The Inside Story

The Inside Story

             Everyone has a story. Everyone has a history, and a “life story”, the narrative line we tell ourselves and others- the facts of our life and, more importantly, who we are. Of course, this story is one we create. The facts may be clear, and even that is not always the case. But we create this story of our lives, of who we are, from scratch. Except we don’t realize that, or admit it to ourselves. In fact, the story line we tell ourselves and others is one of many possible versions of the story of who we are, developed around our early family life, our subsequent needs- in particular the ones that went unmet- and our internally working out a version of ourselves which makes sense to us, which makes sense of our life experience. 

             This story we tell ourselves often becomes ingrained, and reinforces our beliefs, our prejudices and our own shortcomings. It creates an armature or support structure for our lives, but it also screens out a great deal of what is happening to us and around us day to day. In fact, this story may wall out exactly the experiences, the people and things that we most need. But we rarely notice that, because it would mean changing the story, altering the story line, letting in a very ambiguous and unclear aspect to our lives. 

             To take this sense of self to the next level, we need to include an even more remote aspect of our lives and selves, that of our bodies. While the way we relate to ourselves and others is highly dependent on the story we tell ourselves, it is perhaps even more dependent on the story our bodies tell, and the non-verbal story we tell ourselves at a somatic bodily level. Our “body story” is usually out of reach of our conscious mind, but it has everything to do with our ongoing experience, our future, and how we will behave. For this reason, working to be open to and truly apprehend our individual “body story” can greatly affect our present and future experience. The way to do this work, as the “body story” is unconscious, is to work with mindfulness. The mindful state both detaches from one’s personal, verbal story line, to allow new information into consciousness, and allows for an experimental attitude, in which one can “try out” letting down the usual personal barriers, and become much more attuned to the riches the body has to offer. Better still, unlike having a purely intellectual understanding of one’s issues and experiences, this mindful attitude allows one to truly reach the non-verbal “body story”, and soften the edges of the story, to let new experiences in, often the very experiences we most long for and need. 

             The fact is, most people have a decent idea of what their issues are, and they usually even know what they need to do about it. The problem is, that kind of understanding does not change anything! If it was that simple, we’d all just go ahead and do what needs to be done. So why don’t we? Because most of who we are is unconscious, and that part of us, the huge iceberg under the surface, is what’s running the show. Ask anyone who’s tried to lose weight through dieting. They know what to do, but their own unconscious patterns of behavior and self-image will win out every time, trashing the diet, and keeping that person in their usual groove. This is where working in mindfulness is so powerful, because when the unconscious is tapped, especially through the body (which is very much our unconscious made visible), there is a visceral and immediate understanding that is non-verbal and which actually changes our plastic mind. This is why telling oneself to calm down when you are angry or impatient is so much less effective than taking three breaths, which boosts the parasympathetic nervous system, slowing our pulse, breathing and heart rates rather quickly. 

             If you truly want to know yourself, don’t go by the story line, go by your body’s story line. We all lie sometimes, especially to ourselves, but our bodies never lie.  That’s where you’ll find the true inside story of your life. If you want to change, that is the place to start.