False memories?

The other day my wife and I were talking about vacations, and I started to relay a conversation I had had with some relatives about their up and coming trip to Nova Scotia where they were planning on visiting the Viking ruins. But as I started to process this, I realized these relatives had no trip planned. The memory was as real as any other memory but now I think it was from a dream as I recall the conversation and where it took place, but cannot recall anything before or after. I did not ever write it in my DJ. I think it was a forgotten dream, but the memory was triggered by our conversation. Now it bothers me a little assuming as a real memory something I have now reasoned to be false. Anyone have a similar story? I know my LD memories seem real, but I can recall them and put them in their context, but this was just out of the blue.

Mh, yeah, I know!
Sometimes, I can recall something and not be absolutely sure whether it was a dream or not :/ It's really confusing, for me at least.

I've had one false memory. It's weird that I can remember it like it was real life and I had it 8-10 years ago. I'm quite sure that it was a dream, because in that memory Mars showed up on the night sky as big as the moon.

Yeah, it used to happen a lot to me. Over time it's lessened, mostly because my dreams don't take place in areas i know of.

I would bet it's happened to most people who have some level of dream recall.

I have had it, usually occurring with conversations like the one you experienced. That brief moment where you can't remember if it was dream or real...totally sucks!

Has happened to me quite a bit since childhood until now.

I've also had false memories, the other way around.. In dream I realize something like "I've seen this dream a thousand times before." But when I wake up... I know for sure it was the first time ever to see such a dream. :D

I had to laugh when I read this because growing up, my grandma would constantly ask us, "Did I dream it the other night, or did (insert event here)?" I thought everyone got mixed up between dreams and reality every now and then. Especially when your dreams are really vivid. Obviously you know they're a dream when you wake up, but after a few days, weeks, or months to let the the memory fade, it's sometimes hard to remember if something really happened or only happened in a dream. It kind of reminds me of those studies where they create false memories for people by telling them something happened over and over, and the people actually start remembering it as if it really did happen. Our memories really aren't as reliable as we want to think they are :)

@ADEzor I get the dreams with their own sets of memories too. It can be a lot of fun with non lucids where you literally remember living a whole different life with super powers or something. Those used to be my favorite kind of dreams before I had my first lucid!

Ah true! :shadewink: all those neat alter ego super agent dreams with helicopter gunships and high tech installations... I get what you mean ^^

I used to get this all the time. Not so much now though, thankfully, as it did start to get a bit problematic. It would usually be things I thought I'd told people, and I'd then talk to them about it the next day - oblivious to the fact they had no idea what I was talking about!

A friend of mine told me recently about his worst experience with it: he dreamt a girl he knew told him that her boyfriend had a small dick. He then spread this around to some of his friends, who also knew the boyfriend, but when he talked to the girl about it a few days later, she told him she'd never told him anything like it! So there was a rumour going around about this poor guy's dick size, and all because of a dream so vivid it seemed real!

I get this sometimes, too. It is frustrating! On some level, I think I know it was just a dream. It takes me a minute to figure it out, but at least I am sane enough to question the memory.

Sometimes the opposite happens to me, too. If I remember something incredible that really did happen a few years back, I will have ask my wife, "Did that really happen?"