So I think I need to be the one that breaks something to you.
There is somebody in your life who is not who you think that they are.
And they have been with you for so long, decades, even since the beginning.
They were there when you learned to ride a bike, when you had your first kiss,
when you graduated from high school. They were there on your wedding day.
And they've also been there through a lot of the hard times.
They were there the night that everything fell apart.
They've been there for every conversation, every argument, even every quiet
moment where you sat in the car in the driveway and just try to figure out, am I losing my mind?
Now, they have been, at times, your most trusted confidant, the one that you
turned to when you needed to know what really did happen.
When the ground moves under your feet, they're the one that you reach for.
And for a long time, they were very reliable.
When somebody told you, you don't think the sky green they
whisper it's not it's blue i'm here i see it
but over time something changed it was
really subtle at first a real small detail here a
shifted timeline there it's not anything that you would look at as any kind
of sense of betrayal but it was more like just static this buzz this hum in
the background like a signal that used to come in really clear but now occasionally
drops out you miss a few things it drops out just long enough to make you wonder
wait did i did i hear things right.
But over time, the static got worse and you would still reach for them in the middle of an argument.
Wait, wait, that is not what happened. But now they kind of hesitate just even
for a beat, just long enough for doubt to slide in through the crack for you
and the person across from you, the one who you're maybe having a conversation
with, and it feels almost like they're rewriting the story in real time.
They would see that hesitation and then they would press harder.
See, you don't even know. You can't even keep your own story straight.
And all of a sudden, you're confident.
The one who used to say, I was there. I saw it all, started saying something different.
Yeah, well, maybe. I mean, maybe it did happen the way that they said.
Maybe you are the problem. Maybe you're actually the narcissist.
Now that, in hindsight, is when you should have known. That somewhere along
the way, through hundreds of conversations where your reality was questioned
and rewritten and denied, that they had actually been turned.
Now in the intelligence world, they have a name for this. Somebody who wears
the same uniform as you, sits at your table, has access to your most sensitive
information, but it turns out secretly they're working for the other side,
they call it a double agent.
Now, what if the double agent in your life is, pause and insert dramatic music
here, what if it's your memory?
Hey everybody, welcome to Waking Up to Narcissim. I'm your host, Tony Overbay.
I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and also the host of the Virtual Couch Podcast.
And if that opening had you going, okay, who is he talking about?
Of course, that's kind of the point.
Because when we think about the damage from being in a relationship with somebody
who is emotionally immature or narcissistic, meaning somebody who struggles
to take responsibility.
Tolerate being wrong, or even try to empathize with how their behavior affects
other people, we tend to focus on what they're doing to us.
The gaslighting, the confabulation, the rewriting of history.
And while all of that is real, what happens to your own memory after years of
living in that environment?
Because the damage isn't just that they lie about what happened.
The damage is that eventually you start to lose confidence in your own ability to know what happened.
Your memory, your internal record of reality gets compromised.
It gets turned. And once that happens, you're not just fighting them anymore.
You find out that you're kind of fighting yourself.
Now I hear it in my office. I read it in the emails that so many of you are
living in that space right now where you can't quite trust your own memory,
but you're trying to get back in touch with your gut and your gut is at times
absolutely screaming that something's wrong.
And you often find yourself stuck between those two things.
Am I going crazy? Is my memory compromised or are my gut instincts actually wrong?
But I think I'm supposed to trust my gut and that can become exhausting and
cause you to want to mentally kick the can and just, I'll figure it out later,
later and later and later.
And over time, that's just what it feels like to be you, that I'm not doing
something. I worry I'm going crazy and I'll just figure it out later.
And that exhaustion, that burning of emotional calories takes its toll.
So today we're going to talk about why it happens, what it even is,
how it happens, and maybe better yet, what you can do about it.
Now, first, some good news. So even when your explicit memory,
that's your conscious recall of events, it's the who said what and when,
even when that part of your brain has become compromised, there's another kind
of memory that is a lot harder to turn. And it's called your implicit memory.
Implicit memory, you can think of that as the stuff that lives in your body.
It's what shows up in your nervous system.
So it's not necessarily the memory of what happened, but it's more of the memory of how things felt.
And implicit memory is actually really, really hard to gaslight.
But often we don't check in with our implicit memory, our gut feeling.
So that anxious feeling when somebody walks in the room, implicit memory.
Or that knot in your stomach when somebody starts a sentence with,
you know, actually, that's your implicit memory.
Or the way that you find yourself rehearsing conversations in your head before
you even have them because you are trying to get your facts so airtight that
the person that you're about to communicate with cannot poke holes in what you're about to say.
That's your implicit memory trying desperately to get a message through,
even though your conscious memory, your double agent keeps telling you, no, everything's fine.
Now, if we're going to stick with the spy metaphor, your implicit memory is
the one loyal agent that's still trying to pass you notes under the table saying
something's actually not right here.
You know, the official report says everything's great, but the intel is not lining up.
And so many people in these kind of relationships have had the experience of
feeling crazy, not being able to point to any specific thing.
I want to say death by a thousand cuts, anybody, because pretty much every specific
thing when it has been brought up has been explained away, rewritten,
confabulated, but still feeling in their bones, in their gut,
that something is deeply wrong.
So, if something's wrong, it must be something wrong with me because if it's
wrong with me, then I can fix it.
And if I can fix it, then that doesn't mean that I am going crazy.
But it's nice to feel like there's something you can do.
And that becomes the tension between a compromised explicit memory and an implicit
memory that refuses to defect to the other side.
And that's a good thing. You're still fighting for your sanity.
So, if that's you, if you can't quite trust your own recollection,
but your gut continues to scream at you, I would love for you to really hone in on this.
Right now, let's go with your gut is not crazy. Your body is not trying to lie
to you. That feeling though is data.
And right now that feeling is your most reliable intelligence.
And that's the one thing that confabulation, the big thing that we're going
to talk about today, can't truly touch.
But, and I think beginning to understand what is actually happening will allow
us to start to tap into what your gut feeling is, what your gut is trying to
tell you, the stories your brain is trying to tell you.
And even then, that doesn't mean that the first thing that comes to your mind
is the correct story. We're going to change, hopefully, the relationship with your thoughts.
A quick side note before we get into the mechanics of the topic today, confabulation.
And what is confabulation? You still may be wondering that.
