Narrative therapy - rewriting the way we view ourselves

As humans we love stories - the ancient Greek odysseys, myths and legends, fairy stories told to us as children at bedtimes. In our own lives we have stories of tragedy or trauma, joy or comedy, populated with good guys and guardian angels or toxic creatures and dark figures. Our brains are naturally wired to weave a narrative to help us make sense of the world and our place in it.

But sometimes our narratives and stories about our lives become unhelpful. Instead of helping us feel secure and safe, they become entrenched and work against us. This is when narrative therapy can help.

The stories we tell ourselves

When we explore our life stories and where we fit into them, we can start to see if these stories are a true depiction of our life’s events or whether they have been skewed to fit a particular narrative. Are they perpetuated by other’s opinions? Have we cast ourselves (or others) as certain characters in order to continue a familiar line of thinking? Are these stories even true? Were they true once, but not anymore?

Changing or updating these old narratives can help us to see the reality of who we are in the here and now. We can slough off old beliefs that no longer serve us, we can reframe ourselves within those stories, and even reframe others’ participation in them. It doesn’t mean dismissing our lived experience, but examining it with a more observant and curious eye.

Here's a very surface-level example of how I questioned one of my life’s narratives. As a child I was very clumsy. I was often caught up in my imagination and didn’t concentrate on the real world which resulted in me walking into doorways, falling down stairs and tripping over carpets. The voice I frequently heard was my father calling me a “clumsy oaf.” So that story and character stuck with me (I’m a clumsy oaf who is scatty and not on the planet) and I continued to believe that about myself, right up until I got my first job when something happened to make me question that.

I had put down a cup of tea for a colleague and spilt some of it on her desk. I admonished myself, using the same words as my father, “I’m so sorry! I’m always such a clumsy oaf.” My colleague looked confused and said: “No you’re not. I don’t think of you as clumsy.”

Just those words made me question my narrative. I asked her: “So you’ve never seen me bump into anything or fall over or spill things?” She said: “No. No more than anyone else does.” (I’m conscious of the fact that simply in explaining this, I have created a narrative with characters and dialogue. I have created a story. Stories are such an instinctual part of our lives.)

This first questioning of a personal narrative had a profound effect on me. I realised that I didn’t need to be pigeon-holed into something I had once been or that someone once saw me as. I needed to update the narrative. I was not ALWAYS a clumsy oaf. I am not ALWAYS scatty.

The Always and Never Trap

This word “always” and also the word “never” are great clues to realising when our old beliefs have become entrenched. When we describe ourselves to people we can fall into the trap of saying: “I’m always like this…..” or “I never do that……” Always and Never are very polarising words and if we look at them closely, they actually obscure the truth. They are easily relied upon to do the heavy lifting of describing or explaining but when we pick them apart we can see that things are rarely black or white but instead many shades of grey in between.

The problem with Always and Never is that they can lead us into confirmation bias – the way we have of discarding anything that doesn’t fit in with our view. If your view is “I am always anxious and I never enjoy social occasions” then you will automatically bring into focus all the times you are anxious and all the occasions where you’ve had a terrible time socially. However, this doesn’t take into account all the times you have not been anxious, or the times when you’ve felt slightly anxious but managed to overcome it, or the times when you went to a social event and actually really enjoyed yourself. As you can see, the truth of the narrative becomes hazy when you begin to really dig down on the details.

If we view ourselves in such polarising terms it can also pitch us into critical and harsh thinking patterns where we beat ourselves up for the things we are or things we do. It leaves little wiggle room for the truth, and one of the words that is much more realistic is the word “sometimes”. For example, “I can sometimes be clumsy if I’m not concentrating properly.” (That sounds much kinder and less critical than “I am ALWAYS a clumsy oaf.”)

Starting to see when you use Always and Never in relation to yourself or to your life can be the beginning of unravelling the unhelpful narratives into which we have become trapped. Finding kinder and more truthful ways of reframing those old beliefs can help to untangle ourselves from those stories. Start to gather the evidence like a detective – am I ALWAYS anxious? Do good things NEVER happen to me? Question the evidence you have built up and start to see when you have discarded or blinkered yourself from the reality. Dismissing the good stuff and focusing in on the negative is a normal human trait that our primitive brains developed in order to keep us out of danger, but if everything you are noticing is negative, you may need to start to questioning that narrative. We are complex creatures with paradoxical feelings and behaviour. Different people view us differently depending on how we are thinking or behaving at the time. But how we view ourselves is up to us.

Familiarity, fear and self-fulfilling prophesies

Like scary ghost stories that can both terrify and thrill us, humans are driven and fascinated by the murky world of fear. Sometimes our fears are heightened to create a warning system to protect and prevent bad things from happening to us. Narratives then become defences against fear. Just like the Brothers Grimm fairy tales which frightened children into behaving themselves for fear the monsters would take them away, overly defensive narratives have a way of frightening us into submission and can sometimes get out of hand to the point of detriment.

For instance, instead of my “clumsy oaf” narrative protecting me and warning me to concentrate in case of a possible clumsy event, it can become so hyper-aware that it makes my hand shake so I break or spill something, or makes me tongue-tied so I appear scatty. In the end, the fear actually manifests the thing I am scared of. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. If I buy into the narrative, I become the narrative.

But if I begin to softly push back on that narrative, I can find ways of getting out from underneath it by challenging it with facts and evidence. I can say “Well I didn’t spill anything last time, so I’m sure I’ll be ok. And if I do, it doesn’t matter, I’ll just wipe it up.” Finding ways to assuage those fears are a little like telling your childhood self that monsters don’t really exist. In the dark, the monster feels like an all-consuming fear. But in the light of day, those monsters seem to lose their sharp teeth.

And sometimes we have just got used to living with those monsters, those fears and stories that have kept us safe in the past, that have helped us to survive. We get used to having them, we let them take up space in our heads and moderate our behaviour so we don’t disturb them. And there is something in our make-up that enjoys familiarity. We know where we stand with it. There are boundaries (“If I don’t go out, then I won’t be anxious”) and the boundaries feel safe. Humans enjoy habits, rituals and familiarity. It gives us structure, it dictates safe limits. But familiarity can also be restrictive and limiting. It can trap us.

When you start to challenge the fear-structure that you have built up around yourself with your stories and narratives, you can see how it might have once served you, kept you safe, kept you boundaried, kept the monsters at bay. But you can also see how it has kept you tied to a version of life that may not suit you now and kept you in a caricatured version of yourself that you no longer recognise or you no longer want to be.

Finding the power to rewrite and update your stories can be a difficult process as you come to acknowledge how people, life events and your own self may have held you back. But it can also give you clarity and allow you to find the freedom to write your next chapter yourself instead of being dictated to, and where you can write yourself as the hero of your own journey of life, instead of being held as the victim of it.

If you think narrative therapy could help you, take a look at my counselling page to see how I can help you. Or if you need general help with mental health issues, you can find a list of resources with our free online mental health courses.

Katya JezzardApril 23, 2024counselling, narrative therapyComment