Ep. 188-"That Never Happened": How Out-Of-Control Emotions Warps Memory
This episode talks about how mood, especially dysregulated emotions, affect memory. It explains why people with emotional issues may have such a different perspective and memory for things that happened in the past.
If you're close to someone with big emotions, you've probably gotten into an argument with them about something you remember...very differently than they do. You bring up something that happened and they'll say "that never happened!", leaving you to question your whole reality. In this episode, Dr. Kibby delves into why the "that never happened" argument happens so often. What if your loved one is genuinely remembering a fight differently- and that difference isn’t about manipulation, but about how your brain reconstructs trauma and emotion? This episode dives deep into the science of how mood, trauma, and dysregulation distort memory, often making "truth" feel entirely relative.
Dr. Kibby discusses why borderline personality disorder, trauma, or anxiety see the world and their memories through a skewed lens, and how this impacts trust, communication, and conflict resolution. She describes frameworks like mood-congruent bias and affect-as-information, which explain how emotions activate specific memory networks, creating a battlefield of conflicting recollections.
This episode also breaks down practical strategies for coming to a resolution when someone has a very different version of events. Learn how to respond when someone insists "that didn’t happen," or accuses you of things you don’t remember without gaslighting or invalidating their experience. You’ll hear about the dangers of false memories, how negative content is more memorable, and why gaslighting often involves wielding power over someone’s very sense of reality.
If you've ever wondered whether their reality is "crazy" or if you're losing your mind, this episode will give you the understanding and tactics you need to foster compassion, clarity, and peaceful communication.
Resources:
KulaMind for support with loved ones with emotional issues
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Kibby McMahon (00:03)
What's up little helpers? Today I'm going be talking about how emotions, especially big dysregulated emotions, affect memory. And the reason why this is such an interesting topic is because if you have a loved one who is emotionally dysregulated, borderline personality disorder, trauma, anger issues, narcissism, ⁓ you might disagree on what actually happened, right?
they might accuse you of saying, hey, you said this and you call me these names and ⁓ then you hung up on me and texted me this, right? They might have a whole recollection of a fight or situation that happened between you and them, but you have a totally different memory. Like you remember it differently. And you might be like, I mean, are we living in two different realities? Am I wrong?
Do I have a bad memory? What is going on? Are they doing this on purpose? That's a question I hear too. Are they doing this on purpose to gaslight or manipulate me? So I'm going to be talking about all of that, about why memory problems or, I don't know about memory problems, but why someone with intention emotions might remember past events differently than you.
⁓ And if you are struggling with this, if you have a loved one with emotion dysregulation or any other kind of serious mental illness or addiction, this is what I do. ⁓ I help people like you learn skills to actually communicate with your loved one, to support them without losing yourself. So if you're interested in that and need help, go to the link in the show notes, kulamind.com, K-U-L-A-M-I-N-D.com. ⁓
or look it up online and you can book a free call with me to talk about your situation and what would be the most helpful. So, just wanted to put that out there in case you're like, my God, I am losing my mind with this intense, emotionally intense relationship. ⁓ I can help you with that. So.
This, I'm gonna give a, just gonna give a brief overview of how mood affects memory. And I'm gonna go really, there's a whole field of research on this, but I'm gonna gloss over it pretty, you know, the important parts and to understand like why this is happening. Why if, you know, your husband with borderline personality disorder will just remember the past very differently than you.
I'm also hearing this in parents, especially older parents with their children who are like 20 or 30 years old. They might have all sorts of mental health issues, but they go, hey, you abused me. You punished me in this way, or you said this thing to me, or you screamed at me this, and I found that horrible.
really abusive and then the parent might have a totally different memory of that, ⁓ which is really complicated, especially if the kid is young and you you were an adult and so sometimes people don't know like, what do I do when someone I love is upset, but they're upset over something that I don't remember, that I'm pretty sure didn't happen.
Right? I say all the time that if someone is emotionally dysregulated, it makes sense to validate their feelings. So say it makes sense that you feel angry or, you know, I get that you're frustrated, but what do you do if someone's angry because of something that you don't remember?
And that becomes really tricky, right? And that could range from, think that, you you, when you screamed at me, you called me crazy and you call me these things, right? It could be something like remembering a different part of a fight or a conversation or event. But sometimes it could get really serious to the level of people saying, you know, I was sexually abused by someone and that person was like.
I have no memory of that. And so you don't want to victim blame. You don't want to say, you know, it's not true that you were abused, but there are cases where the other side just really doesn't know how to handle this, because they don't know, they don't remember that, right? So, and that could, that could be really hard. So how do you validate someone's feelings?
when their feelings are based on, I don't know, not reality or their different memory of the situation. So this is the problem that I'm seeing a lot. I struggle with it myself a lot, mostly because I have a terrible, terrible memory. So already I have a hard time remembering exactly ⁓ what happened when, who said what. I mean, I will have like general...
