The Stories We Tell Ourselves

How I'm learning to speak to myself with the tenderness I offer others

Hello friend,

Being on a break has allowed room for contemplation and inspection. I’ve caught myself in moments of harshness where I’ve thought to myself: you’re not doing anything with your time / you’re never going to write that book you say you’d love to / why aren’t you making more ___________ (insert my latest craft project) to sell?

Oof. What a buzzkill.

Listening to these unkind comments vacuum the joyful energy out of me and leave me in a floppy heap resembling a melted candle.

The truth is, I’m not the sort of person who would say things like that to loved ones, actually, not even strangers, and my guess is neither are you. So what makes it okay, or even unconsciously instinctual to say these things to ourselves?

Stories?

We live within stories - good ones, and others we may choose to inspect and edit.

Some stories were given to us even before we learned how to speak, some we’ve picked up along the way from learned behaviours and cultural norms, others we’ve crafted ourselves from moments of praise, shame, belonging and exclusion. Unquestioned, they become part of who we are, truths that we naturally default to and how we move about the world.

The Story I Carried

The story I once told myself is that rest is indulgent, and that I am useless unless I’m producing something of value. For a long time now, this story made sense to me - if you’re not part of the solution, obviously, you’re part of the problem - and it even served me well in high-performance environments.

I did things that helped to keep the story alive. I disconnected from my body - never knowing when I was feeling stressed, tired or hungry - not even when gastric pains and eczema flares plagued me, until one day I noticed I kept dropping food on my lap at lunch. My jaw had grown so tight from being clenched all the time that I couldn’t open my mouth properly to feed myself. And even then, burnout stayed guilt-free as I blamed genetics and sought methods of dampening the symptoms.

The Indulgence of Rest. Izmir, October 2022.

Unlearning, Gently

Re-writing our stories is hard, painful even, because it can feel like saying goodbye to an old friend. I imagine my story to be a knife concealed in a pillow I’ve used forever - comforting because it’s shaped like me, yet the sharp edge threatens to slice a piece off me if held the wrong way, and slice, it has.

It began with clarity for me, and curiosity helps me to get clear. I stayed honest to myself and reflected on questions such as: What’s the story being told here? Who’s benefiting from it? Whose voice is this? How true is this?

I crystallised the story into one sentence, held it in my palm and examined it from different angles to see what I’d find.

I found legacy intertwined in my story. I was born of and raised by elders who had to believe this story in order to survive, and in addition to morals and traditions, they passed along their stories. This was an emotional realisation for me, because the gravity of rejecting what has held my family and helped them thrive felt too much to fathom, and almost insolent on my part.

I invited the wisdom of kindness. It gave me the permission to dwell in the space between the solution and the problem, where rest is the restorative superpower that will enable me to go further, wiser.

So slowly, like untangling wires, I began to unwind the pieces of my story that are bound to survival, thanked them for getting us this far, and laid them to their well-deserved rest.

An Invitation

Our lives are filled with stories. What stories do you tell yourself?

What stories do you hold to be true without question?
How are they serving you?

If you would choose again, which stories would you choose to keep? Which parts would you like to edit?

I’m learning to write new stories one word at a time. If you are too, I’m so glad we have each for company.

In storydarity,
Min

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