Trusting your thoughts

Hello all. I wanted to ask u a question. I ve Have hsd this happen alot and i wanted to know if this is natural.. Sometimes when i think about the past, i remEmber things differently. Like i sometimes if i think about events in the past especially if its a bad memory. For example, let's say if you and your friend went to a bank... He goes and robs the place. He gets in the car doesn't tell and u and you get pulled over n you both go to jail. (its not the best example). Anyway, u know you didn't do anything wrong but you are mad and hate the thought.. Fast forward a few years later. You now have depression. Unrelated to that incident, lets say u hsd a panic attack and a swirl of negative thoughts attacked you.. My question is it possible that if those negative thoughts had came back about the bank situation, could they turn your mind against you and cause you to believe that you DID actually steal the money and not ur friend. In other words, change the way you remember it. You know in your heart that you didnt but your mind tells u different. Is this possible or normal.. I hope u understand.

Our minds can be slippery characters, and try to play tricks on us. I think you are on the right path when you hold fast to the actual truth, which is held in your heart. I hope that these negative thoughts will cease to bother you soon, and that you will feel reassured by the truth.

thank you very much . You are so right.its just so hard sometimes.

It's not unnatural at all to remember things differently at times, or to remember something differently than it actually was, or happened. There have been studies confirming this. Also, stress can very negatively affect our memory, and depression, a panic attack with a swirl of negative thoughts is a lot of stress! So if you know in your heart you didn't do something, trust your heart and just remember our memories/mind can play tricks on us.

Really? While i always thought that was true, i didn't know studies were done. How do i go researching that. Your first sentence really sums up my problem.. Does a good medicine help that

Here are a few links about it:

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2...gly-unreliable

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/he...pagewanted=all

http://m.guardiannews.com/lifeandsty...e&type=article

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=117140

As for a medication, I'm not really sure what you're asking about in regard to memory. If it's that in your heart you know you didn't do something, but your thoughts don't match up with what you know in your heart to be true, and it is bothering you, I think this is something a therapist could help you with.

At the very least they should be able to reassure you that most people mis-remember some events and circumstances at times. In some of the articles it even discusses experiments conducted where people, if shown a picture of an activity they had never done, or asked if they recalled seeing news footage that in reality did not exist, said they remembered doing the activity, even adding details. The same was true of the non-existent news footage - a great deal of people "remembered" seeing the footage!

If you google "unreliability of memory" you'll find a lot more too.

Best of luck to you.

Thank you very much!