It has been a couple of years or more since I did an episode on confabulation,
but I'm getting a new crop of listeners who are saying, what is this confabulation that you speak of?
Because it seems like you're pretty confident that it's a significant part of
what it feels like to be in a relationship with a narcissist or somebody who's emotionally immature.
And that is absolutely correct. And I have to start from a place of humor.
Of course, confabulation sounds like a fun card game.
It's essentially the rewriting of history, which can be happening in real time
when you're talking with a narcissist or somebody who is extremely emotionally immature.
And I want to say that if you find that starting to realize that your partner
is potentially a pathological or a compulsive liar is a challenge to a relationship,
and it is, don't get me wrong, or if you've now got your PhD in gaslighting,
one of the things that I really encourage somebody to raise their baseline,
get that PhD in gaslighting, get out of unproductive conversations.
Learn to set healthy boundaries, know the difference between a boundary and
an ultimatum, and realize you are not going to give the person the aha moment or the epiphany.
So that gaslighting is a pretty important part of waking up, the waking up process.
Once you're aware of it, and now again, if you find gaslighting to be pretty
difficult to deal with, because again, it really is,
and today we'll talk about how being aware of both of those,
lying and gaslighting can be extremely helpful, even if you don't know what
to do when the person you're interacting with is doing either of them.
But there's definitely this sense of comfort and understanding that you're not
crazy and recognizing when either is happening.
But confabulation is where we really get into whether or not we're dealing with something,
somebody who truly just doesn't know what they don't know versus more of maybe
we'll call it a capacity issue, as in something that you can't eventually come
back to and talk through later,
even with newfound courage or clarity or confidence.
Because when somebody is confabulating a story, that story changes in that person's mind.
And we're talking, it hasn't just been erased on the page and written over,
because if that was the case, then you could maybe go show them that there's
still eraser marks on the paper, and we can still read the story underneath.
Not in the world of confabulation to carry through with this analogy,
that piece of paper is now completely gone, replaced by a piece of cardstock
with calligraphy writing to the point that now you absolutely do appear to be
the crazy one for thinking that the story once had been written on line paper in the first place.
So the person that you're talking to has subconsciously ripped apart and incinerated
that line paper without even being aware that they did it because they've been
doing that for as long as they have been alive. It's what they do.
So let me give you a sneak preview of what we're going to dive deep into today.
This concept of confabulation.
Narcissistic or emotionally immature people often erase memories or they disassociate
from memories in a way that appears like they have amnesia because their contact
with the world and with people in their world is made up,
constructed, and viewed through this factitious construct, also known as the
false self, meaning that it is whatever and whoever they need it to be in each
and every moment to ensure that they are continually in this one-up position.
Narcissists do not experience reality directly. They experience it through a
distorted lens, and it's a lens that initially developed in childhood.
Their, we'll call them narcissistic goggles, have actually been strapped on
for as long as they remember.
So the way that they see the world and the way they experience reality isn't even up for debate.
It's not up for introspection, to self-confrontation, to the
point that anything that they view through those lenses becomes
taken in and immediately colored with those lenses to help them
make sense of the world and in particular how they show
up and how they experience the world narcissism or
emotional immaturity initially develops as a series of
coping strategies that began as a way to try and navigate childhood and granted
this is the part where they didn't feel safe as a child they had to navigate
childhood in a way that left the person with this unstable self-esteem and these
deep-seated insecurities that caused their brains to insist.
Has to be one way. They are not at fault. They have to be the expert.
They have to be the person in the one-up position. And if they do anything remotely
wrong, then it could not and will not be tolerated. So it simply can't be their fault.
But they also lack the ability to regulate their self-esteem without external
validation. And by that, I mean, without interacting with another human,
without interacting with somebody else who they can then put in a one-down position.
And that is where we talk about the concept of the attack surface.
They don't even know they exist unless they interact with somebody who they
can then say, okay, you're wrong. I'm right. I can't believe you thought that.
I feel better, but I'll move on because this also comes with little to no empathy.
So these narcissistic goggles, this lens actually then requires them to eliminate
any information that challenges their grandiose self-perception or the stories
that they continually have made up or constructed about themselves as being the best.
Nobody knows anything better than I do about this topic and this topic and this topic.
That is absolutely necessary for them. And so what comes with that is also this
ability for them to be able to eliminate.
Extricate, excuse, get rid of and justify their narcissistic,
their antisocial, their self-centered, their exploitative behaviors,
choices, and generally the way that they show up in the world.
So in an attempt to make up for any of these inconsistencies or gaps in memory,
or to get rid of any parts of a story that don't put them in the one-up position,
a narcissist or an incredibly emotionally immature person confabulates,
meaning that they invent these plausible scenarios or these situations or these
plugins of how things might.
Could, or should have occurred.
To the non-narcissistic person, these what basically seem to be made-up stories
or made-up plugins that don't entirely make sense, they don't entirely fit timelines
or even resemble what you might remember happen, it might quite frankly look like and sound like,
downright lies, fabrications, made up stories, but the narcissist or the emotionally
immature person desperately believes in, clings to for dear life and does anything
necessary to believe their reality.
And they will dig in their heels until you believe it too.
They may not actually remember what happened, but it most definitely could not
have happened any other way than the way that they need it to happen in order
for them to fit this narrative that they've created.
So then these little bits and pieces of filler of stories that they've created or confabulated,
and often it's happening in real time, are going through constant revisions,
as many as it needs to be to continue for them to make sense of whatever they're
being confronted with or accused of.
And it has to make sense to them, not to the listener, but to them.
Because narcissists are emotionally immature individuals, their inner world
and their external circumstances are continually evolving.
So unlike somebody that has self-awareness or is even trying to figure things
out, to the narcissist, they're constantly working from a place of deep insecurity.
They absolutely cannot be at fault because that would disrupt this internal narrative.
If they're wrong, then you may no longer love them. Period. End of story.
Now, if you even try and explain to them that, hey, it's okay,
I will love you anyway, then they will still take that opportunity and change
the narrative until you aren't even questioning whether or not they did anything wrong.
So, even when you bring something to them saying, no, I think I can do this,
I can explain this in a way that they'll understand, you're just going to confabulation
gym and giving them another workout to make them even stronger in being able
to turn the narrative around.
They have to control the narrative in order to control the relationship.
They will coerce somebody into loving them or they'll do whatever is necessary
to control them. but they cannot risk somebody else having any type of control,
including control of the truth of a story and the control in the relationship.