⁓ like the gist or the, you know, the underlying vibe of what's going on or the main point or theme, but remembering details about who said what or we went to here and then we went to this store and that store, like those kind of memories. Other people can remember things way better than I could. So it was...
It was hard growing up with someone who with intense emotions and we would fight a lot and she would say, my mom would say, you you called me a bad mother and you said this and that and I really didn't remember that. And I'm like, I think I said something else or I didn't say that but I'm not sure because I have such a terrible memory. So it would make me confused all the time and it really shook.
That was probably sometimes probably the hardest part is that I feel hurt, I feel scared, I feel affected by the fight that we had, but I'm remembering something differently than she does, right? And so, and then I'm like, ⁓ am I making it up? Am I remembering it differently? What is going on? are my traumatic memories just mine and things that my brain made up? ⁓
And so, I mean, even recently, mean, my mom and I are doing really well now, and it's interesting, she's probably listening to this right now. ⁓ And I bet you whatever I'm saying, she's gonna be like, no, that's not true. You know, I've mentioned on this podcast and to her that I have some pretty traumatic memories where our fights have gotten so bad that...
I've gotten physically hurt by them, right? So, you know, I've talked about times when I was injured and, or felt abused, right? Was hit. And whenever I talked to her about it, she has yet to say, yeah, I remember when I did that. I'm sorry. Or yes, that did happen. Most of the time she was like, I didn't do that.
And then now that I'm older and I'm able to, that I know a lot more psychology and I'm much more confident in myself, I'm like, I'm confident in those memories. I'm confident that that happened, that one day, you know, I was, ⁓ you know, there's just been horrible times. There've been horrible times when she's hit me and I've bled or been injured from that.
⁓ And I'm like, I don't even know why I would make that up, right? Why would I want why would I invent that in my mind? So I feel more confident in my memory now, but growing up in that it was so confusing and so hard to trust myself and trust my memory and That's why it was key to have you know, talk to friends or talk to my dad at the time who would be like
no, I remember it this way and I saw you do this and I heard you do that. It was good to have like other witnesses to be like, oh yeah, I'm not crazy. But then like...
I'm like, how did this happen? How does this happen that we have such different recollections of a fight where I remember being hit and you don't remember that at all? And I'm hearing that more and more with people in KulaMind to say they have a child or a partner with emotion dysregulation and they're like, they'll scream at me and they'll call me names and they'll...
say I'm a terrible person and I should die blah blah blah and then when you know our loved the loved one will talk to them about that later like hey that really hurt my feelings the person doesn't even remember and I was like no I didn't I didn't say that I didn't say that so what do you do when when you talk to someone about you've hurt my feelings and the other person was like that didn't happen
Not just I have different interpretations of what happened, but that didn't happen. So stepping back, I do want to say that memory in general, I mean, I'm not an expert in memory. I did a little bit of research in it, but I'm certainly not an expert. know the broad strokes, but memory is really complex. There's all these different parts of memory. There is working memory where you're just like, you know, taking in new information and manipulating it in some way, like working through and remembering it or solving a
a puzzle and then there is short-term memory and then there's long-term memory. And then when you remember something, it is not like you just have a database and you're just looking at the database. We're actively constructing memory. So we have to take pieces of what we remember and make a memory in our minds of, yeah, I went down this street, I went to that street. Your brain is actively bringing up and reconstructing that memory.
It's also called recall. It's one thing about storing information and memories, and there's another is to actually bring it to your conscious thoughts, right? To be like, ⁓ that's right, I went to this store in this day, right? memory is, it's not like a negative on film, where it's just like something's imprinted and that's what it is, it's like an active construction of it.
So that could get really tricky because that's your whole basis of reality, right? And when you're dealing with a relationship of any kind, a lot of what a relationship is is based on a shared memory, right? Like you had a conversation, you went to school together, you had a shared experience, you went to a concert together, you had a fight. And then a lot of how you relate to the other person was how did we remember that, right? Not only what...
happened remembering what was said in that fight, but also our interpretation of it. Right? If I, if someone just, ⁓ like for example, yesterday, ⁓ my husband thought I was angry with him. And ⁓ I, you know, like, I was like, what? Why did you think I was angry at you? I was just really busy with work and everything like that. And
He was like, just had this weird feeling. I asked you a question or I sent you some pictures and you didn't respond. ⁓ And you just sounded really short. And I was like, what? So already there was two problems. One is that I couldn't remember him sending me certain pictures and me not responding. Like I was like, ⁓ I didn't remember that. You didn't send me pictures.
