Is Your Story Moving You Forward Or Back?
“Who am I going to be in this story? What do I really believe, and what do I really value, and what’s worth fighting for, for me?”
We story everything. Romances, friendships, circumstances, and virtually all life experiences are fit into categories of what makes sense to what we know and believe. We have foundations in check, cognitively, religiously, and spiritually that we fall back on in tough circumstances.
But how we story everything matters, and matters a lot, as argues Deborah Khoshaba of Psychology Today. Therapy knows this, and often works to re-frame an existing narrative that is destructive to a person’s growth or ability to move forward. There are two ways, according to do this in modern psychological discussions: we can change our behaviors or we can change our dialogues.
To change our story is to change our dialogues. “People learn how to reflect upon and organize their thoughts and feelings into a meaningful dialogue about their lives and the things that happen to them.” These things can be good or bad, but those definitions are often left up to us at the end of the day.
Throughout the article, Khoshaba uses the example of Gayle Haggard, the wife of Ted Haggard. Gayle Haggard had to refocus her life after revelations that her husband, Ted Haggard, a fierce Christian evangelical advocate against same-sex marriage, paid male prostitute, Mike Jones, for sex for three years. How she must have felt in the midst of the scandal must have been unimaginable, but she asked herself these questions: “Who am I going to be in this story? What do I really believe, and what do I really value, and what’s worth fighting for, for me?”
So how do we re-frame and change our stories and our dialogues? That is a question I often ask myself, these days. Are the soul-searching, self-critical and scathing questions I ask about myself these days just the wrong questions? Am I missing the point?
Khoshaba first urges us to “consider your thoughts and feelings, even the ones that you may be trying to avoid or deny.” It is important for ourselves to address the feelings we have, and let ourselves feel them. If you’re suffering, suffer. If you’re afraid, let…
