Sometimes I like to hold up for clients a picture of a blank page. I explain to them that it’s a metaphor for how we tend to show up for our lives, every day, with a page full of writing. And if a page is full of writing, how many new notes can we make? If our page is full of notes about childhood trauma, failed relationships, bitterness, self-hatred, and defeat, where is the room for us to create new narratives about ourselves?
From a narrative therapy perspective, we have been creating stories about ourselves our entire lives. Some of our stories are accurate. I am a therapist. I have one sibling. We can state facts. But then our stories begin to gain some embellishment. I was abandoned as a child. I come from a broken home. I suffered emotional abuse. This does not mean the stories are untrue by any means; it just means that we are moving further away from facts, and into the world of embellishment. And then we need to ask- as soon as we acknowledge certain things about our history, what does that say about us? Where does our story go next? And finally- can we re-write our stories?
It's a lot to take in, but I process with my clients every thought they have about themselves and their lives. If they make a statement such as “I am broken,” I explore that. What does it mean to be broken? What does that word mean to you? When did this feeling start? When did you feel this way in your childhood? When you were a small child, did you know anyone who was broken, and how did you perceive that person? This way I can get clues into my clients’ narratives and understand their personal viewpoint of their words. Viewpoints are everything; and it is quite a leap for a client to gradually begin to recognize that we can change our viewpoint, change our story, and thus change our lives.
Yes, a childhood may be abusive, but our responses are quite varied. You can interview several children from the same home, and they will have entirely different temperaments, beliefs, behaviors, and even memories. Ask every child in a family to recount an incident. They may agree that the incident was traumatic and negative, but the nuances will be different; one child may have felt a great amount of fear or shame; children often place more blame on one parent than the other, or sometimes excuse their parents altogether. Children often believe that abuse is their fault.
If we can move past the initial shock that we have been writing a well defined story for ourselves; if we can note that all the patterns in our life (which are often negative) may link back to this script we are carrying around with us, there may also be a feeling of hope, relief, freedom. If our lives are a reflection of our stories, and our stories are a reflection of our thoughts, and thoughts can be changed, then perhaps we can change. Perhaps so many notions that we assumed were an intrinsic part of ourselves were not. Even statements like I’m shy, I hate crowds, I can’t be alone, I only drink red wine, etc., are habitual ways of us trying to make sense of the world by forming an identity. OK, maybe you don’t like crowds. But what if you were to really tell yourself that you liked crowds? It may not make you love them, but you may dislike them way less than when you came into the situation with a built in preconceived notion of how much you would certainly dislike something.
If there is a story you don’t like and you want to change, reach out to me. If you are feeling stuck, reach out. If you are stuck in a repeating life pattern that isn’t working for you, please reach out. I can help you change that narrative. We are so much more than the stories that have been told to us about ourselves. We are so much more divine, infinite, and bright than we have ever given ourselves credit for.
