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Are we all storytellers even if we don't write? |
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We create a narrative for our lives. Some stories are good, others not so. Self-talk or inner speech is an inner narrative which gives a voice to our thoughts while we are awake. Dramatists use a monologue or soliloquy to tell the audience what a character is thinking. They sometimes use it to share information with the audience. But what of the stories we tell ourselves? Why do we do it and can they affect us? For most of us, the answer is yes, and our story can impact everything we do. Tell ourselves a bad story and our life can be hell. Introspection is the examination of our own conscious thoughts. It also involves a look at our soul in a spiritual context. For thousands of years, people talked about the inner voice. Plato once questioned, “...why should we not calmly and patiently review our own thoughts”. Self-reflection is an image we have of ourselves and is hard to change. It comes from things learned about who we are. Research has shown human brains can only experience one thought at a time as a fast-flowing stream. Buddhist scriptures describe it as the 'Mind Stream'. Practising mindfulness is being aware of the moment-to-moment events in our lives and how we react. Buddhist teachings say the mental and material events created by the senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, touch, and thoughts are related to the past, present, and future. In literature, the technique of narrating the flow of thoughts and feelings in the minds of characters is called stream of consciousness. Stream of consciousness is a literary device which gives the writer the ability to tell an audience or reader what a character is thinking. It can be a loose selection of thoughts in connection with how the person feels or reacts to something. Authors, however, did not invent stream of consciousness but the term was coined by eminent psychologist William James. Susan Blackmore, visiting professor, University of Plymouth describes it this way, “When I say that consciousness is an illusion I do not mean that consciousness does not exist. I mean that consciousness is not what it appears to be. If it seems to be a continuous stream of rich and detailed experiences, happening one after the other to a conscious person, this is the illusion.” We know a negative self-talking story is associated with psychological disorders such as low moods affecting how we behave, and our sense of well-being. It can also lead to a sense of dread and turmoil resulting in loss of sleep. In the next blog, I look at ways to tell ourselves a better story. |
| The stories we tell ourselves develop from things that happen in the day-to-day from childhood to the job we had last week. The time when the teacher yelled at us for crayon scribbles on the wall, even though we didn't do it, set-up 'automatic thoughts' which get repeated over and over as a view of ourself and the world around us. A bad story can also come from wanting to do something perfectly. All of us have a choice in how we live and the story we tell. It is entirely possible to kick back and do nothing, live a happy life of unchallenged bliss? Probably not. A tiny voice would rehash saying such as life is not a rehearsal, or time waits for no man to remind us of our story of doing little or nothing is no story at all. Most of us want to do something, take a challenge, leave statements of the minutes, hours and days of our existence. Attempting to do something—such as write a blog—opens up the possibility of failing. Failure is inevitable. It is how we tell the story of what happened in those dismal times of defeat that makes the difference. We can distort a bad story after a failure into something like, I'm the dumbest that ever lived. Such a story is not true and a method of arguments called elenchi would cross-examine the facts to disprove the bad story. We've all read stories of epic failures by famous people. Stephen King was working as a school teacher when he wrote Carrie. After getting his novel rejected 30 times he did what Homer Simpson advised, 'If at first you don't succeed, give up before you fail again.' King tossed the manuscript into the trash. His wife convinced him to submit it one last time. Thomas Edison said, 'Many of life's failures are people who did not know how close they were to success when they gave up.' That could have been Stephen King's story. Edison who endured many failures turned the story he told himself around. He said, 'I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work.' His life story had the hallmarks of being a bad one. While at school, his teachers assessed him as pretty dumb and would not likely succeed in life. Back in an era called the 'swinging sixties' people became fascinated with the capabilities of the mind. Some took drugs called hallucinogens to cause them to see, hear, and feel things that weren't there—experiences only in their head. It opened questions about reality and how we deal with it. At the same time psychiatrist, Aaron T. Beck started to believe thoughts, feelings, and behaviour are all associated. He came up with the idea that if we want to do something and overcome obstacles along the way, we have to change our thinking. It set the basis for what we now know as Cognitive Therapy. Here's the thing: many of us don't recognise we have bad thoughts or stories. There are four basics steps in what we call Cognitive Restructuring: the first is knowing we have bad stories that are negative about us and the world around us. The second is understanding these thoughts are distorted and we must do something about it. The third is cross-examining the story to disprove it. While the fourth is coming up with a good argument that these automatic thoughts are bad. If we want to be better, tell ourselves a better story. |
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