But then there was also the interpretation of what we were, you know, what were we saying to each other, right? I was like busy and kind of stressed and he was like, Kibby might be mad at me. So already we have the same text conversation, but two different versions of it, right? And I did look back and I was like, ⁓ I did miss that picture. And there was, you know, other texts of mine that were very succinct and short and kind of like, you know, ⁓
that I could see now, I'm like, I see why he would think I was angry. I was just like, don't forget he has, you know, the doctor's appointment, right? It was very curt. So I was like, okay. I remember saying those words, but since I had such a different intent behind that, I didn't even think that it would come across as like angry at you. So miscommunication that was like quickly resolved, right? But, and that's normal.
That's a normal part of relationships where you're constantly have to share an experience and conversation and interact, but people have different memories of what happened, but also different interpretations and feelings and opinions and reactions to that, to what happened. And sometimes a lot of the work of resolving fights and issues is just clearing up that miscommunications. You ⁓ sent me that text and let me understand how you...
Interpreted that and I'll tell you what my interpretation of that is like really understanding like with this one event How do we both? have different experiences of that event, right so That is just a normal part of relationships and I feel like that is being pathologized a lot in online because of all discussions about gaslighting ⁓ and I'll talk about gas lighting a little bit more but
The idea is that sometimes it can be so distressing when someone that you love that you're in a close relationship with remembers a situation differently and says and like invalidates or discredits your memory of it, right? You say, hey, you said this and you called me a bitch and it really hurt my feelings. And the other person says, no, I didn't. I didn't say that. You're remembering it wrong.
I mean, yeah, as I'm saying that, sounds horrible, and it is, ⁓ but it's really common that people do remember things differently. But gaslighting has this added problem of ⁓ using that difference as a way to make someone feel crazy or undermine their reality. So it's tricky because it's like, yeah, disagreements happen. People remember things differently. It's not always gaslighting. It's not always ⁓ damaging, but sometimes it is.
So I just, you know, making the point right now that memory is a construction, right? We're creating memories. Whenever I'm like picturing back to my childhood, I'm actually like making that a new, which sometimes is accurate and sometimes is not. And then you're dealing with what happens when you have two people remembering the same thing and they remember it differently and they react to it differently. So those are like the broader issues about this, but.
We also know from the research that mood affects memory. The way you feel now affects the way you're going to remember things in the past and the way you felt at the time affects how you're going to remember it. ⁓ So it is really hard to separate emotion and memory, right? To be like, what are the facts of the situation? What is, what, you know, what
Let's get logical, like let's get real. What is the reality of this versus emotion? Well, that's sometimes really hard to peel apart. So there's one, there's a lot of my research in grad school had something to do with this where I looked at mood congruent biases, meaning ⁓ if you have an emotion, if you're feeling sad, that's going to impact the way you see things.
process information in your world. It also affects the way you recall memories and information in your mind, right? So if I'm feeling really, really sad, what happens is that
That feeling of sadness is connected to all these different memories and thoughts and ways of seeing the world, right? My attention is going to be narrowed. I'm going to, ⁓ it's that feeling in my body of sadness is connected to times that have been sad or made me sad in the past. So it's like when you have an emotion, it activates a network, an associative network.
where I feel sad and then that sadness is connected to a feeling, a memory of like when I was hurt and then it might make me pay attention to things that are more sad and so on and so forth. So it's kind of like spreads, right? It's also called like a spreading activation. ⁓ And that, and based on, based on, ⁓ sorry, cut that part out.
And based on an approach called affect is information approach, our brains are taking emotion as like, ⁓ this is information and what is that information connected to, right? That feeling of sadness, the heaviness of my chest crying that brings back ⁓ other memories of when I was sad and that makes me look at things in a sad way and makes me pay attention to sad words and ⁓ like stories and
pieces of information from everything that's given to me. So that's what a mood congruent bias is, a mood bias, where your emotion is going to make you focus on stuff that is in line with that emotion. And we say that in DBT that emotions love themselves. So what that looks like is if I'm angry,
emotion, that emotion wants to build on itself, right? Because it wants to motivate us to satisfy a need and motivates us to do something. That's what emotions are supposed to do. They're supposed to make us move around and do something so we solve a problem or meet a need, right? So if I'm angry, it anger wants to rev me up. So I fight, you know, and I protect myself or my loved ones or, you know, so it needs to rev, it needs to like gain momentum. And so
Emotions love themselves if I'm angry about something else like maybe I maybe I had it just like a lot of coffee and I'm just like angsty Then it's going to make ⁓ In what it's gonna make it much easier. Let's say to access memories of other things that made me angry or To look at a situation and really focus on on it and interpret it as in a way that makes me angrier
Right? emotions really build on themselves. And that's why it's so hard to get someone to want to regulate their emotion at the moment because it's like a runaway train that wants to keep going. And it's like, no, everything is terrible. And this sucks and everyone's out to get me. Right? And so it doesn't want you to come in and be like, wait, wait, wait, what about all this other information that tells you that life is not all bad and people are not out to get you?
It really narrows our minds to things in our present and past and future ⁓ that are in line with that feeling. So I saying, when I get angry, it really builds on itself quickly. So I'm angry even at one small thing. Suddenly all the reasons why I was angry with that person comes up, right? It's like, then they do this and then they do that.
