Can we trust ourselves?

So this week we talked a lot about memory. I think it's very interesting, because the brain is so complex but still very easy to trick. Something that really caught my attention is that we always change our memories. For example, I have a memory (that I first remembered a couple years ago); I must be around five years old and my parents are going to a wedding, it's my mom's cousin Peter's wedding. They drop me off in the woods, which I know is the wood you pass by when you go through our relatives cottage, and then they leave me there, crying. I think I am meeting up with my grandparents, but I can't remember if I ever met them or not. This of course is not true, my parents would never just leave me in the woods like that and they would not leave me crying either. Also, another proof that this is incorrect is that my brother is not even in this memory, and by the age of five and three we would definitely be at the same place.However, they did go to this wedding and I weren't allowed to come and as I said, the forest isn't something I've made up because it's something I have seen for real when we go to our relatives.

My theory is that I was disappointed that I was not allowed to come to the wedding, but then I forgot about it. Later on something in my mind must have triggered this memory. I then think that I dreamt about this, and had a very vivid dream. Sometimes I have a hard time to remember if it was a dream or if it was reality. So, by dreaming this and getting this image in my unconscious I started to believe that this was actually reality. I guess it's like using imagination inflation, but using it on a feeling that I already had and just made up the memory around it.

But even know, when I know that this memory is not real, it doesn't change the fact that I still see this as a memory. It is so clear and vivid to my that it can't just be something I made up because my mind really thinks that I did experience it. So whit that pointed out, how can we know what's real and what's not? How much can we really trust our memories? I guess, with the way science is going, in a few years we will have the answer to that in a few years.