Be Careful with the Story You Tell Yourself
The narrative is everything, in relationships and in life.
In her Netflix special, A Call to Courage, researcher and storyteller Brené Brown tells a story of what is, at first glance, a failed bid for connection with her husband. As she tells the story, however, we begin to understand it’s about more than connection, it’s about narrative.
Brené and her husband were swimming in a lake when she attempted to connect by telling him how sharing that moment made her happy. Her husband commented on how nice the water was and swam away — the opposite of what she had hoped for.
As they were about to climb out of the water, she realized the misunderstanding would hang between them for a while, souring their vacation, so she decided to clear everything before she found herself snapping at him over who should do the dishes, or something equally as unproductive.
As she asked her husband what was going on, her choice of words was very powerful: “The story I’m telling myself is — ”
The story she was telling herself was that her husband didn’t respond to her bid for connection because as he saw her in a swimsuit, he realized she wasn’t the young woman he’d married anymore, and he wasn’t attracted to her anymore. She wanted to know, was that it?
Her husband then revealed he had been fighting off a panic attack, which had nothing to do with how she looked in a swimsuit, and everything to do with his fears of loss and abandonment.
The stories we tell ourselves are powerful. Imagine if Brené had not cleared everything with her husband right there, but had gone on believing he wasn’t attracted to her anymore, and that she was the problem. Her husband would have continued to bear the weight of that panic attack by himself, and she would have resented him for ignoring a bid for connection that was so important to her.
How often do we tell ourselves a story and just run with it?
The stories we tell ourselves are not only about the people we love and the relationships we have with them. We also tell ourselves stories that form the narrative of our lives — and the narrative is everything.
A narrative is how we put together the pieces of a story, how we connect a series of happenings to form a cohesive structure that makes sense. A narrative gives meaning to what would otherwise be a series of loosely connected events, it helps us find purpose in life.
In psychology, there’s something called Narrative Identity Theory. It was developed to describe how humans create an “internalized and evolving story of the self” that people construct “to make sense and meaning out of his or her life.” McAdams, D. P. (2011).
Narratives help us understand not only ourselves but the world around us and our place in it. Our narratives are influenced by the culture we grow up in, the common knowledge instilled in us from childhood, and our personal inclination to assign positive or negative meaning to certain events in our lives.
We rely on narratives to fill in the blanks when we don’t have enough information. When someone is late to a meeting, we create a narrative of them having had a flat tire, or gotten into a car accident, or we simply fill in the blanks of their tardiness by assuming they’re irresponsible people who don’t care about anybody else’s time.
In relationships, we rely on narratives to attribute meaning to our partner’s actions. If they seem distracted at dinner, we can either assume there’s something else bothering them, or that they’re not in love with us anymore. That’s why clarifying our story with our partners is instrumental to avoid misunderstandings that fuel resentment.
Following Brené Brown’s example, coming up to your partner and saying, “The story I’m telling myself is — ” is a powerful tool to elicit your partner’s help to build the narrative instead of doing it on your own.
The narrative we build for our lives determines how we see the world. If your go-to narrative is that everyone else is out to get you, that every mistake someone else makes is on purpose to hurt you, and that every time your partner does not respond to your bids as you’d like them to, it means they don’t love you, you’re setting the stage for a life of negativity, hurt, and disappointment.
If you assume an “innocent until proven guilty” attitude, you give people a chance. You don’t assume their actions, intentional or unintentional, are all about you. You clear up the story you’re telling yourself whenever possible to get a more accurate picture.
Sometimes, the story you tell yourself is that you’re not loved, you’re not enough, you’re not worthy.
And then you find out your significant other has been fighting off a panic attack.
Be careful with the story you tell yourself. The narrative is powerful, it can poison your relationship, or it can fill your life with positivity and love — if you’re mindful of how you build it.