And then I'm looking at this conversation and clearly they mean that I'm a bad person, right? So I'm really, my world is getting warped with that emotion, with that anger, and then I'm getting more more angry. So it builds on itself, right? And since I'm more regulated, especially these days, I have a lot of support and a lot of help.
I'm able to interrupt that process and be aware of it and go, ⁓ you know, I'm angry, so that's making me see things in a really particular way. ⁓ I know it's just my anger talking. Anger-colored glasses, like rose-colored glasses, I'm just like seeing through it right now and I'm not gonna make any major decisions or act on that because I know that I'm like, you know, my view of the situation is distorted until I'm calmed down and I can really see things clearly.
So knowing that that mood connecrum bias happens is important.
my training.
And, sorry, jumping back in. And it's going to really paint a really specific picture of a situation, right? Like, the ⁓ times that I've gotten to an argument with my husband or been upset with someone, my mind will go to, and then they did this before and they did it again, and then my mind is only seeing the stuff that makes me angry.
And not only is it bringing up all that information, right? It's like pulling all the anger memories, but it's only letting me see that. So then suddenly that person just becomes like, ⁓ wow, that, you know, I can't even see why I'm, you know, I can't even see him remember the happy moments. All I remember is that they've hurt me this way for all of time, right? So it really biases our perspective.
And this is the case really strongly with people with emotion dysregulation, right? This mood congruent bias happens to anybody. ⁓ But when people who don't have skills to regulate their emotions or have like metacognition or awareness outside of their emotions in that moment, it's really hard to say, whoa, okay, I am like so mad at this person. I'm just like.
seeing all the bad things, all the reasons why I'm angry with them, all the reasons why I'm hurt. ⁓ But I know that this is only like right now. I could take a step back and realize that that's what my brain is doing now and I do have good memories of them too, right? Like if you're able to regulate.
you're able to hold the balance and at least like acknowledge or even like really pull other information that's not in line with that emotion, right? So if people are dysregulated, they don't have that skill. They don't have as strong of that prefrontal cortex and metacognition where they're able to be like, ooh, there's a world outside of this emotion memory, right? So they're only seeing the bad.
And so that's why people who have borderline personality disorder or dysregulated in some way, like, it feels like all good or all bad, all black and white. They're just suddenly, at one point you were the love of their life, they're happy, you guys are great, you had great memories. But then when you have a fight, suddenly you're the worst, they were always unhappy, and you're just an all bad person. Well, it's because their emotions are taking over.
blocking out the good stuff and focusing on the bad stuff. And so it really does seem like sometimes they'll treat it like two different people, right? So sometimes that's what the Jekyll and Hyde effect happens where you're either all good, everything's all good, happy, happy, happy love, or all that, all that. So keeping that in mind that...
Emotion is kind of like a drug. distorts the way we see things and remember things. ⁓ And that's especially true when someone is emotionally dysregulated. ⁓ Something else about negative emotion is often negative emotions, especially when you felt it at the time, will improve memory. Like it actually increases memory. And I think that's because like,
we, our brains need to remember threats, right? Like, I'm hearing this also in parent-child ⁓ dynamics where the parent is like, yeah, I gave you a timeout or I punished you when you were like five or something like that. And, you know, it wasn't that big a deal, but for example. And then the kid is like, well, no, I remember exactly what happened.
this happened and then you said this and you said that and it's like the kid has like a perfect memory of this really upsetting experience and that's because the brain needs to, it makes sense for it to be really locked onto threat like I'm really going to remember bad things that are dangerous so I don't encounter it again. So sometimes really intense emotions can really heighten and make your memory better in the for even like really
⁓ negative content, negative events. So you already have that where a person is going to much more easily remember all the bad times, like the five bad times or the bad fights and remember all the good times. And that's why it kind of feels like, ⁓ it feels like, hold on.
It feels like you could build a thousand bridges and ⁓ just knock it. Wait, what is that?
Build a thousand...
Oh my god, nevermind, I just having a really funny joke. But that's why it might seem like you can have great memories or have, you know, do well or show up for that person a million times, but then the one time that you messed up or hurt their feelings, that's what they remember. Because negative, unfortunately negative memories are easier to remember. So.
There's that. mean, this is kind of a bummer because it's like negative moods kind of almost take over their brain, right? ⁓
⁓ Another thing about what negative moods do to memory is that ⁓ negative mood makes it easier to remember the gist, right? Like overall, ⁓ the overall themes or the feeling or what, you know, like the gist of what's happening, right? The overall, like more of the general.
context or outcome, but negative mood makes it harder to remember verbatim details. So someone looking at a fight or a conversation in the past and they're feeling bad, it might help them remember, well, that conversation made me feel really bad, but it's actually hard to remember exactly what was said. So...
