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Original poster

Has anyone ever experienced flashback of memory they don't remember??

46 replies

MrsSeptember · 26/07/2017 22:24

This sounds really weird and I'm freaking out a little. I really hope it's my mind playing tricks on me.

I had a flashback of what feels like a memory. I remember the place, the people and most of the details really well from a previous memory. The problem is a really disturbing addition to this 'memory' came into the flashback.

I don't want to say what it was and I don't know why I'm posting really.

Has anyone ever unearthed a suppressed memory or has their mind played tricks on them and misrememebred things?

OP posts:
Original poster
MrsSeptember · 26/07/2017 22:24

This was supposed to be in chat Blush

OP posts:
dadadadathatslife · 26/07/2017 22:31

What is the memory?

Is it something that you could easily confirm with someone else?

rosybell · 26/07/2017 22:39

This has never happened to me but I've just finished watching The Keepers documentary on Netflix which is about people recalling repressed memories so I guess it does happen. Could just as easily be a remembered dream though?

Pop24 · 26/07/2017 22:42

Yea I've had 'false' memories. Memories from childhood that definitely feel like memories rather than dreams but they never happened. Very weird. I've read it's quite possible to truly repress a traumatic/disturbing event and remember it years later. I do think memory is generally quite unreliable though...

Calvinlookingforhobbs · 26/07/2017 22:43

Can you see yourself in the flashback? If so, it's almost certainly a false memory

OwlinaTree · 26/07/2017 22:46

Could be a dream. I have some weird memories that I think are actually dreams, as I cannot work out the circumstances of them at all. Sometimes they are memories of a place I visited, but they are not things that actually seem to have happened, so I'm guessing they are dreams. Sorry haven't explained that very clearly!

noodleaddict · 26/07/2017 22:58

I had a flashback to a memory from when I was about 8 when I was about 16. Luckily I was able to discuss it with my sister who confirmed it had happened and was quite upsetting, which is presumably why I'd blocked it out.

Is there anyone you could talk to about it?

Crumbs1 · 26/07/2017 22:59

There is a thing called false memory syndrome. You flashback and have memories of things you haven't actually experienced- often triggered by something subconscious or that you've absorbed subliminally.

ChasedByBees · 26/07/2017 23:33

I remember reading something about how memories are very malleable - the act of recalling them can change them which I found quite interesting. I'll see if I can refind this...

ChasedByBees · 26/07/2017 23:39

I can't find the specific article I originally read but here's a related news link:

abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98195&page=1

BillyDaveysDaughter · 26/07/2017 23:44

I have a fairly significant phobia which I have never got to the bottom of...but particular sounds and sights (of the thing I'm afraid of) bring out such unspeakable dread and horror and fear in me, which is so vivid and makes me feel so hopeless, that they feel like flashbacks and I wonder if I've suppressed a memory.

Particularly the sound. I reckon I overheard something that I can't recall, as I would have been under 4. I've had psychotherapy but I bottled it when he asked if I wanted to try and unravel the cause of my fear! Just said please teach me to cope instead.

StaplesCorner · 26/07/2017 23:44

If you suspect its a memory of abuse OP there are organisations that can help and talk this through. I agree with Chased though things can become very odd over time, its actually a weird phobia of mine to "mis-remember" things!

Awwlookatmybabyspider · 27/07/2017 00:05

I remember when I was about 6 years old and I had a habit like most children of always getting into my parents bed in the middle of the night, and This particular night was no exception, anyway in the morning my mum had got up, so. It wAs just me and my dad and I turned around and saw another of my dad, and I remember being more confused than scared and I said. Daddy there's a man thats the same as you, and my dad said.
Oh ignore him and he'll go away.
Now to this day 35/36 years later. I don't know if I was dreaming or if I indeed did see my dads doppelganger.

4dogs · 27/07/2017 01:34

Awwlook that is very weird! I sometimes have difficulty working out if a memory is from real life or dreaming. I also sometimes get a feeling that I have blocked out a fairly long period of time from my childhood and that maybe I committed a heinous crime when very young. I'm 99.99% sure I didn't but for some reason I can't articulate it does pop into my head every now and then. Memory is a very weird and unreliable thing.

