The Story I’m Telling Myself Is…

I don't know where or when I heard it first but the phrase "the story I'm telling myself is..." has come back to me recently. It seems so simple and yet, it has been deeply helpful for me in my own personal life. When I was in graduate school, I remember hearing about story work for the first time. The idea being that our lives from start to finish are like any great story we've read. I also remember hearing someone say "our lives are lived forward but understood backwards."

All of this basically means that the events in our lives matter. They typically build up over time. We learn lessons from these events that stick with us and we create and develop meaning from these events. We understand ourselves and the relationships we have based on our interpretation of these events, hence "the story I'm telling myself is...".

In my adult life, and specifically my marriage, the story I'm telling myself is that I'm not doing enough. There is a narrative in my head that always feels this way. The story is that no matter how hard I try or how well I do, there will always be disappointment. This disappointment in my head particularly comes from my wife. However, it's interesting to me that my wife is my biggest supporter and giver of compliments. And while she certainly expresses healthy disappointment, she typically doesn't feel it about the things I fear she will. And she certainly doesn't treat me the way I assume she will when she feels disappointment. It's all just the story I'm telling myself.

I remember when we were newly married and I was ironing a shirt for work. I somehow knocked over the iron and it hit our new entertainment center. The iron left a small dent in the wood and I immediately started thinking of ways to get myself out of this situation. In a matter of seconds I had played out several scenarios of how I would manage this mistake so my wife wouldn't divorce me. I was fully invested in the story I was telling myself. After a moment, I remembered what was true. I told her immediately and she understood and showed grace like I had never experienced.

My mistake wasn't punished. Our relationship wasn't threatened. I wasn't shamed or ridiculed. When I was a kid, even the smallest mistep might have caused chaos and disruption.

I had to take on responsibility and expectations that seemed to land way outside of my age range. The reaction to a mistake never seemed to match the mistake itself. And the story I was often told was it was all because of me. Even if it didn't come in explicit language, the implied message was if mom was disappointed, someone would have to pay. Or if mom disappointed you were going to be cut off from that relationship. Brene Brown says, "shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledge, healed, and rare."

As a kid, I experienced a lot of what Brene Brown mentioned in the above quote. I can look at pictures of myself from childhood and feel anger and compassion for that little kid. He was carrying a lot and managing a lot without the tools to get through it all well. He was often surviving, never truly knowing when the next moment of chaos or disconnection would come. I carried those stories into my adulthood.

I remember sitting in counseling with a trusted counselor who tossed out the idea that my wife held a similar position to my mother in my emotional life. At first I balked at the idea because my wife and my mom are close to complete opposites. The counselor gently suggested that at one point in my life, the most important woman was my mother and now the most important woman was my wife. I seemed to be reacting emotionally in similar ways to my wife as I would have my mother. The issue being my mother was often emotionally volatile and could be abusive and my wife was very far from those things. My reactions to my wife often reflected my experiences with my mom. Because of the story I was telling myself, my wife would melt down or cut off affection if I caused any disappointment.

The story I often tell myself is I haven't don't enough. I feel it in my body. I work tirelessly both consciously and unconsciously to avoid the chaos that often followed a moment of disappointment from my mom.

Sometimes it seems more real than others. When I forget to pick something up at the grocery store, when I was the clothes on the wrong setting, when I shower and my hair litters the bathroom floor. The fear is that it's all over. This is it. Divorce is around the corner. Or at the least, I'll be yelled at, shamed and pulled away from.

Thankfully my wife's voice and her reactions have helped me experience some healing in these places. The story I tell myself is often far from reality. But it's also important for me to put words to these thoughts. It's helpful that I know my baseline reaction to these experiences and I know my emotional response.

I don't know if these things will ever be cured. I will most likely feel shards of my previous life experiences throughout the remainder of my life. Thankfully, healing has happened and continues to happen. We are deeply affected by our life experiences but that means that we can be deeply changed by new ones as well. Our best chance for healing comes from understanding ourselves and the story we are telling and bringing it all into the light. It's vulnerable and challenging but deeply rewarding.

What stories are you telling your self?