So as you can imagine, that's where a lot of fights come in where people are left with this, the gist of a negative mood, a negative impact in that conversation or whatever happened. ⁓ But they can't remember the details. And so that's, you know, it's a problem when people get into the weeds of the details and go, well, no, that didn't happen. I didn't say things exactly like that. You're remembering it wrong. Well, that could come across to your loved one.
as really invalidating because they feel certain things from that memory. They feel sad, they feel ashamed, they feel angry. Their memory of the specific details might be fuzzy, but if someone says, no, you're wrong, then they're like, yeah, but I still have the feeling, right? Like, sure, we remember the details differently. We don't agree on what happened, what was said. I'm still left with this feeling and
it doesn't really work to say, ⁓ wait, my memory's different than yours. Okay, now I feel better. It's like, I'm still hurt. And now I'm kind of confused at what happened. And ⁓ now I don't know how to resolve it because your solution is just to tell me that I'm wrong. So that's why there's so many fights that are not productive around what really happened. What did I really say? What did you really say? And the details of a memory.
⁓
So.
So that is just talking about how mood can affect memory of stuff that's there, right? How it can pick up on stuff that's congruent with it and in line with that feeling or not. it's like, is a magnet, an emotion is like a magnet for memories and thoughts and ⁓ focus on things that are similar, right? But what do you think, ⁓ sorry.
but there's also the issue of false memories. let me look at the, look at my notes.
So.
There's an issue with false memories ⁓ where people remember things that didn't happen at all, ⁓ which is actually pretty scary if you think about it. psychologists got really interested in this when ⁓ Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist, ⁓ pioneered this work on false memories or the misinformation effect. And this is, in her studies, she ⁓
would take her ⁓ research participants and they would do something, right? They go to a mall or no, sorry.
Loftus would show that if research participants were exposed to certain information, even if it's inaccurate, after an event, it could actually be incorporated and included in the memory. So, for example, in her famous study, she convinced 25 % of participants
that they had been lost in a shopping mall as children, even though that event never happened. So there's all these different ways in her studies that she was able to convince people of something that happened to them in the past that never actually happened. Sometimes even leading questions, I'm not saying this is what she did in this particular study, but leading questions like,
What did you feel when you were lost in the mall as a child, right? For example, that kind of question or that information might even make people remember getting lost in the mall when that never happened. So we can create memories that aren't accurate, which is really scary. I think the more I'm talking about this, the more scared I get. ⁓ And this had...
a lot of impact on legal proceedings and the law because it's like if if eyewitness if so if like people were sentenced based on eyewitness ⁓ eyewitnesses then what if that eyewitness like remembers something that never happened what if their memory isn't accurate so her work was so important to show that yo memory is plastic and memory is not always reliable
especially in emotional situations where you are better remembering the gist and not just the detail play-by-play, which is necessary for things like legal proceedings. The research also showed that negative content or negative information ⁓ more easily creates false memories than positive information.
It's easier to convince people that people had been lost in a shopping mall as children than them winning a great prize in the shopping mall, right? So it is easier to take in false memories if the content of that memory is negative. So this is also really concerning because I mean, this is going to be hard to, and I just like,
nervous about talking about it because I don't want to invalidate anyone's experience and even my nervousness shows like how touchy of a subject this is. ⁓ There have been some loved ones who, as I mentioned, said, yeah, my daughter has accused of, has accused like someone in our family or someone that they know for
assault or sexual assault or abuse. ⁓ And we don't know what to do about that because ⁓ she might go back and forth like there's sometimes when they were like they remember that and sometimes that they didn't. ⁓ And at other times she admitted that that was not really that didn't really happen. But we also know that with abuse ⁓
someone can not remember it, right? Because you might have dissociation, meaning that your mind is so overwhelmed by the distressing trauma that it doesn't remember things as well. So if you know that people who are victims of abuse tend to not remember actual abuse that they've experienced, well then what do you do if someone says, ⁓ wait, I remember I was abused by this person and the person's like, I don't remember that.
And then they go, well, actually maybe that wasn't true. That didn't happen. And then later on they say that happened again. I think loved ones are obviously really stuck by, don't want to victim blame or I don't want to ⁓ tell someone that their traumatic memory or their abuse didn't happen at the same time. That is not in someone's reality. And I'm really talking about cases where
the person is genuinely like, don't remember, not someone who hides it or lies about it, which is also really common, sadly. So there's no right or wrong. I'm not saying that everyone who accuses of ⁓ abuse and if the perpetrator doesn't remember it, then it's a false memory. Everyone's reality is different. And when you're dealing with traumatic memories,
memory itself becomes really complex and really hard to figure out and use that as like evidence for what really happened. gosh, ⁓ I went on tandem with that one. so there's that issue of false memory. Now, with borderline personality disorder, I have been hearing more and more people saying, well,
Like I've, sorry, like I'm gonna start that part over again.
