The Stories We Tell

A lot of therapy and parenting is about narrative.

The stories we tell ourselves shape our daily lives, they can steer us toward happiness or loneliness.

Stories are how we make meaning. Our brain tells us stories in order to make sense of the information our senses provide. When there is a dramatic mismatch between our senses, our brain sometimes has to stretch to find an explanation, such as believing our loved ones have been replaced by exact replicas.

Your personal narrative shapes how you interact with the people in your life. Does your story leave you open to connection, or has it filled you with fear? Believing that you are destined to be alone makes it harder to meet your social needs and actually changes the way you interpret social interactions.

A couple years ago I was heading out for my morning run and was stopped at an intersection, impatiently waiting my turn to cross. When the light changed I trotted into the street and promptly heard a horn honk. The loud noise startled me and left me off balance. I assumed the honker thought I was in the wrong, or somehow didn’t have the right to cross, or even thought I was too slow of a runner. Then my reaction quickly shifted to rage. Couldn’t they wait a darn second? Were they somehow more important than I was? I was going as fast as I could! In less than a second, I had reacted by flipping the bird over my shoulder.

Let’s unpack. The story that leapt to my mine was one of me being wrong, a story which tends to end in isolation, particularly if you’re someone who occasionally falls for the all-or-nothing fallacy of changing “I made a mistake,” to “I’m a complete failure.” If the next sentence that leaps to mind in my story is “she was so very wrong that no one wanted to be with her,” I’m going to have a hard time when thrown for a loop, because it will reinforce my fears.

A block farther into my run, a different narrative kicked began. What if the driver was someone happy to see me and trying to get my attention? What if it was my kids’ teacher, on her way to school, tooting a little hello? Had I just flipped off my child’s teacher? Note– this is a similar narrative to the earlier one, it still results in me being wrong. In this narrative though, I have the power to make things right.

The story I told myself, about cars and aggression, my inherent wrongness, selfish morning attitudes and right-of-way, shaped my interaction with a stranger and caused me to spend the rest of the day worrying about the person who received my angry gesture.

When the story changes, so does everything else. When my story is one of aggression, my stomach hurts, my heart rate goes up and I am decidedly unfriendly. When I am unfriendly, I behave badly, impulsively feeding into morning chaos with an obscene gesture. If my story doesn’t change, I might carry that attitude with me into the rest of my day, and spread it to the next stranger I see, triggering their own personal story of failure. I am closed for connection, afraid of being hurt or judged.

If my story is one of connection– someone wanted to say hello, or even someone was concerned for my safety, or hey, someone’s hand slipped, my stomach stops turning, my heart rate remains steady. I can send off a friendly wave, and maybe even reverse someone else’s unpleasant path for the day. I am open to connection. Even a story of one frustrated driver, late to work for the third time that week honking at a runner (who totally had the right-of-way) could leave me more open if it ended with that runner being able to laugh off the honk and not get sucked into the black hole of anger.

Shifting my narrative a block down the road helped me feel like connecting to other people and allowed me to laugh about it with my running partner. Actually having a friend there who didn’t run in the opposite direction upon discovering my middle finger’s impulse control issues shifted my story too. The bigger task though, is shifting the overall narrative so that the next automatic sentence is one that opens doors instead of slamming them shut.

How do we make that shift in our story? Practice, practice, practice. Watching our automatic thoughts, slowing down enough to hear our self-talk, and reaching out for a different perspective when we get stuck are good places to start. It’s a difficult process because often the first story our brain reaches is one in our implicit memory, one so entrenched we barely see it, we just feel it. We can overwrite those stories, but it takes work. Sometimes journaling, meditation and long talks with close friends is enough; other times it works to unpack those stories through therapy.

For further reading:
Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection by
John T. Cacioppo, William Patrick is a fascinating read on how our brains need social connection, and how our experiences can sabotage our attempts to meet that need.

The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain, by Louis Cozolino is another great read on the neuroscience behind human connection.