16. Chapter 4
Narratives: The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves
*This book was set the be published by the publisher of my first book, but after years of struggle and many other reasons, I decided to release it on Substack instead. Each week, the 52,000 word book which was tentatively titled “Be A Force” will be dropped here online. The sections will start with number 1 and then progress over the 52 weeks of the next year. The Chapter title will be placed in the post description for clarity.
Narrative Therapy
Narrative therapy is a therapeutic practice that invites you to re-author your life story. It enables a separation of identity from your issues and this helps to foste growth and change. Ingredients definitely needed to become a force. Steve Madigan, a narrative therapy practitioner, has shared the three major stages of narrative therapy and they are a good guide for you to self-reflect on from the comfort of your own home:
1) Deconstructing problematic dominant stories
2) Re-authoring problematic dominant stories
3) Remembering conversations
Using the awareness you have of yourself (self-connection), choose a story which has informed your evolution. Can you pull this story apart? How could it be re-told to yourself?
Reduce Your Story Down to the Facts
Here’s an exercise you may find really helpful. Chris emphasises that because as humans we create stories to make meaning, our brain will “fill in gaps” of narratives that we don’t have facts to verify. We saw this earlier with my “You have a pretty face” story. What we fill in is telling data for those of us interested in connecting better to ourselves. Get out your journal and write down your life story. Go into as much detail as you like. Once done, get out a highlighter and highlight only the parts of the story which are fact—just the description only and no inferences or assumptions. It will probably shock you how little of our stories are based on fact and how much we colour them with meaning that is inferred.
