Narrative, Part 2 - How to Work With Your Narratives
Most of the time when people come to therapy, it’s because some of the things they are experiencing in the present moment are at odds with the narratives they have about their lives in ways that are confusing, scary, or just make them feel like something is wrong. As therapists, our work is often to help you deepen these narratives into ones that can integrate all of these different, often contradictory and therefore confusing, experiences you are having.
You bring your existing storylines, memories, emotions, body sensations, images, impulses and so forth to the p(l)ot; then we use what research tells us about human development, our place in the natural world, and the role of social life to spice that mix, and bring out different flavors and perspectives that make for a much richer stew. In that process there’s a growing acceptance of all of these different parts of you, because those parts don’t need to be excluded all or part of the time in order to maintain a cohesive sense of yourself. Instead those different parts become part of the delicious nuanced tapestry that is you.
Indeed, much (but not all!) of therapy is a telling and retelling of these stories, a constant reworking and deepening of the narratives of our lives that start to make sense of the oftentimes confusing things we do, think, or feel. I often think of my job more as a life-story editor than anything else - identifying the parts that aren’t yet integrated and gently helping you turn your attention towards them so that they can come in from the dark and join the rest of you. This makes it sound abstract, but it’s not abstract at all - these narratives shape the import we give events, and that import is first and foremost a FELT reality. If you are talking about the narratives that shape your life and you’re NOT feeling a fair amount of emotion then you’re probably not in touch with what’s really going on.
This is also true of the excluded parts of the story - most of the time they are excluded exactly because they make us feel too much. When you touch on that material it can be overwhelming, producing a distressing amount of emotion. Oftentimes that comes with intense bodily reactions, sometimes even producing panic attacks (if that’s happening then stop! That material needs a more gentle approach). Because there is so much intensity to this material, it is outside the window of tolerance (essentially the range of intensity of emotions that you can tolerate), and part of the work here is approaching that material in a titrated way, over time, allowing you to develop more comfort with the emotions it brings, and ultimately to expand your window of tolerance. THEN it can be folded into the story of you without becoming a wrecking ball.
So how do you go about this? First, it helps a lot to work with someone who can hold this material with you, instead of doing it all by yourself. That might look like talking with friends, or a therapist, or even group therapy.
Second, with that support, you turn your attention in a curious and non-judgmental way towards the things that are happening, for as long as you can. That might be a thought, an emotion, an image, or feelings in your body, but whatever it is you put your attention on it and just notice what else happens. If it’s a thought, then as you pay attention to it does it also have an emotional tone? Can you locate the feeling of that in your body somewhere? Is there an image that comes with it? An impulse to move? Is this a familiar thought/feeling/sensation?
As you explore all of this material you articulate it. And as you articulate it it steadily becomes folded into your story. You might go over it once and it’s done, but with the really deep core material you’ll probably return to it again and again for a long while as you build tolerance, explore it, and make sense of it and the impact it has had on your life. It’s a rich and rewarding, though not easy journey. Good luck, and as always, if you need help with the process please reach out to me or another professional.
Narrative, Part 1 - The Story of You
Narrative is at the heart of how we, as humans, make sense of the world (and even how we construct our own sense of self!). Sometimes this idea seems strange to people - it’s not immediately obvious how stories are related to understanding the world, or to how we think and feel about ourselves. But the phenomenon of myth - sets of stories about the personified forces that make the world go round - has been a common feature of all societies throughout time, ours included. People have always received models of the world in this form, and then turned around and used the figures from those stories to make sense of the things happening around them.
Likewise, all of us have stories about our lives that describe the important forces that shaped us, and that we then use to make sense of both the things that happen to us and the things we do in response. These stories may feature our parents, traumas, alcoholism, or hard work, but whoever the players are, the purpose they serve is to help us hold onto a consistent picture of ourselves. The one common player in all of these stories is you, and it is through this historical narrative that all the different experiences you have had in your life get woven into a felt sense of yourself.
One of the most powerful moves in therapy is to identify, in an honest and non-judgemental way, the narratives that are shaping your life. Once you’ve done this you can start to see the places where you’re unconsciously conforming to these storylines, even when there might be opportunities to do things differently.
By their very nature, stories have a beginning, middle, and end - there is an arc to them that points in a particular direction. The stories you use to make sense of the world work the same way - they contain an arc which tends to define the direction of the events of your life. Certainly the world can still throw unexpected things at you, but we’re talking about a general tendency here.
If the arc of your stories is one of beautiful successes - you see opportunities, grab them, make great use of them, and then profit from the results - then you tend to see the world in terms of opportunity and profitable work. And much of the time the world will conform to that. Not that bad things can’t or won’t happen, not that it always works out that way, but in spite of the setbacks you are primed to see opportunity and the potential for profit. And having eyes for those things gives you more chances to recognize them in the world.
On the other hand, if the arc of your stories follows the screw-up genre - you’re handed opportunity but always botch it up and then live in regret for the rest of your life - then that narrative tends to shape how you perceive the world. And rather than seeing opportunity as the first ingredient of success, it instead becomes the precursor to failure and regret. Rather than opening the door to prosperity, opportunity becomes the hook upon which all manner of failures can be hung. And with the emphasis more on the potential for failure than on the potential for success, that’s where your experience tends to go, in the same way that a bicycle will tend to follow where you are looking.
The good news here is that when you become aware of this storyline you get the opportunity to shift it and open up new possibilities. A personal example - there was a period in my life where I was working a software job that happened to have a lot of idle time, and a ping pong table in the office. I would play with my co-workers, and actually got pretty good. But no matter how well I found myself playing most of the time, I still seemed to choke at the end of most games, blowing often sizable leads. As I reflected on that (or agonized over it!) I started to notice that in the final points of these games I started to have a mental conversation that went something like “I wonder how I’m going to screw it up this time?” That talk was the expression of an underlying storyline, or deep belief, I had about myself that I was always going to lose. When I became aware of that talk I was able to shift it - when I noticed it happening I would just start to tell myself, “You’ve got this.” And it worked - I stopped choking, and started winning those matches.
In the next posts in this series I’ll talk more about working with these narratives in therapy, and then about the cultural context of them. And if you’d like help working with this material then please reach out!