They said what ?? !! ??

I have had people lie to me. I have had people lie about me. Sometimes the lies were way out there tall tales that no one could possibly have believed. Could they? Sometimes the lies were about the person telling the lie for the most part and I somehow got a dishonorable mention. Sometimes the lies turned out to be a twisted up version of the truth. Has any of these ever happened to you?

If so, did it make you ask yourself how their memory of a situation or event could be so different than what you remember?

I know I asked that question.

I do have an answer to the question of the memory difference. Here it is.

People can remember the same event very differently because memory isn’t a perfect recording—it’s a reconstruction shaped by the brain, emotions, and context. Here are the main reasons why:

1. Attention differs in the moment

No two people focus on exactly the same details. One person might notice facial expressions, another the words spoken, another the environment. If you don’t pay attention to something, it’s unlikely to be stored clearly.

2. Emotions strongly affect memory

Emotions act like a filter:

• Strong emotions (fear, excitement, embarrassment) can make some details feel vivid

• At the same time, they can distort or block other details

  Two people feeling different emotions during the same event may remember it very differently.

3. Prior beliefs and expectations

Your brain interprets events based on what you already believe or expect. If two people go in with different assumptions, they may interpret the same actions in opposite ways—and later remember those interpretations as facts.

4. Memory changes over time

Each time you recall a memory, it can be altered slightly before being stored again. Over time, memories can:

• Lose details

• Gain new ones

• Shift to better match how you now understand the event

This is why memories can drift apart even more years later.

5. Social influence and retelling

Talking about an event with others, hearing their versions, or being asked leading questions can change what you remember. Your brain may blend other people’s details into your own memory without realizing it.

6. Stress and brain processing

High stress can narrow focus (sometimes called “tunnel memory”). A person under stress might remember one central detail very clearly but miss everything else.

7. Different goals or perspectives

People remember what mattered to them. If an event affected one person more personally, their memory is often richer—or more emotionally colored—than someone else’s.

The basic issue is:

Memory is not a video recording—it’s more like a story the brain rebuilds each time. Different brains, experiences, emotions, and perspectives naturally lead to different versions of the same event.

  While this explains how someone can remember something differently than you, it does not explain the wild, way out there, outright lies someone might tell. Tall tales so far removed from the truth that it cannot be a difference in recall and cannot be explained away through memory differences.

This type of lying is not the 'gaslighting' type of lying. Gaslighting is denying and redirecting. That's a topic for another day. That type of lying is not an error, a false memory, a 'different' perspective, but instead a very deliberate deceit intended to mislead.

I hope this type of thing is not something you have to deal with in your own life and I find it quite sad that it lives in my world.