About this episode

This episode explores how memory can be distorted in relationships with emotionally immature or narcissistic individuals, focusing on confabulation and its effects on trust and perception of reality.

Your memory has been turned—and the double agent is inside your own mind. After years in a relationship with someone emotionally immature or narcissistic, the damage isn't just that they rewrite history. It's that you stop trusting your own ability to know what happened. This episode unpacks confabulation—the unconscious, real-time rewriting of memory that goes far beyond lying or gaslighting—and explains why the story keeps changing, why you can't win the memory argument, and why your gut is still your most reliable intelligence. Tony Overbay, LMFT, walks through the neuroscience of how memory actually works, why your brain's negativity bias makes you especially vulnerable in these relationships, and what you can do when your explicit memory has been compromised but your body still knows the truth. In this episode, you'll discover: The critical difference between lying, gaslighting, and confabulation—and why confabulation is the most disorienting of the three Why your implicit memory (your gut) can't be gaslit—and how to start trusting the data your nervous system is handing you How the brain's negativity bias creates a lopsided scorecard that someone emotionally immature…

People in this episode

Host: Tony Overbay LMFT

Topics covered

• memory
• confabulation
• gaslighting
• narcissism
• emotional immaturity
• neuroscience

Keywords

• memory
• confabulation
• gaslighting
• narcissism
• emotional immaturity
• neuroscience
• negativity bias
• implicit memory
• trust
• identity

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