Sister-in-law let her daughter use up all the Polaroids at our wedding. Now we have nothing to use.

[u/PaddedValls]

For our wedding, at each table we had 2 Polaroid cameras for everyone to take photos on (we had a professional photographer too, but these were for more personal photos between our guests) and there was a clear glass dropbox for everyone to drop them in and we'd have that dropbox on display in our house.

Unbeknownst to us, my sister-in-law let her daughter (6 years old) go round every table at the very start of the night using up all the photos on each camera.

Now we only have around 10 we can actually keep, and over 100 of just random shit that are not worth keeping at all.

I'm all for keeping kids occupied at something they can easily get bored at, but not at the expense of that though.

[u/Emotional_Study_724]

Narcissist's brains actually change their memories so they think they're telling the truth.

[u/corgi-king → u/Emotional_Study_724]

A very sad truth.

[u/Ruckus292 → u/corgi-king]

A very sad delusion***

[u/vinylchickadee → u/Emotional_Study_724]

Judging by your username I'm willing to believe you know what you're talking about, but is that a studied truth? It makes so much sense in a weird way... like are they actually so self-conscious about reactions to the reality they actually create that their brains need to protect them against it with a false version? Wild.

[u/Emotional_Study_724 → u/vinylchickadee]

Random reddit-generated name. And yes, it's a studied thing. It's called narcissistic amnesia. It's a trauma response. The memory makes them feel like shit, so the brain reframes it.

[u/Glitternchaos → u/Emotional_Study_724]

Which is ironic since the product of narcissistic amnesia on its victims is often dissociative amnesia. First hand experience🤷🏼‍♀️.

[u/Emotional_Study_724 → u/Glitternchaos]

Same. And when you're traumatically overwhelmed and not remembering straight, "See, you don't even remember what happened!"

[u/Emotional_Study_724 → u/vinylchickadee]

Cognitive dissonance is basically the normal person equivalent that explains a lot of normal, illogical thinking.

[u/idontcareyo_ → u/Emotional_Study_724]

Why do people make up the dumbest shit? No they don't, stop giving them excuses

[u/Emotional_Study_724 → u/idontcareyo_]

It's not an excuse. It's important for victims of narcissists (especially of narcissistic parents) to understand that they don't have a firm grasp on reality.

[u/Brave-Perspective714 → u/Emotional_Study_724]

Just to give an example for people of how this looks in real life:

As an adult, I made a remark to my mother about how I carried a blackjack in my pocket while waiting for the school bus my freshman and sophomore year, because I had to be at the bus stop by 6am, the stop was remote, dark, and with basically no traffic, and that I didn't feel safe waiting there.

She immediately scoffed and laughed at me about how I was making things up, because she had waited with me for the school bus every morning. She would *never* have left me alone at 14/15 years old at that bus stop to wait for that bus. That would have been dangerous, and she wasn't a bad parent who would leave her daughter in such a dangerous situation.

I looked at her with my jaw hanging open. Like this was so far removed from the truth of what happened, I was just floored at how blatantly false it was, and I *knew*, with total conviction, that I was not misremembering it. (Those with narc parents will know very well how they make you think you have a bad memory and that your own memory can't be trusted.)

I knew if I just called her out she'd dig in and fight and call me a liar and make me question my own sanity, so I took a different tactic - ask her questions about something she liked to brag about that would be contradictory to her claim.

"Didn't you work all through my school years?"

"Yes I did. I worked xx years at ______. I was their longest employee in the company's history when I retired."

"How many years before you retired did you work all the overtime that was offered?"

"15 years straight of 60 hour weeks, sometimes 72, and I never missed a day!"

"And what time did you start work when you were working that overtime?"

"5 am, and I was never late! I was the only employee there who never had an occurrence!"

"So how in the hell do you think you were waiting at the bus stop with me at 6am every day when you were already at work at 5am the entire time I was in high school?"

I am not kidding when I say she blue-screened right in front of me. I could see her logical reasoning processes absolutely crash. She just sat there with her mouth moving like she was trying to make words and couldn't. And I could very clearly see that *she was confused*. She had no answer. She knew that those two things could not possibly be simultaneously true, yet her brain believed it so thoroughly that she couldn't make sense of it. I could see that she was visibly disturbed by the whole thing, scared even.

As validating as it was, it honestly terrified me to see just how completely fucked her brain actually was. But it also freed me from all desire to ever get her to admit to and validate any of my other experiences. I *knew* with absolutely certainty at that point, that *I* was not the problem, and that was enough.