The Stories We Tell Ourselves
By Rami Nijjar and Stefanie Krasnow
“People come to therapy because the way they are remembering their lives has become too painful;
the stories they are telling themselves have become too coercive and restrictive.
In so far as they have a dominant story about who they are, they have a repetitive story.
And repetition [...] is forgetting in its most spellbinding form.” —Adam Philips
With the common use of buzz words such as “transformation”, “thriving”, “abundance,” and trending phrases like “level up”, human beings are encouraged more than ever to reinvent ourselves and strive for growth. This seemingly never-ending quest for self improvement motivates and propels us towards new heights and self-actualizing goals, but seldom do we pay attention to the price it bears. In order to transform one’s life, there first has to be an awareness of either not-being-okay with the status quo (be that economic struggle or dissatisfying relationships) or not being okay with oneself. As much as we are motivated by desire, we are also motivated by shame. As we put the wheels in motion for self-improvement, we naturally begin to take stock of our lives, deciding what is “good” and worth holding onto and what is “bad” that we should “let go” of. Although this may lead to desired changes, it can also feed into the shame-fuelled narrative that there is something inherently wrong with us. This is how the relentless cycle of shame and self-improvement/self-criticism begins.
Why do we push ourselves so hard to be different than what we are? Why is self acceptance such a challenge for many? To understand this, it is helpful to remember that human beings are fundamentally social creatures; as such, nothing can cause us as much detriment as disruptions or ruptures in our social world. When we fight, break up, or endure other losses in our interpersonal life, it can cause such distress that, in order to regain a sense of control, we often look for someone to blame: ourselves or others. While this provides us a finger-hold on control, it also leaves us feeling shame, disconnection or both. Further, this attempt at control lends itself as fuel for the stories we generate in order to protect ourselves, stories which can lead to a fear or shame-based view of ourselves and the world around us.
We tell ourselves stories, almost always unconsciously, stories that conceal the sources of our pain and reveal a path toward a fictional end-state of mastery, control or relief. A feeling of shame from interpersonal trauma gets translated into a story of i’m not good enough, which shows up in disguise as a quest for perfection — perfection being a fictional end-state that is impossible to reach and destructive to pursue. We may translate the terror of early abandonment into a story of i’m unlovable, which can show up disguised as a pattern of being overly accommodating, even attracted, to people who have power over us; if we can woo them to love us, then this may soothe our unacknowledged fear. All the while, the behavioral patterns these untold stories compel often amplify rather than assuage our pain, pain that was too unsafe and overwhelming to confront in the first place. So what do we do? We, wittingly or unwittingly, push that pain further underground.
Through a series of automatic physiological and neurological changes that are part of our stress-response, we bury our pain in our bodies and push on through life like warriors. Although we can maintain functioning this way – being able to work and take care of day-to-day tasks – our bodies become minefields of unacknowledged emotion. Like the tip of an iceberg, unproductive behaviors start to poke through the surface of our daily lives. They are tied to all that which we cannot see, remember or feel, and they help us contort ourselves to avoid those minefields. Most commonly, folks will subdue themselves with substances, food, sex, scrolling, overthinking: the list is endless. Our response to our own (unacknowledged) feelings is again, to interpret them through our busy, overstimulated minds. We assign meaning to them based on our “shame story” or the remarks of those around us. Folks who have experienced boundary violations, especially repeatedly or chronically, will often harbour shame that they interpret through a story: for example, someone who has experienced childhood physical or sexual abuse will often interpret their shame through the story of i’m bad or defected or broken.
According to Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal theory, this shame story is the mind’s interpretation of the collapsed physiological state that we go into when our bodies are threatened repeatedly — it is important to note that by threatened, we mean not only in terms of physical harm, but also in terms of emotional harm, as in, those threatened or real ruptures to our social ties. Human beings are meaning-making creatures, and we will select to create meaning (even if it’s a painful meaning) of our experiences rather than live in a void of meaning. In Polyvagal theory, there is the adage: story follows state. When we are living in a state of isolation, abandonment, shame, overwhelm, terror, or rage, we then create a story to understand and interpret that state of being; in this way, our meaning-making muscles are hijacked by trauma. Experiences of interpersonal pain become stories about us not being allowed to have needs or set boundaries (which forms the roots of anxiety and OCD), or we generate stories that all relationship issues are our fault (which forms the basis of depression), or that other people can’t be trusted (which can feed into anxiety, avoidance, and addiction). All of these storylines get re-triggered in our social and romantic worlds, causing painful spirals in our mental health and confusion in our lives. Those very mental health conditions (anxiety, depression, OCD, addiction) are in fact symptoms of interpersonal wounds and the painful stories created in their wake: i’m bad, i can’t trust others, i’m not safe. Those symptoms can be anywhere from inconvenient to debilitating, and this is often what compels people to seek out therapy or blog posts like this, to find a path toward relief. As poet Robert Frost famously wrote: the best way out is always through. There are ways out of these stories, these symptoms, and the pain that they mask: but the way out is through.
