I often talk about how we frame our stories in Resolving Chronic Pain sessions. It’s said there are two sides to every story, but how often do you remember that when thinking about your day to day life?
The ‘story’ to which there is more than one side is not just the tales you recount to your friends over a cup of tea, but also applies to the stories you tell yourself.
This is a view shared by Lori Gottlieb, an American therapist who also writes an advice column called ‘Dear Therapist’.
She believes that all of our lives are made up of a series of stories we tell, which are all shaped by our own opinions and prejudices. She explains in a TED talk how this realisation can be immensely freeing, as it allows us to consciously re-shape the stories we tell about difficulties we encounter.
As an example Lori speaks about a woman who wrote in to her ‘Dear Therapist’ column to ask for help with a problem in her marriage – she felt disconnected from her husband, and suspected he was having an affair as he was spending a lot of time on long late-night phone calls with a woman at his office. ‘What should I do?’ she asked Lori.
But Lori looked at the problem from a different perspective. She read out another letter, from a man who felt disconnected from his wife, and found she was not listening to him or giving him the support he needed so he was having to turn to the only friend he could speak to – a colleague at work. While the second letter was invented by Lori, she says the situation is inspired by problems she sees every day.
She explained: “I have to be really careful when I respond to these letters because I know that every letter I get is actually just a story written by a specific author, and that another version of this story also exists. It always does. And I know this because if I’ve learned anything as a therapist it’s that we are all unreliable narrators of our own lives.
“I don’t mean that we purposely mislead. Most of what people tell me is absolutely true, just from their current points of view. Depending on what they emphasize or minimize, what they leave in, what they leave out, what they see and what they want me to see, they tell their stories in a particular way.”
Lori continued: “All of us walk around with stories about our lives. Why choices were made, why things went wrong, why we treated someone a certain way – because obviously they deserved it – why someone treated us a certain way – even though obviously we didn’t. Stories are the way we make sense of our lives.
“But what happens when the stories we tell are misleading or incomplete or just wrong? Instead of providing clarity these stories keep us stuck. We assume that out circumstances shape our stories, but what I found time and again in my work is that the exact opposite happens. The way we narrate our lives shapes what they become. That’s the danger of our stories, because they can really mess us up, but it’s also their power. Because what it means is that if we can change our stories, then we can change our lives.”
We have the power to think differently about the stories we tell ourselves, and examine them from another point of view. It isn’t possible in every case – there are some more serious instances when it isn’t helpful to doubt yourself or the harm another person is inflicting on you. But it is always a good idea to be aware of the stories you tell yourself, and the fact that you, and everyone around you, are sometimes an unreliable author.