In thinking severe anxiety can’t possibly distort memory?

[Blahblahbird]

I hope this makes sense?

i feel like I’m going mad. I’ve suffered from mad burnout recently and had every issue under the sun - catastrophing, overthinking, black and white thinking, just never relaxing and constantly worrying about everything ever.

I was having a sad chat with my boyfriend about my worries of the day (as I do a lot). I felt a twinge of guilt. I’m so paranoid about putting so much on him all the time, and said “I’m sorry this happens every night, I’m sorry I chat about how I’m feeling before bed and ruin your evening every night”. He said “don’t worry, you don’t talk about it every night”.
I thought he was just being nice but he was genuinely trying to tell me that it doesn’t happen every night but I really thought it does. He said it’s possible I’m maximising how much I’m doing it because I worry about it so much.

Is this even possible?? Am I going mad?!

all sorts of things alter memory....
and emotions are very much one of those things...
you are not mad...you are anxious and you think about it all the time.....you may even imagine verbalising it when you are actually thinking it..

I hope you have some help for your anxiety and it gets better for you soon.

You are severely stressed and yes, stress does shrink the hippocampus which plays an important role in memory. I hope you get some relief and help soon.

Memories are incredibly unreliable. When you remember something, it doesn't just get 'read' from your brain, it gets read and then rewritten! That's why memories change over time.
There's a fascinating study in the US where every year people are asked what they remember happened on 9/11 and how much people's memories have changed since they were first recorded. People can have very vivid memories of things that never happened, simply because they were told they did so many times.

In short, don't be worried, everyone's memory is terrible!

Yes. Millions of people 'remember' seeing the 1st plane hit on TV that day when they didn't.

There was a fascinating thread on MN once about walkers swapping the colours for S and V and C and O crisps. Which never happened and Walkers went so far as to put out a statement about it, saying the colours had always been the same.

Which led to the thread with dozens of MNetters saying Walkers were gaslighting the public and they 100% remembered when the change happened. But not only were so many convinced they could remember it, there was about a 20 year span of different 'memories' of when they 'distinctly remembered it happened' from different posters 😀.

I should imagine you don’t do it every single night, or at least probably haven’t always done. Maybe he places more weight on, and remembers the good days, while you concentrate on, and remember the bad ones?

Stop worrying about it. This is not a sign of madness or bad memory on either side. It’s just normal that different people perceive things differently.