That is why narcissists and emotionally immature people often contradict themselves
because tomorrow's confabulation, it most likely will negate today's story.
The narcissist, the emotionally immature do not remember previous stories because
they are not invested in the emotions, in the realities, the cognitions that
are the true parts of real memory or real intimacy.
Their memory is constantly subject to change.
It's So this is why we need to take a quick tangent into the world of memory
and how memories are built.
And I just want to say right from the start, the majority of what I'm about
to explain comes from a very good book called The Buddha's Brain,
The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom by Rick Hansen.
And no, you do not need to know anything about the Buddha or be a Buddhist,
nor is there anything in the book that is truly outside the context of what
I would imagine many of you have heard if you've been listening to any type
of mental health related content over the past decade or more.
So memory, let's jump in. Your brain is literally built from your experiences,
all the things that you go through.
And I don't mean that in a poetic, inspirational poster kind of way. I mean it physically.
The same way that your body is built from the foods that you eat,
for better or worse, protein builds muscle, calcium builds bone.
Your brain is physically shaped by what you experience.
Every interaction, every conversation, every moment that you are doom scrolling
on the internet, every moment where somebody makes you feel safe or makes you
feel small, that It is slowly sculpting the architecture of your brain.
Now, some of that shaping you can recall. These are mainly the explicit memories.
But most of what's happening in your memory happens below the surface, your implicit memory.
It isn't just a feeling in your gut. It's your expectations about how relationships work.
It's your models of what love looks like, what you witnessed growing up,
what conflict looks like, how you get through things, what safety looks like.
Do I take ownership of things or do I just go silent and wait till the storm
passes? It's essentially whether the world feels pretty fundamentally safe or
fundamentally dangerous.
All of that was built piece by piece from the time you were a kid.
So implicit memory isn't just passing you notes under the table.
It's also what you view as the table. It's the room. It's the entire building.
And so here's where this gets pretty crucial.
Your brain also has a negativity bias because it is essentially a don't get killed device.
Its primary job is not to make you happy. It's to keep you alive.
So it is going to preferentially scan for, register, and store negative experiences.
And I love how this has actually been described in the book.
Your brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, and it's like Teflon for
the positive ones. So the negative experiences stick.
Positive experiences tend to slide right off. So even when your life has had
maybe even more good than you realize, maybe even more good than bad,
that pile of your negative implicit memories grows faster. So over time, if you are not working on.
Being present, registering, acknowledging, journaling, some of your positive
experiences, then that interior landscape or what it feels like to be you can
start to become undeservedly dark.
And it isn't necessarily even because your life is that bad.
And I'm not saying that people don't have their challenges or struggles,
but it's because your brain's keeping a pretty biased scorecard.
Now, imagine then that negativity bias of the brain inside a relationship with
somebody who is very emotionally mature or narcissistic, where your negative
experiences aren't just these normal bumps in the road that then we're going
to talk about and get through.
And I'm actually going to use this relationship to grow.
We're going to co-regulate. Some days I'm going to be on, some days they're
going to be on. I might need a little bit more comfort from them.
They might need some from me.
But instead of that, these negative experiences are targeted at you and they can become relentless.
The daily drip of being told that you're too sensitive or you're remembering
it wrong or you're the problem or even just not responding, being nothing in
the relationship, every one of those interactions also gets filed in your implicit
memory with incredible precision.
And the good moments, the things that you may really connect on, those slide right off.
So your loyal agent isn't just keeping a record, it's keeping a lopsided record.
And that's not a design flaw. It's actually your brain trying to protect you.
And with that awareness, there are ways to try to take in and be more present
with those positive experiences. This is where the hope comes in.
Because the remedy to this is not suppressing negative experiences because they are going to happen.
Because if you're trying to suppress them, that's avoidance.
And it will slowly start to eat you alive. If you are so afraid of being anxious
that you avoid all things that will cause anxiety, then anxiety is still running the ship.
I love the concept of acceptance in the world of
acceptance and commitment therapy that it means to take in without defense in
its entirety so if i'm actually going to accept the fact that i am going
to feel anxious then i can also go out and live and i am going to notice when
oh here is one of those moments where i'm feeling anxious but then i think what
we don't spend enough time on in a healthy way is the remedy of intentionally
fostering positive experiences and not just saying i'm choosing to be happy,
although that's great when it works.
But when I am noticing that I am having a good experience, a good moment,
a good feeling, then I need to take it in.
I need to let it land. I need to now accept the fact that this moment,
even though it too shall pass, is happening.
And I want to take it in. I want to hold on to it long enough that it can make
a little dent in my implicit memory or part of this slow residue of my lived
experience, part of what it feels like to be me.
And I'm not just talking about the vacations or the promotions or finding money on the sidewalk.
I'm talking about the moment that somebody laughs at something that you said,
or the moment that you laugh at something that somebody else said,
or the couple of minutes that you might spend outside and the sun just hits
your face, or the text from somebody that says, hey, hope you're having a great
day or thinking about you.
Those count, but they only count if you really allow yourself to let them in.
And when you dig deeper into the book Buddha's Brain, There's a fascinating
chapter where Rick Hansen says
you can actually use these positive experiences to even heal old wounds.
Now, this might best be done with the help of a good therapist or coach.
But when you can think of good feelings, almost sinking into the places that
hurt, kind of like a warm ointment or a salve, reaching down into the old injuries.
If you felt powerless as a kid and you find yourself in a moment where you actually
feel pretty powerful or strong and allow that to come in and then sink into
those moments where you felt a lack of power as a child, that can be pretty healing.
It doesn't fix it altogether, but you're starting to train your brain of this is a way that we can heal.
If you carry sadness from a relationship that ended, let yourself really feel
the love of people who are around
you are still here or when you find connection at any part in the day.
And I think I know my audience that I think some of you are going to turn this
into another way to beat yourself up. So let me be clear. This is not about toxic positivity.
This is not just think happy thoughts. What I'm talking about is balance of
being able to accept the difficult experiences, be curious about them, sit with them.
That's the acceptance and commitment therapy piece, but also make room and space for the positive.
Because remember, you're going through life the very first time is you.
You are a unique combination of your nature, nurture, birth order,
DNA, abandonment, rejection, hopes, fears, dreams, and all the things that make you you.
It turns out that you think and feel the way you do because you do.