Now to add confusion to the mix, even more confusion to the mix, ⁓ borderline personality disorder can come with some hallucinations or delusions. So there actually can be some psychotic symptoms with emotion dysregulation in borderline personality disorder. I saw a review study.
that looked at 1,263 patients with borderline personality disorder and auditory hallucinations like hearing things that aren't there were reported in 27 % of hospitalized BPD patients and visual hallucinations like seeing things that aren't there was reported in 25 % of all patients inpatient and 24 % of outpatients. So there are a
big portion of people with BPD who also have psychotic symptoms, right, who are hallucinating. Also important to note that the people with BPD and psychotic ⁓ symptoms are much more severe, right? They're just more, they're usually, you know, more hospitalized more often. They have more suicide risk and self-harm. So they're just more severe in general.
But also they have more PTSD and emotional abuse. So these people might have PTSD symptoms that are also, you know, giving them flashbacks. I mean, it's like a complex issue, but ⁓ it is seen that with people with borderline personality disorder, they might actually have like delusional thoughts and a lot of the time is negative, right? Like that someone's out to get me, someone's out to hurt me and it could be really intense.
So ⁓ the way that they can tell that this is psychotic symptoms in borderline personality disorder versus schizophrenia or psychosis is the psychotic symptoms are only present in BPD when the person is really upset or in distress. So it's also activated by mood. ⁓ With people who have schizophrenia,
They might have psychotic symptoms when they're stressed, of course, but sometimes when they're not. So you could tell that they're just having those psychotic symptoms and hallucinations and delusions no matter what. But people with BPD, it only happens with intense emotions. So I've seen that a lot. And I've seen that, especially with BPD, ⁓ when they get really, really upset, it's often triggered by rejection or feeling criticized or just feeling hurt.
in an interpersonal context and then they get upset and then their emotions take over, right? They feel shame or anger or hurt or whatever and their emotions are biasing the way they see things when we can grow in bias. And then also it sometimes dips into levels of delusion where they're like, everyone's out to get me, everyone's trying to hurt me, you are conspiring against me, right? Or they could even hear or see things that aren't there.
relatively rare, right? BPD is rare in general and 24 % of like really rare disorder. It's like, you know, only a few, but this is why someone with, who can't manage their intense emotions can reach the level of they are just living in a different reality. They're just seeing things differently. And that could be scary.
Because you want to validate and want to support them, but also you're like, are they crazy? ⁓ what is happening? They're getting upset over something that I don't remember or I don't think it happened. ⁓ Now, even as I'm saying that, what could be common in ⁓ relationships where there's borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder is that this
big difference in remembering a situation could be gaslighting. I...
I don't know, I definitely feel like people are overusing the word gaslighting. So that's why I'm trying to be cautious here because ⁓ now people are taking any disagreement like, my boyfriend, ⁓ I remember him yelling at me and he said he didn't yell, he's gaslighting me. And I think people are talking about the effect of it, right? The effect of.
what happens if we have an emotional situation and disagreement and they remember things differently and I remember things differently and we go back and forth over what really happened. That could be really frustrating because you're like, all you're doing is just defending the way you see it and not even hearing me, hearing the way I feel about it, hearing the impact, like really validating and seeing me for like the feeling that I have, regardless of the details.
So people can really get upset with that and it could just like create more more clash. So ⁓ arguing over the details is a way to make things so much worse. ⁓
So it could just escalate the conversation when you're just going back and forth like, no, it didn't happen. No, and you're battling over whose memory of it was right. You've already lost it. That's what you're trying to do. So it's just not doing that. But gaslighting in particular is the core definition is someone who is often in a position of power.
over another person, but often in position of power and using their power to ⁓ make the other person doubt their reality. And it's more of an intentional thing, right? It's like, I'm gonna make you feel crazy and ⁓ that you can't even trust your own memory if I say, no, what you're remembering is not right.
I have more power over you, I know more, and I'm saying that your memory of the situation is incorrect. ⁓ That is an intentional manipulation tactic to get power over the other person, even more power over the other person and belittle them, which it's interesting, the effects of gaslighting can really affect memory. people who've been gaslit intentionally a lot are
have over time less trust in their own memory. So they actually, in some studies, they perform worse on reality testing and reality monitoring, hey, do you remember this thing? Do you think this is real? And they have less confidence in their own ability to tell what's real than someone who's not been gaslit. So it definitely has an effect on the way you feel and the way you remember things. ⁓ But gaslighting in its very specific
definition is like someone who is using that disagreement, that difference in memory and difference in perspectives as a way to gain power over the other person. ⁓ However, it's still really distressing when you or someone you love is very emotional, you're having a lot of arguments, and then you have completely different memories of what happened. No one's trying to like
super overpower or belittle or intentionally make the other person feel crazy, but it's just like, no, I'm right. No, I'm right. And both people are just frustrated and confused that you can't even agree on what happened, right? So here are some strategies for how to deal with that situation.
