Narratives: what are they? A narrative is a spoken or written account of events or a story. A personal narrative is a story we can express to ourselves or someone else about ourselves. There are several kinds and sizes of narratives—from our daily inner dialog, to our belief system and way of looking at the world, to our overall life story—who we are. All of them are important and have an amazing amount of impact on us. We can also have a great deal of influence on our narratives, as we are the narrators, the storytellers.
We’ve written about personal dialogue and developing an awareness of how we talk to ourselves. Our beliefs are stories we have internalized to the point that we don’t often think about where they came from. We wrote about Cognitive Journaling, a systematic way of identifying our beliefs—especially beliefs that cause negative emotions or behavior.
Updating our stories, or beliefs, is also called “reframing”. Examples of this are presented in Reframing Your Way out of Old Arguments.A classic example of how we reframe the past is how we view our parents. As teenagers, we might see them as unpleasant, controlling disciplinarians who are out to make our lives as difficult as possible and ruin any fun we might have. Later in life, we might see them as caring boundary-setters who had our best interests at heart. What changed? The events, people and situations from our teen years didn’t change. We have updated the story.
We are also narrating our present and future story, weaving it together with our story of the past. Our story is not a timeline of incontrovertible facts – it is a constantly evolving view (narrative) of who we are, past, present, and future.
In How to Rewrite Your Past Narrative, Benjamin Hardy Ph.D. says “According to the Theory of Narrative Identity, developed by scholar and researcher Dr. Dan McAdams, we form our identity by integrating our life experiences into an internalized, evolving story of ourselves, which gives a sense of unity and purpose to our lives. Your past, present, and future are all happening right now—at least in your mind. […] When you change the meaning and narrative of your past, you simultaneously change the narrative of your present and future. And vice versa.” Hardy uses his own experience to recount how his story of his childhood changed. “The more emotionally developed I become, the less negatively impacted I am by my past and the more I get to shape the meaning of it.” Hardy also recommends the “gap vs gain” method of turning our story into a positive one.
Cecilia Dintino Psy.D. calls these changes the “re-story” in Re-Story Your Life. Dintino says that “We employ the same areas of the brain when we look back on our past as when we envision our futures. Professor of Psychological and Brain Science Kathleen McDermott, of Washington University, cites the results of brain scans demonstrating that when subjects imagine potential future events, it is the memory processing centers in the brain that light up … subjects with amnesia are unable to imagine the future.” and “Our stories are fluid.” She asks, “What is your re-story?”
In How We Story Our Life Experience Matters, Deborah Khoshaba Psy.D. tells about the “The Personal Story Approach To Change”, saying that “there are two schools of thoughts in therapy … We can change our behavior or change our dialogue. The personal story approach to change emphasizes the latter. [In] Narrative Therapy, 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 (good or bad).”
As we have covered extensively in previous posts, both the behavior and the dialogue methods have merit! As far as changing our narratives, once we begin to be more aware of our inner dialogue and beliefs, it opens the door to taking a closer look at the stories we tell ourselves. What is your (re-)story?
More reading:
Want To Change Your Life? Change Your Narrative. Here’s How. Five strategies, grounded in science, to help you reset your own narrative.
Changing the Narrative (Part 1). Alternative facts without deception. The stories we tell ourselves. We might be leaving some things out of our stories.