Not your automatic negative thoughts, your stinking thinking,
you're not broken, you're a human being going through life for the very first
time. So check that out. That is the thing.
This is what ties us back to today's topic. If your brain is Velcro for negative
and you've been living in an environment where negative experiences are manufactured
on the daily, as the kids probably don't say anymore, then your implicit memory
is carrying an enormous amount of weight.
It's, I guess, maybe walking around with one of those weighted vests that I see everybody wearing.
Probably a bad analogy because those could make you stronger as well.
We're not talking about carrying around emotional weight in a way that it will
all of a sudden make you more robust and strong.
And some of that weight is from the relationship that you are in now. Absolutely.
Some of it, though, is from much further back. Good old childhood wounds you
didn't even know that you were carrying until somebody came along,
maybe in the relationship you're in now, and then pressed right on top of those wounds.
So I would encourage you not to be angry with yourself for understanding that
or experiencing that or feeling that because your brain was designed to learn
from experience and especially negative experiences.
So when I talk about your memory being turned, this double agent,
I want you to understand that the playing field was never level and we're going to accept that.
Your brain was already wired to hold on to the bad.
And then somebody came along who figured out, consciously or not,
that if they just kept feeding you enough bad, your own internal system would
start doing their work for them.
Not because you're weak, but because that's what brains do.
So let's get back to what confabulation actually is, because hopefully now that
we gave you a little intro on confabulation, talked about the way memory works,
that now understanding the mechanics will hopefully take some of the sting out of it.
And I want to talk about why the stories keep changing. Why trying to win the
memory argument is literally a losing game.
And then I'd love to give you something practical because if your memory has
been turned, it's time for you to start running your own counterintelligence operation.
But first, I want to separate three things that people tend to lump together.
And we could do episodes on the first two. And I think I have in the past, but it's time to do more.
Lying, gaslighting, and confabulation. Oh my. If we don't separate them,
then we may even end up fighting the wrong battle. Now, lying is possibly the most straightforward.
It's, for the most part, conscious deception. Somebody knows what happened and
intentionally says something different.
And there's an episode that I did with my friend Julie Lee in my Love,
ADHD podcast where we talk about fibbing was added to the fight,
flight, freeze, and fawn concept of it is a way to get out of discomfort.
It is a survival instinct that some believe evolved just as we started evolving more speech.
That now all of a sudden somebody could lie to alleviate their discomfort,
to get out of trouble, to survive.
So the motivation can vary depending on what the person's background is,
their childhood is again, avoiding consequences, protecting an image, maintaining control.
But the belief with lying is there is awareness. There's a bit of calculation.
If somebody lies about a credit card charge, you find the receipt.
You can sense that shift somewhere in the interaction, their strategy and they get caught.
And then over time, you're hoping that they will start to realize,
okay, I don't need to lie anymore.
Gaslighting is different. I have done several episodes on gaslighting gaslighting
isn't just changing the facts But it's also there to destabilize your perception
of reality So the goal isn't just to avoid consequences and hopefully get away
with it The goal is more or less to make you question your own mind.
I never said that you're too sensitive
You remembered it wrong and then layering it on you always do this.
You need help There are a lot of people that think the same thing about you
So that's not just self-protection.
That's an attempt to then push it back and erode your confidence in your own
experience because if you doubt yourself, then you're easier to manipulate.
You're easier to manage. If you don't trust your own memory,
you will start deferring to theirs.
And then they have the control.
Confabulation is where things get much more complicated and they can then be
much more painful if you are not aware of what's happening because confabulation is not conscious.
It's not always necessarily strategic.
It's survival. It's when somebody's brain fills in gaps in memory with a version
of events that protects their identity.
And here's, I think, what can really twist you up inside, it's important to
know that if it is confabulation, they believe the version that they're telling you.
To understand, I think we got to go back to something really foundational.
Emotionally immature, narcissistic people experience reality through this false
self, this constructed identity that is built early in life as a childhood adaptation
that allows them to survive.
That identity formed in circumstances where self-esteem was absolutely unsafe, unstable.
Love didn't just feel conditional. It was. And the shame was overwhelming.
And shame is a, I am bad. Not I did something bad, but I am bad.
So over time, the brain learns, I cannot afford to be wrong.
I will not be wrong. I can't afford to be flawed in any way because that will threaten connection.
So through that lens, any information that challenges this self-protective narrative,
it has to be removed. It has to be reshaped.
Because if something would place them at fault and that would evoke shame,
that would imply that they may have even hurt somebody.
Their nervous system experiences that as absolutely intolerable. It is unacceptable.
And when something is intolerable, the brain adapts, it edits,
it fills in the gaps, it creates these plausible explanations that keep the
internal story intact for them.
Simple examples. Imagine a fight at a dinner party where the person raised their
voice and then you left early.
Now, if they were lying, they might say, I didn't yell knowing full well,
they did a simple example.
They're gaslighting might even take it a little further. I actually didn't yell as a matter of fact.
You're the one that's pretty dramatic. If anything, I think you were the one
that was yelling and people were starting to already talk about how you overreacted.
And there were people that were even worried about, I think you might end up yelling.
And if they were confabulating, they might say, I wasn't even yelling. I was just passionate.
And you're the one that started escalating the whole conflict to begin with.
I was the one trying to calm it down.
And as they say it, you can see that they mean it. Their brain has already reorganized the memory.
So they are the reasonable one, because the alternative would collide too hard
with their identity. This is why the story keeps changing.
Yesterday's version may not even match today's.
Tomorrow's could contradict both. To somebody anchored in accountability,
then that inconsistency feels like proof of dishonesty. Oh, that is not what you said yesterday.
But to somebody operating through this fragile self-concept,
the story isn't anchored to this factual continuity.
It's anchored to whatever they need to say in the present moment to protect
their ego, for ego safety.
So even as their internal state shifts, the narrative that they're going to
share is going to adjust to continually preserve the version of themselves that
they need to believe that they are.
And that's what makes arguing with somebody that is in the world of confabulation exhausting.
If somebody's lying, evidence can sometimes corner them.
Somebody's gaslighting, evidence may escalate the battle, but you know,
and you're learning to set a boundary. If they're doing this, then I'm going to leave.
But if somebody's confabulating, evidence feels like an attack to their identity.
And when their identity is threatened and their nervous system,
it's going to double down.
So the more you try to nail down the timeline, the more the timeline shifts.
