The Stories We Tell Ourselves

I  recently stumbled on a line that stopped me in my tracks: “Memory is reconstructive. Every time you recall an event, you’re editing it. Your brain is a bad film director.” At first, it felt like one of those clever psychological one-liners you smile at, nod to, and then move on from. But the more I sat with it, the more unsettling it became. Because if memory is not a photograph but a screenplay, then every recollection isn’t truth retrieved; it’s truth rewritten. So I began to test it. I pulled at threads of events I have often revisited, moments that were etched into my sense of self. And the surprise was immediate. What I now remember shares maybe 20% with what actually unfolded. The broad strokes who was there, what happened, the setting; yes, those remain. But the finer brushstrokes had been replaced. Details blurred, re-coloured, or sometimes invented altogether. Entire sequences had been edited out, others given undue emphasis. The more I coaxed my memory for the original details, the more I realised how much of the “event” I had been carrying around was actually the narration I had created afterwards. Like a film director dissatisfied with the first cut, my brain had trimmed, reshot, and re-scored the memory until it aligned with the story I wanted or perhaps needed to tell myself at that time.

And that’s where it gets tricky. Because I didn’t just remember those edited stories; I lived by them. I drew lessons, made judgments, and even took actions based on these reconstructions. In some cases, they hardened into convictions, ideas about who I am, who others are, and what “really” happened. Yet much of it was scaffolding, built not on fact but on narrative. 

Which makes me wonder: how much of our present, our choices, our relationships, even our identity , is standing on foundations that were never as solid as we believed? It’s tempting to go hunting for the “true” version of the past. To dig, to fact-check, to separate what really happened from the story we’ve told ourselves. But I’ve come to see that this is not as straightforward as it sounds. Memory is not an archive we can simply consult; it’s an ongoing negotiation between fact and meaning. Even when we think we’ve uncovered the original, we’re still only accessing fragments, filtered through today’s biases.

So maybe the work is not to chase accuracy but to cultivate awareness. To notice the director in our head, the one who keeps cutting and splicing. To recognise that the film reel we carry isn’t fixed, and perhaps never was.

Because here’s the paradox. A memory revised in pain can lock us into cycles of regret or self-criticism. A memory retold in blame can cement resentment toward others. We can become trapped in a self-narrative that is both inaccurate and limiting ; a script we didn’t even realise we were still following. However there’s also a possibility. If our brain is going to keep playing the role of director anyway, then maybe we can become more intentional about the edits. If the story of the past is always shifting, then perhaps identity is not a prison of old scenes, but a canvas for new meaning. This reframing doesn’t mean distorting reality to suit our ego. It means recognising that meaning is always being constructed and that we have an active part to play in how we construct it. The same memory can be a wound we carry or a lesson we grow from, depending on the narrative we align with it. 

The penny that dropped for me wasn’t just that memory is unreliable. It was that memory is alive. And if it is alive, then so are we, not bound to the past as it was, but free to choose the meaning we carry forward. In that recognition lies a quiet freedom: we are not defined by the first draft of our story. We are defined by the story we choose to tell next.

C