Emotions and the Story You Tell Yourself

This section talks about how it’s not just the event or circumstance that creates the emotion, it’s what I tell myself about the event or circumstance that creates the emotion. How I choose to explain what has happened impacts my emotions more than what has happened.

We can tell at least two different stories about anything that happens. It’s referred to as the pessimistic explanatory versus the optimistic explanatory style.

The Optimistic story teller will interpret whatever challenge is happening as being localized and temporary. It is not all-encompassing and it won’t last forever.

The Pessimistic story teller sees the event as a disaster of gigantic proportions that he won’t be able to recover from and it will always be this way.

I wasn’t fully aware that we tell ourselves stories to deal with the pain or the circumstance. This will be an interesting activity for me to do on a few things. I will look back at different times of my life and ask myself, “what story was I telling myself about this particular event? Was I predominantly making up pessimistic stories or optimistic ones or a mix of both?”

Here’s an event that happened in my life. I’m going to try to apply the story style to this event. When my husband and I got married, we got married in Southern California. His parents flew down from Washington for the occasion, but they were not satisfied that none of their friends could be at the wedding. A month later they made us fly up to Seattle and be present at a reception there for all their friends. I literally knew no one, and I think I offended many of the friends because I did not conduct myself according to Japanese customs, which I knew nothing about because my husband is very Americanized and didn’t alert me to any specifics.

This reception was not enjoyable for me at all. I felt like I was on exhibit and failed. Looking back, here’s at least part of how I explained the event to myself. The story I told myself is that with the Japanese people my, personal preferences don’t matter at all. I think part of my negative experience with them quickly morphed into a dislike of all things Japanese.

What if I realize there is a pessimistic story I have been telling myself, and I want to change it? Here are some questions I can walk myself through.

• What events happened in my life that I cannot change?
• Why do I think the event happened?
• What does that event mean for my future?
• Is it permanent and global or local and short term?
• Are there solutions or do I think it is unsolvable?
• Is this an opportunity for growth or helplessness?

I can then begin to look at those beliefs and challenge them. I can ask myself:

• What evidence is there for my belief?
• Is my belief airtight?
• What are some other interpretations for this event?

This other interpretation part may be especially helpful to do with a friend who can help see another perspective. Then I begin to look for the nuggets to extract from the event.

• What can I glean from this event?
• Where is the gift or the beauty of this event?

We’re not ignoring the pain and trouble; we are simply looking beyond it for how God turns it around for our good.

Obviously the story I told myself about that reception was narrow minded and one sided. Another story I could have told myself about this, had I been aware that I was even telling myself a story, is that I am marrying into a family that has many friends and they want to welcome me with all the bells and whistles they are able to pull out. It would have made me translate what they did into the intention behind it. I could have told myself that they are excited to have me, that they are accepting of me even if the way they communicated it was hooking something from my past and made me make sense of it with that subconscious hook influencing me.

I have been married for 20 years – it’s a little late to be working on retelling the story. But it can still bring me peace and closure to work on establishing some form of re-conceptualized story about the in-laws. I mentioned earlier that the story I told myself was influenced by a hook this reception grabbed hold of. The familiar feeling I felt was that what I wanted or needed did not factor in or matter. I can see that this was a belief from my own growing up and it just carried over. That really explains why my reaction was so strong.

I can use my thoughts and words to correct this story. They tried to welcome me in the best way they could. It just so happened that their style of doing it triggered mayor pain from my subconscious. I am challenging that belief by telling myself, no, this is an opportunity for me to learn to be assertive in my communication and stand up for my own needs and desires.

I believe one of the gifts I am gleaning from this event is that I have experienced cultural differences first-hand and I believe God will use my experience to help me be of help to someone else in a similar situation.

Another nugget I notice is that had this event not happened, I would not be unpacking it now and learning about this particular hook, and how far back it goes.

I do know that as a result of not having close family, it created a perfect opportunity to draw closer to God, and that is irreplaceable.

This entire concept is important. It applies to everything. Re-conceptualizing my thoughts is nothing less than renewing my mind and taking every thought captive according to the Bible.

Emotions can give me clues, they help me keep track of what I’m believing and thinking. The negative feelings are flagging down areas that need attention in my life. I am not able to track and check all 50’000 thoughts I have in a day to see which ones to renew and which ones are ok. But my feelings will flag the ones that need attention for me.

I certainly think I have more emotions that need attention than I have the capacity to process at one time. But whatever the emotions bring to the surface are the ones that will be moldable and ready for examination and re-conceptualization at that moment. Knowing this gives me peace and hope that I can actually get somewhere. It’s a starting point. I can work with what I have at that moment and not worry about all the stuff I don’t know how to dig up yet. Kind of like when people whine about there being so much they don’t understand about the Bible. But there is so much we do understand and can work on, and make progress in.

One last note about the stories we tell ourselves. Some people may not be telling themselves pessimistic stories at all. They may be telling themselves perfect stories. But are they true? Was everything really perfect and wonderful or are they telling themselves this version to avoid slipping down a painful slope? I’m starting to think I may have some denial stories in my life. I am not completely sure but I can see the possibility in some areas. These kinds of stories are a way to protect myself from pain that ends up hurting me as much as pessimistic stories do.

I found the example Abi shared about a friendship and the story she was telling herself very noteworthy. She shared that in her church environment she had been taught about covenant relationships a lot. The basic idea is, if you are healthy, you will have forever relationships. When a relationship with a friend of hers ended, she began telling herself a negative story about how she must be unhealthy and how bad it is that this is happening. She later discovered it was because of shame. Shame coming from ‘shoulds’. In this case, you should never end any friendships. It took someone else explaining his view on relationships that helped her reframe and change her story. He explained relationships being like a tree. Some relationships are like leaves, they are there for a season. Some are like the branches, they are there for longer times and grow, even if some branches may break off. And then some are like roots, they are there forever. This helped her re-conceptualize the end of the friendship. Because the shame of the belief of covenant relationships had gotten clarified and removed, she now was able to grieve the end of the relationship according to clean pain vs. the dirty pain that tapped into shame issues.

Here’s a Homework invitation for you. Ask yourself:

What is the story that I have told myself about my life and about myself?

What story have I told myself about my marriage?

What story have I told myself about my relationships?

What story have I told myself about money?

What story have I told myself about my past?

What story am I telling myself about my future?

What story have I told myself about my health?

What story have I told myself about my work?

About my hobbies?

About my church?

About my birthday?

You can keep going with this as long as you want. This isn’t an easy exercise. It will require again to really allow yourself to feel and let the subconscious come up into your conscious and look for what your prover is telling you about it. In this respect it is very similar to one of the activities from the previous session.

Remember, to change your explanatory style, you have to begin to challenge your beliefs.

When looking at a belief, ask yourself “is there actual evidence to support this belief” “What are some other possible interpretations of this event?” Then use your thoughts and your words to change the story that you are telling yourself regarding that situation, and your emotions will follow suit and calm down.