Now, understanding this is not an excuse of the behavior and it doesn't make
it safe, but it explains why trying to win the memory argument feels like chasing smoke.
You're bringing documentation to somebody whose brain will say,
thank you. And I will rewrite this in real time.
Let's go with an example that is often brought up when you do start to look
at this concept of confabulation.
Let's just say hypothetically, you're one of the most famous athletes in America.
You've been adored for decades.
You're charming. You're charismatic. You're successful. You're in movies and
commercials, and your identity isn't just personal. It is cultural.
You are the guy in the commercials, the guy that everybody roots for.
And then let's say overnight, you're accused of something so horrific,
it completely collides with that identity.
In 1994, that's essentially what happened to OJ Simpson when he was accused
of murdering his ex-wife and her friend, Ron Goldman.
Now, he was eventually acquitted, but he was found liable in civil court and
not wanting to relitigate the case.
But what I think is more important to explore is the psychological dynamic that
when somebody's identity is threatened at that level, the belief is that he
truly did not think that he did it.
His brain had almost sealed over this, I could have done it, just tight as a drum.
So he did not do it because if a person's self-concept is built around being
admired, being good, being justified,
and if that is their entire internal architecture, if every bit of that says,
I am not capable of that, then any evidence suggesting otherwise then creates
such unbearable cognitive dissonance. The brain can't tolerate that.
Confabulation in that case wouldn't look like somebody crafting this master
deception to get out of being in trouble.
It would look like a nervous system that is doing anything it can to preserve
its own self-image filling in the blanks with the only version that allows the
person to keep functioning psychologically So genuinely believing that you were
framed focusing so intensely on procedural errors Not as a strategy,
even though the attorneys might think that but for them as no,
that's right This is an internal anchor.
You're right. This is what I must have done. This is what I said This is correct
And here's why I think this matters for most of you Most of you aren't dealing
with high-profile criminal cases.
You're dealing with arguments in kitchens and financial secrecy and emotional betrayal.
But the mechanism is similar. If somebody can't tolerate being any sort of the, quote, bad guy.
Their brain may rewrite history so that they were provoked if
they can't tolerate being wrong they may genuinely remember themselves
as being calm and you are the one that escalated and
if they cannot even tolerate for a moment the idea that they might have hurt
you then they didn't and they remember that you were the one that was overreacting
and if you look at any kind of a high profile case and the stakes are public
identity and somebody's legacy then it can seem very big and dramatic and grandiose.
In a relationship, the stakes are attachment and control and love.
If I am wrong, you might leave. If I am flawed, I might lose love.
So for somebody whose self-esteem is so fragile and externally regulated,
that will feel just as catastrophic.
So the brain protects and it edits and it fills in. And over time, those edits are memory.
The person across from you doesn't always look like they're lying.
They look convinced. And that's what makes it so disorienting,
because when somebody is confabulating the story, you're arguing with a story
that their brain built to survive, and it can shift and change and adapt in real time.
I want to talk about a very sensitive and real example of this that I have experienced
on a number of occasions, but this is one that was probably one of the most
profound. And so I've changed things, of course, to protect the innocent.
But as a therapist who spends a lot of time with people who navigate faith journeys
and faith crisis, I see this dynamic show up in a different but equally powerful way.
I once worked with a couple whose adult child came out as gay,
and both parents had held positions of leadership in their church.
And it was a community that didn't openly affirm LGBTQ members.
The unspoken message was, you can be here, but not fully. You can belong, but just not as you are.
So over time, their child experienced a profound sense of depression.
And eventually, that depression escalated to an attempt on their life.
And that was the moment that everything cracked. I was working with the parents
and the father broke down and you could see something collapse inside of him.
And he began recognizing the ways that his child must have felt invisible.
And he said things like, I really did think I was loving them.
I didn't see what it was doing to them.
And there was grief and shame and pain, but there was also a willingness to
tolerate that pain to understand his child's experience.
Now, the mother responded very differently. And I want to be so gentle here
because it could be reversed as well.
Because it wasn't in a villain sort of way. It was somebody whose nervous system
couldn't tolerate the possibility that she had failed to protect her child.
So as we explored the child's experience, and we're talking an adult child at
this time when we did a little bit of family therapy, something fascinating
and also heartbreaking happened in the office time and time again.
She began to recount memory after memory of being supportive.
Conversations where she would then claim that she had always said,
I will always love you no matter what. My love is unconditional.
Moments of openness that were completely foreign to both her husband and to her adult child.
And her husband wanted her, and I guess it was him wanting them both to admit
or acknowledge and own up to
the fact that they didn't show up in the way that their child needed to.
But even when he would try and have that conversation in therapy.
Then she would villainize him and say, that was you. And that's the problem. I was never that way.
It was almost like you could watch the confabulation happening in real time.
Her husband would try to say things like, you know, that isn't really how I remember it.
And then her child would gently say, Mom, that didn't happen.
And she would double down, elaborating, adding details, reconstructing scenes
with so many details and so much certainty. And this wasn't somebody who was
trying to calmly craft a lie.
It was somebody who desperately needed to build this new scaffolding under what
felt like a collapsing identity.
Because if she had not been supportive, if her silence had contributed to that
level of despair, then she worried.
What did that mean about her faith that she had been protecting and amplifying
and sharing and living by her entire life? What did that say about her role as a mom?
When that shame feels annihilating the brain
protects her mind had to reorganize the
narrative it filtered out moments where she deferred to
the church's doctrine or her child's lived experience it amplified these tiny
gestures of kindness into evidence of unwavering support and it often relocated
responsibility outward onto the church onto her husband even onto her child
saying that he could have been better at explaining himself.
Because that version allowed her to remain the loving mom that she needed herself to be.
And what was, it was so tender, it was unfortunate though, was the son was saying,
I'm okay that you didn't know, but here's where we can now start to build and grow from.
The father could start to tolerate this disruption in his identity of who he
was, who he thought he was, and who he wants to be.
He could sit with, I hurt my child
and now I'm aware and I don't even know necessarily how to repair it.
And all of those could be true. And that felt excruciating at times,
but it also was a doorway to growth.
But it appeared like the mom's nervous system said that can't be true.
And when the nervous system decides something cannot be true,
it has to bend the memory. One parent allowed this difficult experience and
this crippling guilt to start to inform change.
The other parent's brain attempted to eliminate shame by then rewriting the past.
