Narratives

What drives us and holds us back, simultaneously.

Photo by Linus Sandvide on Unsplash

In writing these words, I am in full awareness that throughout my earlier life, I have participated in this mechanism as much as anyone else. But I have spent many years deconstructing, and there has been something that I recognize as a place people can begin to deconstruct themselves, and that is the concept of narratives. Narratives are a mechanism that exist to keep us from the issues we all possess. They may not be exactly the same issues, but the narrative function helps keep facades in place. They keep us from our wounding, and our healing.

One question: What are you unwilling to look at in yourself?

Sometimes, this question brings up defensiveness: “I’m not unwilling to look at anything about myself!” Other times, people will ponder, “Hmm, I never thought about that.” Sometimes people are very eager to delve in, and then disappointment or triggering will set in. The process is actually very simple, but the results are often quite complex. The material it will bring up is sometimes too much for people to be with, or causes so much reactivity they get quite angry. I don’t think most people realize how defended they are, or how much they carry. I’ve heard people express words like: I am not my trauma. I am more than my wounding. Everyone gets hurt. To these things I say, “Yes! Absolutely all those things are true.” And yet, that is part of the defense, the tension around not looking at what is really going on. What all of this is speaking to is how we developed based on the meaning we made of things. How we continue to make meaning from the same places. We are always, MORE. Impact is real, but it definitely doesn’t need to define us. In fact, accepting the impact is how we shift into more.

How do we use narratives to keep patterns going?

It is much easier to create a story around something than to drop a story around something. When we are in the deconstruction process, we have to look at stories. Cause, effect, result. Rarely is anything ever that simple. Stories are convenient, but rarely are they fully accurate. For the black and white thinkers out there, I want to say that humans are complex beings. Rarely, and I mean almost never, is anything that simple. Because I work with people that have trauma, I sometimes feel that it’s very necessary to have something understood from the start: We need context around people and situations, and context is not an excuse for bad behavior, ever. We may see the reason behind the behavior, but we are not required to accept abuse or things that are harmful. Full stop.

Now, for ourselves, often we will create a narrative around someone else in order to keep from looking at or for justifying our own behavior. It is so easy to create a story about someone, rather than look at the discomfort we are feeling, fear we feel, or to keep from feeling guilty, etc. Narratives involve projection, and no one likes to be projected upon.

Many times we will get into a situation again and again, but with different people. The point is, we are meant to see something about ourselves in these situations. The pattern is us, not the other person. The situation will keep repeating until we find what it is we are meant to be looking at within us. One thing I have found to be true at least seventy-five percent of the time? There is a deep fear. It can be a fear of many different things: having to look at something we don’t want to see or admit, taking responsibility, how long we have let it keep us small, that we’ve wasted so much time, etc., etc. Unfortunately, things will not improve for us until we really start to break apart the narratives we keep creating, because it sticks other people in boxes and we stick ourselves in one, too. Freeing others from narratives gives us the space to free ourselves. No one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes. But, we are not served at all in our growth if we refuse to look at what drives us, or what holds us back. Narratives do not serve us, except to keep us from understanding ourselves more fully, and understanding ourselves is always a practice worth our time and effort.