Every time you recall a memory, your brain doesn't just play it back — it rebuilds it from scratch, and in doing so, makes it subtly different. This is called memory reconsolidation, established through research by Joseph LeDoux and Karim Nader, and it turns out to be one of the most unsettling findings in modern neuroscience. The ancient Indian philosopher Dignāga had a related but deeper insight: he argued that what we perceive is never the raw thing itself, but always a mental construct shaped by prior categories and concepts — a kind of cognitive overlay he called *svalakṣaṇa* filtering through *sāmānyalakṣaṇa* (roughly, the raw particular getting filtered through our general concepts). Put these two ideas together and something useful emerges: the 'facts' you return to again and again — about your abilities, your past failures, your relationships — aren't fixed records. They're living reconstructions, shaped every time you revisit them. The memory you keep reinforcing may be teaching you something that was never quite true.

What is a story about yourself you've repeated so many times you've stopped questioning whether it's accurate?

Drawing from Indian Epistemology (Buddhist logic / Dignāga's pramāṇavāda) combined with cognitive neuroscience — Dignāga (with Joseph LeDoux on reconsolidation)