And i see that pattern show up often in the faith
crisis world when identity is so deeply fused
with being a good believer a good parent a good leader and
then something challenges that narrative the threat isn't
just to the relationship it can feel existential i see the same mechanism in
people who encounter inconsistencies in their lifelong faith when somebody has
staked their entire identity on a belief system and they start seeing discrepancies
doctrinal shifts the resulting cognitive dissonance that can come from that.
The psychological tension from holding two conflicting beliefs isn't just something
happening at an intellectual level. It happens at this implicit memory or this visceral or gut level.
And their brain really wants comfort. It wants certainty. It wants coherence.
Resolution can happen by changing the belief or reinterpreting the new information
or dismissing it altogether.
So, for somebody whose identity is fused with that system, changing the belief can feel like death.
So instead of dismantling the brain, then doubles down.
It reinterprets any kind of contradictory evidence as maybe it's persecution
or as test of your faith or as proof that the faith is under attack because it's so right and true.
And they're not necessarily strategic deceptions, they're survival mechanisms.
And the story shifts over time.
One year, it might just be somebody or something's anti-religious bias.
The next, it might be now, this is a test of my faith. And later,
well, these things aren't even essential to my salvation.
The narrative adjusts to manage the discomfort. Until somebody can tolerate
the grief of discomfort,
the grief of disillusionment, until they can sit with the fear of losing their
belonging without being overtaken by it, the brain will keep choosing comfort
and safety even over accuracy.
And I promise you understanding this isn't about shaming anyone because I've
found that it often invites empathy.
What looks like stubbornness from the outside can feel like survival from the inside.
The real work isn't trying to win an argument over somebody's doctrine.
It's starting to create enough psychological safety that a person can look at
the cracks they might find without feeling like they are staring into the valley of despair.
That's when real growth becomes possible. Not when the evidence is airtight,
but when the nervous system is steady enough to face it head on.
Let me shift gears a little bit and talk about confabulation in an interrogation
room, because this is where it is so fascinating to watch and why I will mention
over and over again that I find myself and sometimes my whole social media feed
is watching interrogation videos.
There was one I saw at one point, and this is going back in the time machine
a bit, but a man's wife has been found dead and he's the prime suspect.
So he goes into the police station and he's calm and he's controlled.
And he lets the officers know, hey, I'm happy to be here.
I just want to help you guys however I can. But just to let you know,
I was at home the entire evening.
And the officer says, hey, we have a ring camera footage from your neighbor.
And it shows you leaving through your back door roughly around 1042 PM.
And without even missing a beat.
The person immediately went to, oh, all right. I thought I mentioned that.
I had to check something that was in the garage. No long pause, no recalibration.
The brain updated the narrative to incorporate the new information flawlessly,
seamlessly, even including a little bit of a jab that the officer probably didn't
even hear what he had said earlier.
So I'm kind of watching you, officer. You're not really paying a lot of attention
to what I'm saying, aka not saying.
Then the officer said, I'm just curious why you didn't go through the door inside
your house that lead to the garage.
And it's funny as I'm watching this, I'm even thinking, well,
maybe he just wanted to go out the back.
But then the guy immediately said, well, the lock on that door is jammed.
And it was a seasoned interrogator. So, then he said, when we were inside your
home and we were checking the place out, that door worked fine.
And the guy just said, oh, yeah, actually probably my son fixed it recently.
So, then the officer just said, oh, it's okay. So, if we ask your son, he'll confirm that.
And the guy just responded right back in real time, my son
has the worst memory and then they had
done their research before they called this guy in and
they just said you know we show that he's about to be is
it valedictorian or salutatorian which one's the top one and then the guy even
jumps in oh it's yeah he's about to be valedictorian so then the cop said you
know i'm surprised then with that kind of intellect that his memory is that
unreliable and then the guy just said oh and i didn't mean his memory is bad
i just mean he may not remember fixing the door because he is he's an amazing
guy and he fixes so many things around the house.
Every time there's a crack, his mind patched it.
Every piece of contradictory evidence gets absorbed into a slightly revised narrative.
From the outside, it looks crazy. It looks superhuman.
But through the lens of confabulation, it is a masterclass and it makes sense.
If the internal story is, I am not the kind of person that would take out my
wife, then any evidence suggesting otherwise, it is too much psychological tension.
And his brain has two options. let that evidence collapse his entire identity
or continually adjust the story to preserve it.
And it is like a workout for him.
For somebody who can't tolerate shame or the loss of control,
his brain is choosing preservation every single time.
And what's compelling about skilled interrogation is that the interrogator isn't
just gathering the facts, they are introducing constant friction and tension
and presenting evidence that forces the story to keep adjusting.
And with every adjustment, it's like the inconsistencies add up and multiply and multiply.
Even video evidence doesn't always stop a seasoned confabulator.
They reinterpreted it. That's not what it looks like. That's out of context.
Or then the narrative morphs and changes, not because they're calmly masterminding
a deception, but because their nervous system is defending against the collapse
and it can do it all day long.
And when identity is under threat, the story will continue to bend before their sense of self breaks.
If you want to see this mechanism also on full display, you don't even need
interrogation rooms or faith crisis or faith journey. Turn on the news.
Imagine a politician who can never be wrong. And I am saying insert any and
all politician joke here.
They may make a bold claim. Let's just say for the sake of an example,
the price of eggs is at an all time low. Now the data contradicts it.
And then journalist presents the numbers. Now a psychologically flexible response
would sound like, you know, I realize there are actually more factors in play
than I anticipated. that would be a mature response because it tolerates correction.
It allows new information to potentially update old beliefs.
But for somebody whose identity is fused with being right, whose nervous system
equates admitting any kind of fault with weakness, that response is impossible.
Admitting error doesn't feel like growth. It will feel like death.
So a reflex kicks in. That is fake data. You're wrong. The system's rigged.
The journalist becomes incompetent. the opposition becomes corrupt.
Suddenly, we're not talking about eggs, we're talking about dominance and we're
talking about ego survival.
Emotional maturity is not about always being right. It's about being able to
survive a challenge or it's being able to admit that I may be wrong.
And personal attacks are the fastest way to alleviate any kind of internal discomfort.
If you try to discredit the source, you don't even have to sit with attention.
And over time, that person surrounds themselves with people who validate instead of challenge.
Because psychologically safe environments are created by getting rid of all friction, all tension.
