 trauma survivors if a story is very traumatic they may be experiencing the feelings that they felt at the time when they're talking so they're feeling the feelings now as they're talking they may start talking in the present tense or if someone's lying and making up a story well our memories live in a certain part of the brain if we're making something up then that comes from a different part of the brain and we're making it up in present tense we're not pulling out things we remember we're pulling out pictures that we can see right now because we're making them up right now and we'll use present