The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Stories are not only found in books, movies, and gossipy sharings heard from others. If you listen closely to yourself, you will hear that you are always, in effect, telling a story about yourself. By everything you say, how you say it--and of course, all the goodies that you happen to leave out of your sharings--you are a storyteller about you in your life. 

Our Self-Stories

Our self-stories were first told to us by others. That is, we began learning about ourselves in part through our own experiences, but also through that which we experienced as reflected back about ourselves from our caregivers. Our primary caregivers' looks of love, fear, frustration, presence or unavailability--the accumulations of what was mirrored back to us becomes internalized to represent the building blocks of so many of our future stories. While this continues to be true for much of our lives, it is particularly true in childhood and infancy, including periods of time when we were so new to the world that we in fact cannot remember it at all.

Our stories, or narratives, are powerful because eventually they become indistinguishable from actual lived experience.

During this time in infancy, a preverbal time, was a time where we had thoughts and feelings but not yet language. In spite of this, stories of love, acceptance, rejection, closeness and distance are already being authored through emotion states. Now, as you read this article, it's impossible to imagine having thoughts without words because language becomes so embedded in our cognitions as we develop. And our thoughts contain language and those words and ideas in turn go on to construct a story that we tell ourselves. There are many stories--stories about ourselves, about others, about the world at large. Stories about the past, the present, and the future of ourselves. 

Such narratives are needed because they help us tie together the complexities of everything that happens in the span of a single day, let alone the sum of hundreds of days. They act as a kind of filter to all the information and sensory and relational experiences we have.  In effect, they help us "locate" ourselves by organizing information in a way that has some coherence to it. Our self-stories are the answers to the ongoing questions related to: "who am I?" and "what is happening now?". In this way, stories bring a certain stability to our lives, and in particular, to our sense of self. We say "I'm the kind of person who..." or "that's just who I am". We are telling a story--a shorthand--version of self.

We tell stories to others but also to ourselves. See if you can listen to your own story that emerges through a day. Imagine following yourself along, like a cross between a best friend and someone who is observing during their first day on the job. Just see if you can notice the story. It may take the obvious form of listening to the external words and manner in which you present yourself to others in the world, or the monitoring of the inside voices that comment on you and what is happening, and decisions you make.

Distorted Mirrors Bend Our Stories of Self and Other

Some difficulties can arise when we have had experiences of inaccurate or denigrating or abusive stories reflected back to us. Unhealthy relationships always involve some kind of distortion reflected back to us, and if we are vulnerable or wounded, we may be susceptible to swallowing the story whole. We agree or internalize it because it aligns with our inside feeling of ourselves that already exists (remember those early building blocks from infancy & childhood?). We continue to take in stories that are congruent with our own self-narrative ("I'm good" "I'm bad" etc), which is different than incorporating a self-story because it is actually accurate. 

And so, we can appreciate the ways in which our self-stories tend to perpetuate more of the same. A person who has internalized a negative, or shame oriented self-narrative will tend to project this outward onto the world. They are more likely to have difficulties with clear and consistent boundaries. They may allow others in who do not merit their trust, or remain in relation with those who treat them poorly because at a certain level they believe it to be congruent with who they are: "If I feel ugly, broken, or unloveable, then how could I live with receiving love from someone who cares?" It is less conflictual in the inner world of self to remain in an unhealthy dynamic, even if psychologically it suffocates our possibilities of growth.

When we begin to awaken and notice our stories as stories and not absolute truths, we can begin the process of reclaiming ourselves. First, we come to recognize that a story is not actually a self--it is a story. There is more to the totality of a personhood than the way one describes him/herself. 

Then, as we learn more about our storied version of ourselves, we get to know the parts of the narrative that need more expansion, different terms and words--or a total rewrite. Or one day we may be able to consider that the story we tell of ourselves simply gives us so little benefit of the doubt--and that we would never consider such a story a fair telling if it were from a friend in similar circumstances. When we see that we are the authors of our own narratives, then we can strive for a revised version--an updated version--a truer and more fair and full version of our self-story. One that feels accurate, that has a lineage to the past but is grounded and authored in the present, and that has a storyline to the future that helps us to feel inspired and hopeful, even when things in the present are not.

Here are some questions to bring you into contact with your self-storying.

1. If my life to date was a film or a book, what title would it have?

2.  Imagine--or draw out--a timeline: How would you divide your life up chapter wise so far? Would it be by age range, by developmental stage, by emotional growth theme? 

3. What would the chapters of your life be entitled to date? What chapter are you in now? 

4. What would the first sentence of the first chapter read? 

5. What is the title of the next chapter, as you would like it to be? What would you like that first sentence to be that opens the chapter?

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