False Memories

The role therapists could play in all this has been raised, I think a really good professional therapist is worth his/her weight in gold, but as has been highlighted by a recent investigation into therapy, there are some rather dodgy types out there who are neither monitored or expected to be qualified in any way. Fact is there have been cases of therapists/counsellors creating false memories in their patients but imagine this is extreme, however, I do think that some therapists will seek to manipulate the narrative and cause those easily influenced to turn against their loved ones.
Not at all sure if this is the case with this young woman but am sure it has happened with other ACs.

DD2 frequently reminds me that when she was about 10 I put her on a diet because she was fat. She was a bit chubby but not massively so. She was fat because I kept buying foods that she liked to eat, as well as healthy foods that she didn’t like! Either way I couldn’t win! She’s now a healthy size 6/8 and eats whatever she wants, but mostly healthy non processed food!
Mums can’t win!

Um - the phrase "recollections may vary" might at least put across your daughter is mis-remembering any event!

Even if she was correct - what does it matter? i gather she is not telling people you abused her either mentally or physically?
Maybe, when she tells the stories that people are probably fed up of hearing , you say that you didn't have much money so you did what you did . I think the more you disagree the more you feed into her stories . I think she is being perverse for the fun of it?

@ExDancer if you don’t mind me asking, does your daughter have any signs of an eating disorder?
Even if she doesn’t, have you considered family therapy to work out why you have such different recollections?
My older daughter is anorexic. She’s currently an inpatient at a clinic (and very determined to get better). It’s always noticeable that her memories of eating and her ideas about her appearance are completely different from my own. In family therapy we can discuss all this difficult stuff fairly safely.
On the other hand, with most of my children most of the time I trust their memories more simply because they are younger and things are more vivid for them.

False memory can be a terrible and dangerous thing! Some people have been accused and sentenced to prison and had their lives and reputations ruined on the strength of 'false memory'. Therapists & other mental health workers tend to encourage and act on these memories as they are afraid they 'MAY' be true.

People with psychosis and/or depression can have false memory syndrome.

I think she is just being hurtful and stupid.
I wouldn't push it in case she makes up worse stuff. Many adults blame their parents for everything they don't like about themselves. Just counter the remarks with neutral comments like ' I think you are confusing that with something you saw on the telly when you were small. It won't help calling her liar in front of other people.

When she is alone, you could tell her that these things didn't happen, and that you are upset by the repetition of these tales and would she like to discuss why she feels the need to repeat the stories. Maybe if she's confused she could get some counselling from a reputable counselling service. False memory syndrome is recognised in psychology, I believe.

Eddiecat78, I couldn't agree with you more. Apparently I ruined my daughter's childhood, and she'll never forgive me for it. We have supported her through two disastrous marriages, always been there for her, practically and financially, we have not been invited to her home for over 10 years, and yet she tells me that I am the wicked witch of the east. currently, she's not even talking to me except for a text to thank me for her christmas present.

I'd be inclined to tell your daughter - " recollections may vary " in the words of our late Queen

The problem is not lying but they really are false memories. I remember my mother told me that I was in my pushchair and it tipped up while she was in the shop where she could see me, it all happened in a flash. I'm sure I told her that I didn't remember it, I was about eighteen months old, but I did have a vivid picture in my mind of it happening when she recounted the story, so not a memory but simply a re-imagining of the event.

She sounds like a liar and attention seeker........just how serious will her untruths get in her efforts to perpetrate this "look at me everybody!" aspect of her personality?
A couple of decades back there was almost a tidal wave of people being encouraged by quack therapists to indulge what became known as False Memory Syndrome, usually accusing parents of abuse quite without foundation. It caused volcanic schisms in families.

I think all of us have minds that are far more fallable than we believe.

Many years ago , just before Easter, my younger sister died in a road accident My immediate and biggest regret at the time was that I had not seen her since the previous Christmas.

Roll on 20 years and in a clearout I found some letters DH and I had written to each other at this time. He had been working in Japan for six weeks and in the days before email and mobile phones, we kept in contact by letter. I was rereading the letters and was amazed to discover in one of the letters I wrote a description of seeing my sister, at my aunts, me there to visit my aunt, she passing through very quickly as my aunt lived in Dover and DS was on her way to France for some reason. This event had happened a fortnight before her death..

Yet 2 weeks later, when the tragedy happened I had no memory at all of this visit, and it was another 20 years before I was reminded of it. Since then, I have recreated the event in my mind, and several details have crept in that can only be there because deep inside my mind a memory of that night still exists.

I still do not understand how, even in the shock of the event, I could have fogotten that my sister and I had had an evening together, and shared a bedroom for the night ony a fortnight before her death and I had no memory of it.

Funny how these myths get passed around family and friends. For a long time I laboured under the belief that one of my aunties was once kissed by Frank Sinatra, I told friends this as well. The story was that when she was visiting the US with her then husband who was American many moons ago, she saw ole blue eyes live in Las Vegas, he spotted her in the audience and invited her on stage where he serenaded her and then kissed her before she went back to her seat. Was believable because my auntie was extremely beautiful.
But later in life she told me it was not true, she had gone to see Sinatra in Vegas but that was all there was to it. The story then became embellished every time it was told.
A bit disappointing tbh.
🙄

I assume most carry on as they always have, ignore happily.

We have 5 (now adult) children.
They often remember the same event differently (or maybe don't remember it at all).
Some ideas of what happened are quite fantastical (!)

The benefit of having lots of people involved is that it's not "one-on-one" and often seems to end in laughter.

So is eating air fried crickets but i don't suppose many of you would care for that.
Some of these admissions have quite shocked me.
And I think it helps explain why some young parents are so indulgent with their children. One extreme to the other.

I think Stews and Casseroles are just about the healthiest food there is ….

M0nica

Stews and casseroles have always formed a major part of our family diet, I love them. Since we were first married and ever since (56 years and counting). Both children seem to have survived undamaged, mentally or physically.

I do too.
I was brought up on casseroles!

Our DC ate them but DS doesn't like beef casserole much now at all.

Stews and casseroles have always formed a major part of our family diet, I love them. Since we were first married and ever since (56 years and counting). Both children seem to have survived undamaged, mentally or physically.

cross-stitch and Cabbie my husband used to tell a similar tale, except when he said the hungry children could have his meal then, his mother hit him over the head with a frying pan!!! She was a fiery redhead, but I don't expect that she did that!!

False memories have become a thing. Is your daughter seeing a therapist? Many, many younger people are these days whether they really need to or not. It's become fashionable to have therapy for everything and anything and the recipients are often encouraged to believe they've been mentally scarred by the most mundane of things. Like eating stew for example. Social media also adds to it. There was a disturbing article recently from various parents whose adult children, after seeing therapists, had false memories. They accused their parents of being drug addicts, child abusers, thieves and all sorts of sinister things. One of those adult children actually underwent treatment to reverse the harm caused by the therapist and one set of parents were actually arrested. Although the case was thrown out as it was clearly ridiculous.

Kate1949

I've heard my brother relating stories of things that happened to him and thinking 'I'm sure it was me that happened to, not him'. My sister calls it changing history.

DH does that all the time, particularly when it was something I'd successfully sorted out.
Perhaps it's a man thing 🤔

Surely we remember things differently, in the same way as two people listening to the same conversation may hear very different things.

I've heard my brother relating stories of things that happened to him and thinking 'I'm sure it was me that happened to, not him'. My sister calls it changing history.