Asking a person to talk about their parents in therapy can distort memories of childhood emotions

New research suggests a person’s feelings towards a parent can be significantly changed when they are asked to evaluate them during talking therapy, even when the question isn’t suggestive. 

Therapists often ask clients to reflect on their relationships with family, as a way to help unlock past memories and feelings. A new study, led by the University of Portsmouth, has explored whether this line of questioning can alter emotions and memories towards a parent - a process known as reappraisal. 

The current paper investigates the effect of reappraisals toward participants’ mothers, focusing on the emotions happiness, interest, sadness, and anger. They also looked at how this reflection can affect what they felt about the parent in childhood. 

The lead author, Dr Lawrence Patihis from the University’s School of Psychology, Sport and Health Sciences, specialises in memory reliability. He explained why he wanted to investigate this phenomenon: “We all have childhood amnesia in early years, because we’re constantly producing new neurons. This leads to complications around what we think we remember, and what actually happened. 

“For example, imagine that someone experiences positive emotions with their father during the first 11 years of their life, but this changes at age 16 when he divorces their mum. What they don’t realise is that this negative re-evaluation of their father will subtly change the memory of their relationship with him when they were younger.

“Existing research has shown memories are changeable, and we wanted to test whether the same could be said about how we remember feeling in childhood towards a parent.”

In the first experiment, some participants were asked to give recent examples of when their mother had exhibited evidence of having a positive attribute, while others were asked for examples of her having a negative attribute. The results show that their current emotions were significantly changed by the reappraisals, and memories of emotion from childhood were altered as well. 

“Therapists and clients should be aware that prompts like this during a session might unintentionally lead to reappraisals of parents, with knock on effects on emotions and memories”, explained Dr Patihis. 

“Some therapies that focus on childhood reappraise parents negatively, because the assumption is that relationship problems you have in the present are the result of trauma from childhood. But our research supports existing evidence that this process can sometimes manipulate the truth of what people actually felt in the past. The concern is that this can result in a family growing distant from one another in the present. 

“This is not to say that individuals with genuine negative experiences shouldn’t trust their feelings - just that everyone should be more aware that their emotions and memories are changeable.”

Even boosting positive reappraisals comes with risks. Dr Patihis added: “It is true that thinking more positively towards a parent can improve the relationship overall, but if you accurately remember childhood feelings of sadness and anger, you can then use that accurate memory to choose to raise your own children differently.

“If people are made aware that therapies can shift memories before beginning a session, that knowledge can help them stay accurate about their childhood memories. I have argued that this should be part of informed consent.”

The paper is published in the Psychological Reports journal.