Challenge the stories you tell yourself
I heard an interview with one of my favorite authors/teachers Gabor Matè and I can’t stop thinking about something he said.
He said feelings are meant to be felt, but stories are meant to be challenged.
Understanding the difference in this is key if you want to heal and grow.
So how do you feel your feelings and what are our stories? Let’s dig into it.
First, what is a story?
These are the thoughts/ideas that are rolling around in our head all day everyday. Sometimes they’re loud and persistent, sometimes they’re just there in the background:
“No one likes me”
“I’m not good enough”
“I’m an imposter”
“I’m not very smart”
“I’m not good at anything”
“I can’t heal”
You know, those stories.
These are not just thoughts that pop up occasionally, but they are deeply embedded stories we’ve likely been repeating to ourselves for years.
A story develops because our brain is trying to make sense of the world around us. We’re trying to find our Truth that helps us to survive.
Stories generally develop during circumstances when there are intense emotions. And most of our stories develop when we’re young.
Let’s look at an example of how this can happen:
Say you’re 10 years old and you go to the store with your mom. You wander off and walk around the store, but when you come back and start looking for your mom, she’s no where to be found. You go look for your car and you see her driving away. She forgot you!
In that moment there are a wave of emotions that pop up. You’re scared, you’re hurt, you’re sad, you’re angry. And then you have this thought, “I must not be important, I’m forgettable.”
That thought, those emotions, and that memory all get wired in together in your limbic system, the emotional part of your brain. Your brain ties it all together in one package, putting a red flag on it as one of your Truths. “I’m not important” becomes a story that you start to see everywhere you go and in everything you do.
This is how stories can be created. It can be because of one traumatic event, or it can be because of a series of events over time.
And let’s say your mom remembered you before she even left the parking lot and came rushing back. When you think about it now from a more logical standpoint, you know you weren’t in any actual danger. She was under an incredible amount of stress and her mind was just unfocused. She loved you desperately, but of course she’s imperfect and didn’t always show it in ways that made sense to you. It was an honest mistake.
Unfortunately, we have a really hard time being logical in the midst of strong emotions. And especially in children, emotion tends to win out.
But why would our brain do this?
As children, we’re trying to make sense of the world; we’re trying to survive. In his book, The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk explains that we often blame ourselves for situations because that feels safer than blaming our parents.
It feels safer and less scary to believe that WE are flawed, because it’s devastating to see and recognize that our parents are. As children, we are entirely dependent on our caregivers. If they are majorly flawed, then we are in serious danger because that might mean they can’t care for our needs. We need them to be a safe place for us, so we will often take on any and all blame as a coping mechanism in order to continue feeling safe.
These stories most often develop from trauma, but as you can see from the above example, it can develop from more minor situations as well.
And we ALL have them. No matter how idyllic your childhood was, your parents and any other caregiver or people you were in relationship with were flawed. And your brain needed a way to cope and make sense of that reality.
We often interpret these thoughts or stories as how we feel, but feelings are actually very different, and really understanding the difference can be incredibly empowering.
So what are feelings?
Feelings are simply emotions. Anger, frustration, sadness, overwhelm, happiness, loneliness, and so many more you can see on this emotion wheel.
Did you know that emotions only last for about 90 seconds?
The 90 second rule is a term created by Dr. Jill Bolts-Taylor, a Harvard-trained Neuroscientist who specialized in the anatomy of the brain. “When a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there’s a 90 second chemical process that happens in the body; after that, any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop.”
Emotions are just information. It’s the thoughts and stories we have that drive whether or not we sit in that emotion.
But here is something very important to understand: There’s no such thing as good or bad emotions. They just are. Some emotions are harder than others, but that doesn’t make them bad.
Why is it so important to make this distinction?
Let’s go back to to what Gabor Maté said in his interview: “You do not challenge feelings, but you do challenge stories.”
We don’t need to challenge our emotions. In fact, trying to diminish them or judge them prevents us from processing through them. Emotions are meant to be experienced and noticed.
You might have heard that all feelings are valid. I think a lot of people say that but don't really understand what that means.
All feelings being valid does not mean that all feelings are “right”. It just means that all feelings are real.
When we start to judge our feelings as either right or wrong, we can easily start to stuff them down or avoid them. Emotions are just data. It's just information that something inside of you was triggered in a certain way.
If this is something you struggle with, check out a blog post I did on just this topic for some tools to learn to feel your feelings HERE.
But what did Dr. Maté mean by challenging your stories?
The amazing thing about the brain is that it never stops learning. We are continuously looking for information to validate our Truths.
It can be incredibly difficult to rewire those stories, but it’s absolutely possible. And it starts by just being curious.
What is a common story that you struggle with?
One of mine is, “People aren’t safe, they’ll only hurt you.” That story has made it incredibly difficult to develop close friendships.
The way I challenge that story is by first recognizing it without judgement, and then looking for Truth that contradicts it.
Do I have people in my life that are trustworthy? Yes!
Do I have people in my life who I am safe with? Yes!
Do I have people in my life who truly care about me? Yes!
Do I have people in my life who would never hurt me intentionally? Yes!
Do I have loads of evidence to support of all that as factual? Yes!
My subconscious brain wants to hyper focus on the thoughtless comments or actions, or even misunderstandings that are inevitable in any relationship, because taken out of context, those moments make my story valid. That story has kept me safe in this world, so letting go of it is incredibly scary.
But if I add in more information and really sit with it and feel it, my brain starts to notice and pay more attention to the love, attention, positive comments, and care coming from the safe people in my life. By focusing there, I start to rewrite that story into a healthier Truth.
Full disclosure: I personally needed professional help in order to do this. Internal Family Systems (IFS) and EMDR were two modalities that were invaluable in helping me to heal these deeply embedded stories. I love these modalities especially because of the way they help you to rewire your brain so that your story can be completely rewritten.
Here’s a simple exercise to help you to distinguish the difference between a story and a feeling:
When you’re unsure, try to put what you’re feeling into this sentence:
"I feel ______________."
If the word that fills the blank is not an actual emotion like what you’d find on an emotional wheel, it’s likely a story.
For example:
"I feel like no one likes me." → This is a story.
(The true feeling might be loneliness or insecurity.)"I feel like this will never get better." → This is a story.
(The feeling might be hopelessness or frustration.)
Once you recognize that something is a story and not a feeling, challenge it. **Challenging it comes from a place of curiosity, not judgement.**
Instead of “That’s not true!”, ask yourself questions like, “What evidence do I have to support this? What evidence do I have to contradict it?” Make an actual case to see if that story needs updating.
And if you’re feeling stuck updating your stories, I highly recommend seeking professional help. Especially if trauma is involved, seek out a trauma informed therapist that can walk you through reprocessing those more difficult stories.
Our stories can be a big part of what’s keeping us stuck. Remember that we created these stories to keep us safe. They’re meant to protect us from harm. They’re not bad or evidence that you’re broken, they were likely incredibly useful to you at one point. They might just need to be updated now that they’re no longer needed.
If you need help finding real safety, then you’ll love my course Regulate + Thrive where I teach you how I used self-care to rewire my nervous system and create stress resilience.
