Have you ever experienced a nagging feeling that something happened, only to later doubt your recollection? Studies have shown that there can be a relationship between anxiety and how memories are formed. While anxiety can lead to more attention in some situations, it may also impact how you form and recall memories.
Our brains are constantly processing the world around us. While people may wish their memory could always be accurate, even under normal circumstances inaccuracies can happen. It’s part of being human. In stressed, anxious, or other overstimulating situations, false memories, or inaccurate recollections, may show up, omitting or inserting details that may not have actually happened.
I wanted to be cautious with this post because while it may be helpful to understand how anxious states can impact our memories and experiences of events, I also want to be sure this doesn’t cross into self-gaslighting with the information here. It isn’t necessary to question your experience and reality of significant moments of pain or trauma in your life, or to second guess your experiences. More so, it’s to help you be aware of moments where you’re less clear about a memory, or details of experience, especially if you can recall being in a heightened emotional state at the time. A false memory doesn’t mean you were wrong and the other person was right, for example. It only means there may be some more exploration to do to more clarify or work through an experience.
What Causes False Memories?
Altered memories can come from a variety of things. For example, false memories can come from misinformation or social influence. When you’re exposed to inaccurate information, it can alter your perceptions over time. Similarly, if you’re uncertain about an experience, hearing others people’s accounts may reshape your own narrative. Anxiety can amplify these effects.
How Anxiety Contributes to the Formation of False Memories
When you’re anxious, your brain’s stress response can distort the perception and encoding of events. When you’re in an activated emotional state, your mind fills in the gaps with details that can seem to fit, or even misinterpret ambiguous information in order to align with anxious thoughts. Here are some ways this can play out:
Selective Attention
Anxiety can impact selective attention, causing you to focus disproportionately on things that can impact you in a negative or harmful way. This heightened awareness may lead to misinterpreting benign events as threatening, potentially creating false memories. When you’re experiencing a fear, or a trauma response, even if you’re not actually in a threatening situation, your brain can end up filling in gaps with worst-case scenarios and alter your memory of these experiences.
Emotional Bias
Your emotional state can also influence how you perceive and remember events. Anxiety, in particular, may lead you to interpret ambiguous situations more negatively, potentially creating memories that will align with and validate the anxiety you’re feeling. This emotional bias can reshape your recollection, causing you to remember things as more threatening or problematic than they may have actually been.
Intrusive Thoughts
Intrusive thoughts is a common symptom of anxiety, and can sometimes blur the line between reality and fantasy. These unwanted and distressing ideas can often replay in your mind, potentially leading to unintentionally modifying memories. You might find yourself questioning past events or creating inaccurate scenarios because these intrusive thoughts can be so powerful. They can also distort your view of the present as well due to the anxieties that intrusive thoughts can set up.
Imagination
Your imagination plays a significant role in memory formation and recall. When anxiety clouds your mind, it can also blur the lines between reality and fantasy. You might vividly imagine scenarios that never occurred when you’re in an overstimulated state. Because of the emotional power of these moments, it can lead you to believe that an experience happened the way you imagined since the details may feel so clear.
Trauma
Traumatic experiences are significant when it comes to memory formation. You may find that anxiety stemming from past trauma alters your perception of events. When experiencing a trauma response, or strong anxiety, it may even impact how you see the present, which can alters the memory of the experience. For example, when triggered in the present, it can sometimes feel like you’re being traumatized by the present situation, even if it’s benign in the present and is more of a trigger of a past trauma. In these moments, you may unknowingly create traumatic memories of benign experiences due to a previous trauma being activated.
Clarifying and Moving Forward
The relationship between anxiety and false memories is complex but increasingly well-known. While anxiety does not automatically lead to false memories, it can increase vulnerability to memory alterations.
Ultimately, being aware of how anxiety may influence our memories can help to better understand, clarify, and work through significant or painful life experiences. If you have struggled with anxiety and are looking for a therapist to help, reach out to discuss your situation.