So in other words, if nobody around you pushes back, you don't even have to feel uncomfortable.
And then loyalty becomes more valuable than honesty.
And then the followers of this politician, for example, they feel that same
internal tug of war because if they publicly supported this person or defended
them or tied their own identity to them,
then admitting that the leader might be wrong means admitting they may have
been wrong as well. And that can feel humiliating.
So instead of sitting with that discomfort, it's easier to find a reason why
the other side is the problem.
So their own confabulation engine fires up and now they will reinterpret data
and dismiss miss the sources and rationalize the behavior because apparently
it's psychologically cheaper to double down than to self-confront.
Imagine somebody who has always believed that their leader is honest and then
recording surfaces that clearly contradict something said or a lot of things that were said.
Instead of simply saying, oh, wow, that does not line up.
Now they have to make sense of it. So they say, well, that must have been out
of context or you don't really understand that that's what that person meant.
Or imagine somebody has defended a company for years, decades.
They've told all their friends to invest and put their own money in it.
And then the financials come out and it's a mess or there's a Ponzi scheme.
And instead of saying, oh man, I think I got this one wrong.
They have to make sense of it. So they say, well, the media is obviously trying
to tank the stock or this is a hit job.
Or imagine somebody who's built their whole social circle around a cause and
incredible evidence comes out that the person leading that cause is not who
they say they are and they've done real harm.
So instead of saying, oh, that stinks, that is so disappointing,
I did not even know, I got duped, I got fooled.
Now they have to make sense of it. So they'll say, well, I'm sure this is what
the opposition wants you to believe.
But here's the fascinating thing. I've worked with so many people who have done
the brave thing instead.
They've reached a point where they said, maybe I don't actually have things
as figured out as I thought.
And they allow themselves to question their own assumptions,
not just about a politician, but about their own emotional patterns and their
belief systems and their blind spots.
And the world didn't end. There's a strange strength that comes from saying,
yeah, actually, I don't know, or I got that wrong.
Because there's a steadiness that can develop when you can tolerate uncertainty
without immediately filling it in with a story.
When you operate from a place of genuine curiosity instead of defensiveness,
all the scary kind of shadowy things that you may be afraid of,
it turns out they're not so terrifying.
When you bring them into the light, when you examine them, when you then can
integrate them into who you are.
And I think this is a really good place to talk about something that I think will tie this together.
And it's the difference between what I call a healthy ego and then the unhealthy
ego or the false sense of self.
A healthy ego is a grounded sense of who you are and is built on the real things
that you've actually done, the challenges that you actually work through,
the lessons you actually learned the hard way by putting in work.
And because it's built on real things that you've done, it can take a hit.
If somebody disagrees with you, no problem. If you made a mistake,
it stings, but you can sit with it.
You don't need everybody in the room to validate you and believe that you are
special or right because your sense of self isn't hanging by a thread.
A healthy ego says, I'm not perfect, but I'm starting to learn who I am.
And part of that is I know the things that I know because I've actually looked
into them and researched them and I've earned that.
And that comes with, I don't know the things that I don't know.
And it's okay for me to say that because then the more that I say,
this is something I know, people can start to trust that because I'm going to
admit if there's something that I don't know and things can change.
In unhealthy ego, the false self looks like confidence, but it's hollow.
It's like a house with a very beautiful front door, nothing behind it.
The person acts sure of themselves, maybe even acts superior,
but underneath it is a mountain of self-doubt.
And the key difference is this. It's not built on anything real.
It's not built on genuine growth or hard-won self-awareness.
There isn't consistency there. It's built on the appearance of being special
and being right above being criticized.
And that's why it is fragile. When you challenge somebody with a healthy ego,
they can say, oh, I hadn't thought of it that way, or I'll have to get back
to you on that, or wow, I've been given the data that says this,
but I'll take a look at that.
But when you challenge somebody operating from a false self,
even a small disagreement can feel like this existential threat because there's
nothing underneath holding them up.
So they lash out, they belittle, they mock, they make fun of,
they attack the source, They do whatever it takes to keep their facade standing,
because if it falls, they don't know who they are without it.
Think of it like an armor that's just on for show. It looks strong on the outside,
but it's not actually protecting anything. It's hiding something.
And the tragedy is, as long as somebody is wearing that armor,
they can never really build up the real thing that they need underneath it.
They can't develop genuine self-respect, because genuine self-respect requires
being honest about who you are and admitting things that you don't know.
And it's not that scary. Yeah.
Honesty is the one thing that the false self can't afford. So when we're talking
about confabulation, when we're talking about why someone rewrites history,
why the story keeps changing, why they look convinced of a version of events
that you know did not happen, this is often what's underneath.
It's not a healthy ego navigating a disagreement.
It's a false sense of self fighting for its life and it's willing to say and do anything to be right.
Emotional immaturity looks like a little kid in adult clothes.
Insulting, posturing, scanning for loyalty, labeling people as either with us or against us.
It's rigid, it's binary, and it can't tolerate any gray area. But life is not binary.
And the capacity to sit in complexity without falling apart and without needing
things to be absolutely certain and without turning to aggression, that's growth.
That's differentiation. That's the ability to hold onto yourself while trying
to stay connected to others. It's not a us or them.
It's let's figure this out. I'm going to learn more through a relationship than
just finding my little echo chamber of people that will just tell me I'm right the whole time.
When you stop needing to win every argument, when you stop needing reality to
bend around your identity, you actually become stronger.
You're no longer trapped defending some fragile narrative. You're free to learn.
And that freedom is something that no confabulated story can ever provide.
Okay, before we wrap up, I want to shift gears, be super transparent.
I'm about to give you a sales pitch.
And I continually go back and forth on, do I include it with this audience?
Because I know that so many people that are listening aren't in a,
hey, let's just improve our communication mode.
You're trying to figure out if you're, I'm losing my mind mode.
I go back to if you ever listen to both podcasts, Waking Up to Narcissim and
The Virtual Couch, it does serve different audiences.
The Virtual Couch is a lot of we've grown apart, we're stuck in the same argument,
and those are painful, but they're often rooted in two people who want to try
to figure things out together.
And a lot of the emails I get from the Waking Up to Narcissim audience are people
who feel isolated, who've been told so many times that they're too sensitive,
or like we're talking about today, that their memory is not real.
People whose nervous systems don't feel safe around their partner,
even when nothing obvious is happening.
