I want to write about my past, and it makes sense to start at the beginning, simply because that’s where it began. The problem is that most of what I remember is a series of loose facts, such as living there, being with those people, having that job, and whether it was enjoyable or not, or something in between. I can remember what my old room looked like, mostly because I have seen that one picture of the room from time to time, it’s just the picture I remember holding in my hands if I’m honest. I actually don’t know what it is to remember in the sense of reliving it in my mind. 

What I know of the time from before I moved out of my parents’ house is almost nothing. I can string together a story, I remember the story of my youth. I can point to the tree I climbed when I was 11, and looking down from that vantage point for the first time feels like it is etched in my memory, like what vertigo feels like whenever I experience it now. I remember feeling vertigo in that tree, and more than 30 years later, when standing on a 10-story-high balcony. I recall many strong emotions, and they are often associated with a specific place. However, the feelings are real, but I have no certainty that the locations are correct. 

After I moved out, the story became richer, perhaps because I had finally started living my own life, and the vacation was over. The steps I took now, I did for the first time on my own; I paid attention to where I was going. However, as I mentioned earlier, I am a skeptic and don’t entirely trust my own memories, except for the basic facts that I have lived in different places, attended various schools, and held other jobs. Later experiences now taint most of the feelings that accompanied them, and my feelings about specific events have also evolved over the years. I also believe that if you are currently experiencing strong emotions, such as a breakup, you should recognize that you are the last one to have an objective assessment of what is happening. It often takes time to acknowledge that the strong feelings were, for the most part, an exaggeration and a reflection of how the world around you expects that you should react, how your background taught you what an appropriate memory should look like.   

I asked AI what it thinks of this idea. I am, of course, skeptical about what it says. However, if I treat it as a reflection of what the average website writes about this topic, I can appreciate it, and I am amazed that it can summarize it so well. I don’t know if I could summarize a dozen articles about the topic if I tried, but definitely not in 5 seconds. 

Yes — what you’re describing is very common, and psychologists actually have a term for it: memory reconsolidation and memory substitution.

When we recall something, we’re not just “playing back” the original memory. Instead, each act of remembering reactivates the memory and makes it malleable again. Then, whatever context we’re in — including photos, stories people tell, or even our own retellings — can alter it. Over time, the memory of the memory can become stronger than the raw sensory memory of the original event.

That’s why:

Photos act like anchors: Looking at a vacation photo can reinforce that particular snapshot, until it becomes the dominant version of the experience. Later, when you try to “remember,” your brain is really pulling up the photo and the associations around it, not necessarily the direct sensory trace of the trip.

Narratives take over: If you’ve told a story about that vacation many times (“That was the trip where we got lost in the old city”), the story becomes what you remember, even if other parts of the trip fade.

 

Sensory traces fade faster: The smells, sounds, or fleeting impressions of the trip don’t get reinforced unless they’re re-triggered. Photos and words keep the more concrete details alive, but they can crowd out the “raw” feeling of being there.

This is why memories can feel like “copies of copies” — the more we revisit them through external aids (photos, videos, conversations), the more they reshape what we think of as our past.

Some researchers even argue that many autobiographical memories are constructive fictions: they’re real in the sense that they represent our past, but they’re partly rebuilt every time we access them.

If you ask the AI how it “knows” this, it will tell you, in this case, that it is: “a synthesis of findings from thousands of peer-reviewed studies and neuroscience literature that my training has covered.”

My introspection on what my memories are and what I have concluded so far has been thought of before, and even if they weren’t, it is still how I would describe my experience with my own memories. But memories are memories; you have them, and the ones I have, I would like to write down and awaken more memories, if such a thing is even possible.

It is just crucial for me to make clear that we all have lived in all kinds of real situations; those situations are close to real memories for a few minutes, hours, days, or months, but then they are gone and will be replaced by placeholders, ones that fit better with the life you lead, your upbringing, and other experiences. Most of your memories have little to do with what really happened; they are just stories that fit.