person I always thought I could rely on: myself.
And I realized: it matters not only to me, but to each of us. Because our minds are the stage-on-which we live our lives. If the stage becomes unsteady, the story we tell ourselves, the story we believe, begins to change.
Today, I want to walk you through that day when I first noticed something strange: my brain began to lie to me. And then, together, we’ll peer into the science behind why it happens, how I met it in my own life, and what I learned that you might carry with you.
Why this matters
I used to think memory was like a vault — you put the facts in, you draw them out. A perfect archive. Then the day came when I realized my vault had secret doors, whispering corridors, unwanted echoes.
I had told a friend a story about childhood summers that felt real. When we compared notes, I discovered the event had never happened. I was sure: I remembered. And yet, it wasn’t true.
It shook me. Because how many other things in my life were built on “I remember this happened” when maybe they didn’t? How many of the conversations I believed I had, the decisions I thought I based on “what I know,” were built on shaky ground?
On a broader level, this matters because our society trusts memory: witness statements, testimonials, history told by individuals, even our own self-identity (“I am who I am because I remember who I was”).
But neuroscience has shown: our brain sometimes fills in the gaps, sometimes creates memories, sometimes lives lies without knowing. We are both the storyteller and the story-listener.
And when the storyteller becomes creative not maliciously, but subconsciously the narrative shifts.
So I write this because I want you to know: if this has happened to you (or will), you are not alone, you are not broken, you are human. And you can use this awareness to live a little more kindly with yourself.
The scientific insight: when the brain “lies”
“What I discovered, and what the scientists confirm, is that our brain is not a perfect recorder of life. It’s more like a creative editor. Research on false memories and confabulation shows how our minds sometimes generate recollections of things that never happened or recall them so differently we feel sure they did.”
For example:
A false memory is “a recollection of something that didn’t happen or isn’t true.”
Confabulation is a phenomenon where the brain fills in gaps — fabricating or distorting memories, without the person intending to lie.
Neuroimaging shows both true and false memories activate the hippocampus (a brain region central to memory) and prefrontal cortex regions (which help monitor and label memories). Read more…
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I’m a semantic scholar and researcher with over a decade of clinical experience, sharing real-world insights through the art of storytelling. My writing goal is to inform, educate, and inspire my readers.
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