That's a very different starting point. And I want to honor that.
As I pitch my magnetic marriage reboot, I want you to know I am not selling
this as a cure to narcissism.
There's no communication trick that forces somebody into empathy.
There is no framework that manufactures accountability and somebody who refuses to be accountable.
And the last thing I ever want to do is provide somebody with false hope that
the right words and the right order will fix everything.
But I will confidently say that I believe in frameworks, frameworks as muses,
as things to interact with.
I think we need something structured to be able to see ourselves more clearly.
A mirror, a lens, a way to step outside the chaos and say, okay, what is happening here?
So in my magnetic marriage course, I cover everything from why we picked our
partners in the first place to the anxious avoidant loop, losing strategies,
the things we do that feel protective, but actually become more, they fuel the fire.
I talk a lot about David Schnarch's four points of balance and differentiation.
And we spend a lot of time with my four pillars of a connected conversation and
the pillars are what are very relevant for this audience
because even when both partners aren't doing the work the four pillars give
you something incredibly stabilizing or a home base to operate from a first
pillar of assuming good intentions or for the waking up the narcissism crowd
or there's a reason why somebody does or says the things they do it's hard to
assume good intentions when somebody's telling you to go.
Do something to yourself. But if I look at that, or there's a reason why that
person communicates that way, and it's because that's how they feel that they
need to show up to communicate, then I'm potentially still in the conversation.
And pillar two asks you not to immediately tell the other person you disagree
or that they're wrong, even if you absolutely do disagree and think they're wrong.
And it's not pretending, but it's just not jumping straight to a defense.
When you resist that urge and then move into pillar three, questions before
comments, sometimes something fascinating happens.
If the other person is just emotionally immature, they maybe start to lean in
and they clarify and you realize there's some depth underneath what they want
to say. They're just afraid to say it. They might soften.
If they're lying, maybe the lie unravels under gentle, consistent curiosity.
If they're gaslighting, the manipulation becomes pretty clear because you're not escalating.
You start to see that, oh, they now will do some sort of narcissistic exit and
you find out that you're still okay.
And if they're confabulating, you're going to watch it in real time.
Story shifts, details morph, new explanations appear because you're not attacking,
but you're asking genuinely thoughtful questions.
The pattern becomes visible. So using the pillars won't fix narcissism and it
won't create empathy where none exists, but it will start to expose emotional
immaturity, gaslighting and confabulation.
And it will hopefully help you find your sanity inside conversations that used
to spin you out into the weeds.
So the next round isn't open yet, but the wait list is. So if you're curious,
go to TonyOverbay.com slash Magnetic.
And whether you ever take the course or not, I hope that what you take from
today is clarity is power and structure does create stability and you deserve
to feel sane, especially in your own relationship. So what have we learned today?
Today, we talked about memory as a double agent. We walked through lying,
gaslighting, confabulation. Oh my.
We've explored interrogations and faith crisis and politics and identity.
And hopefully if there's one thread running through all of it, it is this.
The human brain will work very, very hard to protect the self from collapse.
Memory is not perfect. It's not a perfect recording device. It's fallible.
It is a meaning-making device, and it is consistently organizing and filtering
and shaping your experiences to help you survive.
And most of the time, that works beautifully.
But when identity feels threatened, when shame can start to feel annihilating,
when belonging feels at risk, when being wrong can feel like death,
the brain shifts from an interrogation mode to protection.
It edits, it fills in gaps, and it rewrites timelines and narratives and stories,
and it constructs these narratives that will preserve safety.
That's confabulation. And it's not necessarily even malicious.
It's not calculated, but it can be profoundly destabilizing for the person on the receiving end.
Because when somebody is confabulating, you're not arguing with strategy,
you're arguing directly with their survival system.
So hopefully here's the takeaways that you can carry with you.
Your implicit memory or what it feels like to be you is based on the slow residue
of your lived experience, and it matters.
Your nervous system remembers what your conscious mind may question.
So if you consistently leave conversations feeling small or confused or disoriented, that is data.
That's your body trying to hand you reliable intelligence.
Now, you may still not know what to do with it, but we got to start from somewhere.
And understanding confabulation doesn't mean you excuse the harm.
It means recognizing that arguing facts alone is not going to resolve a dynamic
that's rooted in this defense of their identity. You can't out evidence somebody
whose brain is rewriting evidence on the fly to stay intact.
Emotional maturity is not about never being wrong. It's about tolerating the
potential that I may not have shown up in a way that I wanted to without collapsing.
It's the ability to say, I hurt you.
That's not a weakness. It's actually strength and it's differentiation and it's
starting to operate from a place of integrity.
Growth actually requires courage, whether it's a parent facing their child's
pain or somebody questioning a lifelong belief or somebody realizing that they've
defended what now may feel like the indefensible.
The brave move is to self-confront and to admit and acknowledge and then deal with.
And I think it's safe to say any person I've worked with who has chosen that
path, eventually discover something really surprising.
They actually feel better about themselves.
The relationship has a better chance to be truly intimate and connected,
and the world doesn't stop spinning.
Their identity doesn't dissolve. It actually expands. And finally,
if you have been on the receiving end of confabulation, if you felt like your
memory was being turned against you, just know here's another notch on your
belt of you're not crazy,
but you were probably navigating a system where the stability of the narrative
mattered far more than the truth in the relationship.
So your confusion makes perfect sense and your exhaustion makes sense and your
longing for clarity makes sense.
Waking up to narcissism, waking up to emotional immaturity, to confabulation,
it isn't ever about winning an argument.
It's about reclaiming your reality first and foremost and moving from the black
and white thinking into more nuanced thinking, from defensiveness into curiosity
and from this desperate need to protect your ego into a place of integrity.
And when you start to make that shift, and when you allow yourself to say,
I don't know everything, and it turns out that's okay.
You actually stop living in as much of a survival state.
You start letting truth shape you and you're going to listen to your gut even more.
And it's going to tell you a lot of things that are going to be good to know.
And truth, when faced with the courage, isn't nearly as terrifying as the yeah,
buts or the fear or the shadows in our brain make us think.
That's more like emotional maturity. That's growth. And that is what waking up really looks like.
Thank you so much for joining me. If you have questions, thoughts,
or anything that you'd like to send, please do.
And send this to somebody that you think it might help. And I look forward to
talking with you next week on Waking Up the Narcissime.