So I'm just looking over right now.
on? Did I remember that incorrectly?
bound in a relationship but then I had something else. Okay.
Okay, I've gotten this question more and more recently from people who have loved ones who have borderline personality disorder or other emotions, dysregulation, and they're coming at these people with accusations or upset feelings over ⁓ something that happened in the past, but.
the details of what happened or even like, did that happen is really confusing, right? So sometimes people feel like, you know, they're accusing me of things that I don't remember. Like I didn't say that or it didn't happen. Or maybe they did something when they were dysregulated and it's like, hey, you called me a bitch and do you remember that? And they're like, no, I didn't. So how do you deal with someone who is emotionally dysregulated?
and has a very different memory of what happened than you do. So the first thing is do not... Okay, I'll do... Hold on. three suggestions for this. One, don't argue. Two, validate the emotion, not the fact. And three, don't admit to...
something that you don't remember. ⁓ I'll explain each of those. So the first one is ⁓ just don't argue. So if you, this is the common mistake I see in loved ones and families and couples that are emotionally dysregulated. One person goes to the other person and said, you really hurt me, you did this horrible thing to me. And.
Person two goes, no, I didn't, I said this, I didn't do, you're remembering that wrong. And then they go back and forth on the details. That leads to nothing. Think of any time when you got in an argument with someone over what happened, is there any time when that person convinced you, ⁓ actually, you're right, you did say that thing, and now I feel better, right? One, if they're right,
then you feel ashamed and defensive and you're like, well, you know, but my thing is right too, right? There's still a part of your experience of it that you want to hold on to and validate. no, that just doesn't happen. Usually those kind of arguments over the details polarizes you and you get so locked into defending yourself and the way you see the situation that you can't do what you want to do, which is come together, figure out a solution and do something differently next time or resolve it.
So if someone comes to you, accuses you of, or like remembers a situation differently than you, don't get into the details. Don't fight over the content of the memory or what happened. Just rise above it and really focus on the feelings, right? So ⁓ I'll get to that in second, but.
If you go back and forth on the details, it really doesn't work, right? As I mentioned, like you get polarized and people get defensive. But also, if someone is dysregulated, they're not thinking straight, right? So this is why justifying, what was it, Jade? Justifying, arguing, describing, ⁓ I forgot in explaining, I guess, don't really work, because you're really appealing to the
logic mind, right? The rational mind. And you're saying, hey, take in all this other information that is not in line with your emotion. And so see the bigger picture. See the way I see things. And when a person is really dysregulated, as I mentioned, their attention narrows only on the bad stuff, only on the things that fit their emotion. So you're trying to get in there and be like, look at this other evidence, look at this other piece of the pie, like look at the bigger picture. And they're not able to.
People who are regulated are able to have skills and be like, okay, I see things this way, I feel this way, but I will take a step back and see outside of this feeling. People who are just regulated is just like, it's like they're literally put on glasses that are rose colored, right? They're seeing things for a particular way and you're saying, hey, the world is not all rose, it's all so purple. And you're like, I don't see purple. So just, when someone is really, really upset, just.
take a moment and be like, okay, they can't take in a lot of information right now. So going back and forth over the details and information is really gonna fall flat. Like you're asking someone to do a math problem when they're dangling off the side of the cliff. Like it's just not gonna work. So don't argue, don't go into the details and validate the emotion, not the details, right? So, okay, you too remember that argument.
Text message, fight trauma differently. ⁓ be like, agree to disagree. We have different memories of the situation. That's very possible. Maybe even some people are creating memories that weren't there. That's possible. But let's focus on the feelings, right? Let's focus on how it made you feel.
So instead of saying, no, I didn't say that, you remembering it wrong. And if you remember it the way I do, you won't be as upset.
You can say, you know, I don't remember it that way and I understand that it really hurts you. So help me understand that more. Tell me about the way it made you feel. Tell me about what I can do about that. Tell me more about your experience. Right? That in itself is validating because it's leaning into wanting to understand their perspective and their emotions and taking it seriously. So even that can be relieving and take the
the dysregulation and the wall down, asking about their feelings, validating their feelings, not the facts, right? So you could just be like.
You know, you could think to your head like, I didn't do that. You're accusing me of things that absolutely I don't remember and I didn't do. you could think to yourself, if you believe that happened, of course you feel upset. So if they're accusing me of being abusive, I don't have to say, no, I wasn't, I wasn't abusive. You could say, ⁓ if you remember it in that way and...
and felt abused by that, like I can understand why you were so hurt. And that was not my intention, right? Separating the impact from ⁓ intent. I didn't mean that at the time. ⁓ And I would never wanna hurt you like that. And I'm sorry that that made you feel that way. ⁓ I know people don't like the, I'm sorry you feel that way, but you can say it genuinely. Like, I...