1. Feel it to Heal it.
It feels overwhelming and scary to even think about confronting what has been too painful to avow, but only when we allow ourselves to “sit” with emotion can we begin to find relief. Feeling the sensations associated with an emotion, acknowledging the emotion, telling ourselves that it is okay to feel this way all help us to release the emotion and begin to move toward freedom. We can assure ourselves that we don’t necessarily need to understand our emotional experience (i.e. we don’t need to create a ‘story’ or analyze), but rather open up to accepting it wholeheartedly: bearing witness to our own experience at long last.
This is one important pathway to healing: to quiet the mind and allow oneself to exist within the body. However, this can be really challenging. It can even feel impossible when we are sitting with a lot of pain and shame. Self-compassion creates possibilities when we hit this wall; self-compassion creates space when we feel cornered in by our own pain. A powerful, accessible, and learnable skill, self-compassion allows us to hold painful emotions with the tenderness and care which we afford others. Negative emotions are often only as painful as the shame that binds them to us. Self compassion is thought to be the antidote to this shame and a path towards fearing ourselves from our shame stories.
In the words of psychoanalyst, Adam Philips: “Insofar as [people] have a dominant story about who they are, they have a repetitive story. And repetition [...] is forgetting in its most spellbinding form.” Allowing ourselves to feel helps us remember who we are outside of that dominant story; feeling is remembering, putting the fragmented parts of ourselves back together and telling a different story about how we got there, and what this means about who we are.
2. Deconstruct the story
Put on an investigative journalist hat and get curious about the construction of this story. Look at it as a riddle you are trying to debunk. Is this true: is it 100% true? Who does the shame belong to? Is it yours to carry? Could you be taking responsibility for what others who were involved in the creation of the story are not taking accountability for? Or vice versa (if the story is about others being bad or untrustworthy? Who or what benefits from this story: people in your past, institutions, industries? Would you believe a friend who held this same story, this same conviction, after having the same life experiences as you? Would you believe a young, dear child who held this same story? What do you see differently when you consider others holding the same story?
There is no single story that can do justice in explaining our lives or our experiences, yet when one story dominates we tend to not see the alternatives, especially the alternatives that are more compassionate and generous toward others and ourselves. Usually the story that dominates is one that has power and is one that is reinforced by societal messages and even structures of power. What counter-stories are being silenced by this dominant storyline of your life? Are there times in your life where you’ve lived outside of this story, or even imagined what that would be like? Who in your life, or in your imagination, might support a different story? To support yourself in this line of thinking, you may enjoy watching the TED Talk “The danger of a single story” by novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
3. Connect
Telling our story to someone safe and trust-worthy, and connecting with others in spaces where we are seen and validated, helps us in turn to see ourselves and our life experiences in new ways. Connecting to others helps us get outside a pigeon-holed view of ourselves and the world. Also, when we put words to our feelings, it can help us move out of the jumble of emotions and identify the storyline that is most realistic and beneficial to our wellbeing. We all have blind spots. It is inevitable that our perspectives are biased, but they can also be inaccurate, limited, or even harmful to ourselves and others in ways we can’t recognize unless we have someone else who can, with kindness, hold a mirror up for us.
Look for people in your life who can offer you perspective, perspectives that are validating and expansive, generous and nuanced; stories that feel better in your body, stories that have possibilities and layers. If you find that these types of friends or allies are hard to find, therapy can provide the same opportunity. Therapy, more than anything else, is a relationship: an intentional relationship that is co-created to provide you a safe space where you can connect with yourself and another in new ways, unravel limiting stories, and begin to live out the story that you want to be living.
If you are looking for a safe and kind ally in helping dismantle some of your own shame stories, contact us, we would be happy to help.