WhereYouLeftIt · 27/07/2017 01:49

I once read someone's description of how their memory played tricks. They would think of the film 'Casablanca', and they would remember it as starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Right down to remembering Bacall in particular scenes. Then they would watch the film again, and re-establish that it wasn't Bacall but Ingrid Bergman. SO far so good. But, give it a couple of months and if asked they would say it was Bogart and Bacall again.

They mused that their association of Bacall with Bogart was so strong, it overrode their association of Bergman with Bogart, and therefore of the film.

Could it be something like that OP? That this 'disturbing addition' is so closely associated to the main memory, that it gets dragged in?

SpecialDelivery22 · 27/07/2017 02:33

Marking as so interested in this!
I have very vivid memories of when young which some...my parents and older siblings can confirm but others.. they have no clue and because I can actually see, smell and feel these 'memories' I was actually considering past life...I don't know, seems far fetched but I can't explain certain things.

Theresnonamesleft · 27/07/2017 02:43

Yes a number of times. For me they aren't related to dreams and have been verified by others. A downside asking others for clarification is if they are involved or feel guilt and they deny. There's something that happened and someone denied it when I remembered it years later. This bugged me because it seemed so real and made sense for some other that happened afterwards. Several years later I found out indeed it happened but my memory was still a condensed one.

I have a number of memory lapses spanning my life, psychiatrist mentioned something about disassociation, not in a multiple personality way but as in a way of blocking out memories that have been traumatic.

It's also possible to have an experience where you see yourself. It can be a way to deal with the situation. To pull yourself away from the situation. The last time this happened to me was around 3 years ago. It's not a false memory.

TheMaddHugger · 27/07/2017 03:37

((((((((((Hugs))))))))))) OP. I asked Mods to Swap this to Chat for you.
❤️ 💛 💚 💙 💜 🖤

erinaceus · 27/07/2017 03:42

I have had flashbacks to things that I do not know whether they happened or not. Attempting to corroborate the events of the time did not get me terribly far. I work with an excellent therapist who helps me to make sense of these experiences. She recommends this book to me though I have never read it.

Firesuit · 27/07/2017 07:00

I sometimes struggle to tell whether a fragment of memory relates to something that happened in real life or in a dream. I once spent several minutes working out that a scene where I buried my father was false, as he was on a different continent at the time. Would have worked it out quicker if I'd started with the fact that he was still alive

Firesuit · 27/07/2017 07:06

Sometimes I revisit in a dream a place or scenario I have dreamed before, and something new happens, that feels like dicovering a new fact about an old memory. I think memory could easily also add a false fact to a real memory, though not sure what would prompt this.

Youshallnotpass · 27/07/2017 07:49

The human brain isn't like a computer so unfortunately memories get jumbled, mashed up and changed over time. I have a memory of when I was a toddler where I cracked my head open. I remember vividly I hit it on a bookcase but my Mum insists it was a table. I was so convinced it was a bookcase that I remember it being one. But I am wrong.

Memories are strange things

Belleende · 27/07/2017 08:16

Yes. I am an uber rational person. Unless you can produce the evidence, I will reserve judgement type of person. Then it happened to me. I was in 2nd or 3rd yr at uni, very happy with life and boyfriend at the time. We were just chatting and I told him a story about how I was abducted from our doorstep by a strange man when I was little. I remembered tiny details. Smells. Where we went, what happened, being taken to the police station a few times afterwards to try and identify him .
My boyf was horrified, and stopped and asked me if it really happened. At the time I wasn't sure whether it was real or a figment of my imagination. Next time I went home I asked my mum. Told her the whole story as I remembered it. She went really quiet and then confirmed it. She was shocked that the details I recalled 20 or so years later were exactly what I said at the time, down to the description of the motif on his jumper. The advice at the time was not to discuss it, so I think the memory just lodged in my sub conscience and resurfaced when I had the maturity and the right circumstances to deal with it.

So, I know for certain it can happen. But like others, I have memories I am convinced are real, but are categorically not, so it can go both ways.

Either way, I would encourage you to find someone to talk to about it.

erinaceus · 27/07/2017 08:29

There is some research about memory and trauma connected to 9/11.

Here is an article on Psychology Today about it.

WhiteMane · 27/07/2017 18:47

False memory syndrom is made up by child abusers who wanted to deny they had abused their child. It's been refused entry to the dsm & icd and has zero credible research to back it up.

Try reading jennifer fryeds work (she's the child of the people who made up fms and now a world renowned expert on recovered memories and has the science to back it up.