False Memories Created by Dreams?

I have a few memories from my childhood that I found out never happened.

For example, I remember as a baby being taken away from my mother by a strange man in a black car. I asked my mom about that a few years ago.. never actually happened.

I remember being up in my treehouse with my neighbor and she fell off and broke her arm. Never actually happened.

I remember a part in the Little Mermaid tv series where Ariel gets sucked into this whirlpool down to the bottom of an underwater cliff and couldn't get out. I searched for this episode all over the internet. It doesn't exist.

I'm pretty sure now that all these "memories" are from dreams I had as a child that I somehow accepted as actual real-life happenings. I was wondering if this happened to anyone else.

Aw man! I have false memories all the time that were created by dreams and people will have to tell me that those things never happened, then I'll realize that they're right and I'll feel QUITE ridiculous.:content:

But I haven't found any false memories from childhood. I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were some though.

Oh yes! I've got a false memory of my family and I feeding an elephant at a zoo some bananas and large peanuts. We also gave it a bath. I asked my parents about it a year or two ago, and they said we never did that.

I love fake memories! They happen to me quite often and I have learned how to create false memories of dreams within a dream too! Good times.

I only have a mild version of this. I'll sometime remember some little thing, and then think "Oh wait, that was a dream."
I guess it's not so surprising that dreams can become false waking memories. Memory isn't always as concrete and accurate as we would like to think it is, and there are cases of people being given false memories that they believed to have been repressed memories, but never actually happen.

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Originally Posted by ElsiaStar

I remember a part in the Little Mermaid tv series where Ariel gets sucked into this whirlpool down to the bottom of an underwater cliff and couldn't get out. I searched for this episode all over the internet. It doesn't exist.

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If it doesn't exist then why do I remember it, if we're talking about the same thing? I recall other parts to the episode, too; There was one male character down there who was green and a (to my recollection,) female character who said something about Ariel looking into some bag and at first, Ariel looked in it but she quickly shut her eyes before whatever effect the bag may have had on her would've had. There were some other characters who were turned into snails or something. Eventually her father found her and put an end to the whole thing; he let those who were trapped out of the trap, whatever that was.

Also, as a kid (three years old or so to my recollection) I thought that one dream was real; in it, I drove a car (possibly one which was my Dad's) and I crashed it; it was on a bridge with maybe just the nose of it overhanging a creek. I thought about it some times over the years.

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Originally Posted by 101Volts

If it doesn't exist then why do I remember it, if we're talking about the same thing? I recall other parts to the episode, too; There was one male character down there who was green and a (to my recollection,) female character who said something about Ariel looking into some bag and at first, Ariel looked in it but she quickly shut her eyes before whatever effect the bag may have had on her would've had. There were some other characters who were turned into snails or something. Eventually her father found her and put an end to the whole thing; he let those who were trapped out of the trap, whatever that was.

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I actually found the episode! Thanks to your details. I guess I didn't dream that one up.

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Originally Posted by ElsiaStar

I actually found the episode! Thanks to your details. I guess I didn't dream that one up.

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You're welcome. And admittedly, I do consider some memories to be "Not quite there." I used to remember a Scooby-Doo episode a bit differently, but for all I know it may have just been a dream of it. I was young then. And if it's so, I can consider the past to all be past. I can consider parts that were, to not be of me now. I can cherry-pick and disregard the bad times that don't serve any good purpose whatsoever; that's all "The old me that's of no good purpose." I'm no longer that sad person.

I have had similar experiences, but I also have an issue with false memories of other dreams being created in dreams. For example, I once had a nightmare in which an evil spirit was haunting me and claimed to be the ghost from my childhood nightmares, which I then remembered vividly, but upon waking up realized that I had never before seen such a creature and that it was likely a memory created by the dream. What scares me about this is that I often cannot tell the difference; if I recall a previous dream from within a dream, I then cannot discern in waking life whether the earlier dream ever occurred, because I have no evidence to refer to. That's part of why I try to write down what dreams I do recall, so that later on I'll know I actually dreamt them when I thought I had. It makes me doubt my own memory.

I have lots of false memories while in the dream state, but usually recognize them as false after I awake.

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

I have lots of false memories while in the dream state, but usually recognize them as false after I awake.

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Same here. I had one oddball case a few years ago where a specific dream false memory almost overrode my waking life version somehow, actually leaving me confused for a few days before it weakened and I once again knew for sure which was real and which wasn't. A little disconcerting, but rather interesting.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of my early childhood memories could have actually been dreams, though I personally have no real way to confirm that.

One problem I have with establishing whether childhood memories are false: for many of them it is my word against my mother's word, and we are both engaging in selective memory and false memories. My mom almost on purpose choose to not remember some unpleasant things. The dilemma I have is how many of my unpleasant childhood memories are a figment of my imagination combined with dreams combined with my mind over the years during depression selectively choosing to remember mostly negatives. Versus how many of those memories are real but my mom chose to forget and sugar coat them in optimism and denial and as a response to coping with an unhappy marriage and emotional abuse plus a tendency for compulsive lying and believing the lies to be truth.

As a result I have kind of realized that I know very little about my childhood and have no way to know what is real almost.

The interesting question is, did my childhood even happen for sure? :) what if this life is a dream, and time an illusion, and all memories are fake? We really only know that the present moment is real, don't we?

On the other hand it occurred to me that a memory that I have from when I was a teen could actually be a dream memory, and I may not have any way to prove it either way.

Hi JoannaB thanks for the interpretation of my dream ,about memories ...we should remember the good ones so we would smile and remember the bad ones so we dream and let our subconscious delete them and our imagination make them the best memories ever so we will have a ore positive view about ourselves and the people around us