It’s an interesting thing about experiences that they don’t necessarily have any connection to real events.  Your experience might be a fantasy.

Think of the person who has a near-death experience.   They aren’t transported in any way, but they see/hear/smell things that aren’t really there.   But that person REALLY experiences those things.  The experience is real.

Or for another example, think about cases of mistaken identity of a deceased person.   If a person had died in an automobile accident and the authorities called you to tell you it was your relative, you would have an emotional reaction.   Even if your relative came home as scheduled shortly thereafter and the mistake was corrected, your experience was real.  Your emotions were real.  You experienced the pain of losing a love one and the experience was real.

What I’m saying is that what you experience may not in any way reflect reality.  You might feel perfectly safe but may really be in imminent peril.   You might feel like you are in danger yet really are perfectly safe and secure.   What you are experiencing might be a complete fantasy – a fantastic experience!

Why on Earth am I thinking about this?

I hope you never have the dilemma I’ve been going through.  I’ve spent a great deal of time lately trying to trying to remember past experiences and trying to determine if they were real.  As part of my journey toward mental wellness, I’m trying to figure this out.   It seems to me that knowing what is real and what isn’t is important in normal human functioning.

Because of anxiety attacks, emotional breakdowns, and frequent nightmares that linger when awake, I have had a host of experiences that I know never happened, a whole host of them that I’m fairly certain have been tainted, and only a few that I “KNOW” happened exactly as I remember them.

Some examples I know didn’t happen

I’m obviously alive, but I couldn’t count how many times I’ve experienced dying.  I know those memories aren’t of real things, but like mentioned at the beginning, the experiences were real.

I’ve been killed by being shot, crushed (inside a car), drowned, beheaded and more. These experiences come almost exclusively from nightmares.  Sometimes I wake at the moment of death, other times it is suspended (time stops and I am frozen at that moment or just before), other times I’m instantly onto another experience.

During one repeated dream I’ve won the lottery and I’ve decided to use it to pay off all the debts for people in Melbourne, AR.  So I’ve set up a table in front of Miller’s Supermarket and there is a line of people from town.  As they show me the paperwork for their debts Julie pulls out a stack of cash and I hand it over.

One particular person (same guy every time) isn’t happy about something and/or just wants the cash we are handing out, and without saying a word when he is next in line, he simply pulls a pistol from his coat and shoots me in the head.   I never wake from this, but instead am just frozen at the moment of the gunshot.  I never feel the bullet, but am stuck asleep feeling the terror of knowing that I’m about to die, knowing that Julie will be shot next, feeling helpless to protect her/others, thinking about the kids, etc.

The event has never happened, but that terror that I’ve felt is very real.  And the effects that the terror have on my life are real too.

 Examples I’m less sure about

I wish everything were as easy as knowing that I’ve never died.  That one is obvious.  I’ve also never played the lottery, let alone win it.

But what about less obvious memories?  I have one dream that started a few years ago about an experience from my missionary work in Argentina.   The dream takes place in a very poor area and not a particularly safe one.  As is culturally acceptable, one hot day we asked at one house if we could have some water and they let us in.

The three men inside were as unclean as the house.  Heavy blankets covered the house and the darkness seemed oppressive.  I felt very uncomfortable being there, but my companion tried to share a gospel message.   This didn’t last long before becoming contentious.  Feeling very insecure, I notice one man had positioned himself in front of the door.

Stopping my companion mid-sentence, I grabbed him by the arm and stand both of us up saying, “thanks for your time.”  Pulling my companion I turn and move to leave.  The man at the door stands and grins like he knows something we don’t.  All I said was, “you will move!”  At the moment he shifted to look behind me for support I opened the door and slipped us out the door, still dragging my slightly confused/annoyed companion behind me.

Every time I have this dream I’m filled with ominous feelings.   What I’m not sure about is how much of this really happened.   I know the companion and I really visited that house and were admitted for water.  I’m not sure at all if my memories of what happened in there are real though.  It’s possible that what I’ve described was real, perhaps it happened as I remember it.  Or maybe my memories have been altered by my constant nightmares.   Because I’ve repeatedly experienced it this way I can no longer recall it happening any other way.   Is my brain recalling real moments, or is it tainting my memory and making them terror-filled?

Things I know are real

Well, I know I’m alive (as much as any person can I suppose).  I know Julie loves me.  Basic facts like my name and who my kids are seem pretty obvious too.    I know I used to be healthy, mentally and physically. 

I wish the list here could be longer.   Because the nightmares and waking anxiety are so pervasive though, I have started to pay attention to whether any memory I have is real or not.

I’m sure if boiled down, that I’d find that 90% or more of what I remember is “real.”  But how do I know which 90% it is?  I can’t even group large items together (like my mission) and say, “I know all of those are real” because there might be some of them in there like the one I mentioned above.   Experiences I’ve had (especially the traumatic ones), conversations I’ve been a part of, places I’ve gone, things I’ve done, things I’ve seen… all of them are under self-examination.

And do I do about events when I have two or more sets of memories about what “really” happened?  What a mess!

What any of this means…

You’re guess is as good as mine about what I’m talking about.  I think I started out planning on talking about how I’ve had some terrible experiences that were completely fantastic and unreal (thus the title).   Somehow that morphed into how those experiences have made it hard to distinguish between what I’ve really done, and what I’ve only imagined.  So I guess this post, like a few of my “experiences”, has very little meaning.  I’m sure someone, somewhere has a better way of explaining what I’m getting at.

IF I’m exploring “what is real” and IF I were smart, maybe I wouldn’t have written any of it and instead just showed a clip…  it would have spared you all from reading my gibberish.

 

 

So, if any of you are willing to talk about the issues you might have (TBI, PTSD, etc), I’d love to hear about how you deal with this type of memory trust issue.  Please share your experiences below, or share via social media to your other friends who might feel the same way.