You know, I don't remember it that way or didn't intend that and I don't want to hurt you and I'm really sorry I made you feel that way, right? So you could say that, focus on the emotions, not the facts. And then avoid this mistake that I see all the time where people just, you know, they just want to keep the peace. So they just agree to everything. They're like, fine, you're right. That did happen. I was abusive. I'm the worst.
I said this, I said that, and you're thinking like, my God, like the only way I can calm this person down is by agreeing to the way they see things. ⁓ I don't think you have to. Like I think that you, what that might do is ⁓ inadvertently, like, you know, without intending to ⁓ reinforce some dysregulation, right? If they're like yelling at you or screaming at you and you just want to keep the peace.
and you're scared and you just want to calm everything down, and you submitting and just being like, yeah, I apologize for all of it, I'll take the blame for all of it, that might reinforce that behavior, because it's like, oh, if I yell and I'm dysregulated, you'll just submit to me. You'll just agree with everything that I'm saying. So model that you can, show the person that you can,
Come together be collaborative trying to understand like come to a shared understanding, you know connect and Also, it's okay to have your own memory of the situation your own perspective, but you could still connect, right? So you don't have to go all or nothing. No, you're wrong. You know, you're crazy ⁓ or fine. You're right. I am abusive I I'm remembering it wrong. I've just you know, so you can stick to what you know stick to what you remember and
from my personal experience, I think it was really helpful to have like eye witnesses, right? To have someone there, like someone actually to look over my text messages or to be there. Like there are still times when I like recently in the past year where I got into a conflict with someone and I felt accused of something that I was like, wait, I don't remember that at all. And then I went to the people who were there and they were like, no, that.
your memory is correct or you you're remembering, I remember that too. It's like, ⁓ okay. Like that's just, it helps to have some other kind of evidence or record, right? Like having the text, having the screenshots, writing things down, right? Writing things down in a journal or just being confident in your own memory. Which is tough because emotions distort memory, but forget about that. But.
You could say, I remember things differently. And at the same time, I want us to understand how you remember it. And your feelings are totally valid based on your experience of that time, that event. So don't just over confess. Don't just submit and say yes to everything. First of all,
It's people pleasing and you're frankly lying to yourself, right? If you are agreeing to something that you really don't remember, you're invalidating yourself. It's reinforcing their behavior. And it's modeling that someone has to win. It's modeling that one person's memory of the situation is the winner and both people have to submit to that. No, model something else. Model that we can have two different memories of the same situation and
let me understand and work with the way you felt about it. If that's not the impact I wanted to have, then I will apologize for what I do remember and I do agree with and my actual contributions to that situation. And let's figure out what we can do from now on. How do we solve the problem moving forward? ⁓
As I'm saying that, I understand too how hard it is.
You know, I just put myself in the other position of like, there are memories that I have that, you know, people in my past or my mom or my family, I remember things a certain way and I was affected by it. It was like traumatizing or it affected me strongly. And that other person, like my mom, like might not actually remember it.
Maybe because she was in emotion or ⁓ alcohols in the mix or because I'm remembering parts of it wrong or whatever. But it is a really hard thing for me to be the only one who has that memory. The only one who said, yeah, that happened. I was bleeding. I was hurt and I was bleeding. And it makes me feel crazy to be the only one in my memory. I think it's still like in that moment,
If it's really the case where the other person really doesn't remember it that way, I don't want them to say, yeah, you're right, that happened, even though I remember it. But to be truthful and say, well, I don't remember that, but I believe you, and I'm sorry for that impact on you, the way it hurt you, and it makes sense why you'd be upset, right? That would be a response that would be so healing for me.
It would be nice to be like, yeah, you're right. You know, you're 100 % right. That did happen. And I'm sorry, but if that's a lie on their part, if that's just something that they say to make me happy or to keep the peace, then it's not gonna serve me, even though it might feel good at the time, it's not gonna serve me or the relationship. So.
That's all to say that it is true that emotion impacts the way we remember, the way we take in situations and events, the way we remember them, ⁓ and the way we think about them, right? So mood, our mood really takes over our brains and especially the case for people who have intense emotions that are hard to manage.
⁓ happens in trauma, BPD, and depression, and anxiety. know, people with anxiety see danger everywhere. People with depression see rejection and ⁓ lack of hope everywhere. People with BPD see rejection and criticism everywhere, right? So it's true that intense emotions affect the way they see things, but maybe we could get to how it impacts them and their...
people's experience and not the details of the memory. So that's all for today. I know it's a complex topic. Thank you for going with me on this journey through memory research and emotions. ⁓ As always, I love hearing your questions or comments. just comment on Spotify and YouTube. I have the most ⁓ access to. So if you write something there, a question, I'm happy to respond.
⁓ Again, if you're struggling with a relationship like this that's really contentious, really painful, a lot of dysregulated emotions, check out KulaMind, K-U-L-A-M-I-N-D dot com and leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. See you next week.