The Stories We Tell Ourselves, Stories in Our Bodies- Principle #5

We’re exploring my revised principles for healthy relationships as explored in my new book, It’s Never Too Late to Heal, due out winter 2022.

To really understand some else’s behavior, we need to understand that there are two primary experiences that help us to make sense of what we’re seeing. The first are the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening. The second are the stories that we’re experiencing in our bodies about what’s happening. We’re much more familiar with the first one and less familiar with the latter.

When your child spills the juice on the floor and smiles at you, the story you might tell yourself about it will vary from person to person. One parent might tell himself that the toddler is learning and wants to see what happens, redirect the behavior and clean up the juice. Another parent will see the same behavior and feel it is on purpose and become enraged. That’s the story we tell about what’s happening.

At the same time, underneath that story we tell ourselves, we have the story in our own body that we may not consciously remember. If you were treated harshly when you spilled something as a toddler, even if you don’t remember it, you may have the strong reaction of the second parent. Your body remembers that it wasn’t safe to spill the juice and you subconsciously want to teach your own child not to do something that you learned wasn’t safe. So your body has its own story and that is a bigger influence over your reactions than anything else.

Look at the picture above with the little one making a face and notice what happens in your own body when you look at it. Do you laugh? Do you feel upset? Do you feel sad? Scared? Notice what happens in your body. What’s the story you make up about what’s happening here?

My fifth guiding principle explores more about the story we tell ourselves and the stories we experience in our bodies.

Principle #5– Interpretation of our own and others’ behaviors comes from both conscious and subconscious places, and those interpretations become part of the dance of connection and/or disconnection within our relationships.

We make up stories about what’s happening in our life and in our relationships, and those stories may or may not be accurate. There’s another story happening in our bodies too: the somatic story that lives in our cells, in our nervous system. Our stories reflect the patterns of what we’ve been through and how we’ve learned to survive in difficult situations. We see other’s behaviors through this story and pattern-influenced lens and others see us through their own lens, too. Yes, even babies and very young children.

For example, if you grew up with a parent who got upset and yelled at you or ignored you whenever you cried, you probably learned that it isn’t safe to cry. Unconsciously, and most likely preverbally, you disconnected from your own needs to express your emotions in connection because it wasn’t safe. What you might notice as an adult is that you don’t cry, but the origin is actually from your own baby or childhood. Let’s take this one step further: you’re now a parent, and when your child cries, you have an overwhelming desire to make them stop crying, and you have intense feelings in your own body. This is your own story that is coming up, but the story is only understood in context of the experience in your body and nervous system.

And this becomes our dance. Sometimes it is beautiful and graceful. But sometimes it is the kind of dance where we’re stepping on each other’s toes repeatedly (perhaps even stomping), and this communication often happens with a furrowed brow, with a slightly raised tone of voice, with a slight turning away. When communication gets loud, it’s because the earlier communications were missed/the earlier attempts did not succeed.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about (this story is also in my first book): When my youngest son was about six or seven, he bared his teeth and moved his head in toward mine so that our foreheads nearly touched. For a split second, I thought he was going to bang into my head. With that realization dawning, I decided he was being playful and just moving in to kiss me. I reached toward him and kissed him. He then smiled and told me how much he loved me. A few minutes later, after he had gone back off to the other room to play, it occurred to me how differently that situation would have gone if I had decided that his action was a threat to me. How many times do our interpretations of our child’s behavior lead us down the path to more disconnection?

I had a series of negative and overwhelming experiences growing up with my brothers, especially my younger brother. He was really rough. Those stories came up a lot for me when I was parenting my boys when they were younger, and during the time when my older son was having a very hard time and sometimes hurting me. I was reminded of what had happened to me in childhood. All those old feelings, memories, reactions, and conclusions I made were not conscious thoughts as my son leaned in towards me, but I could feel them rise up in the blink of an eye. My response in that moment was a choice I was able to make based on my work of seeing my own behavior as communication. I saw I had choice beyond knowing that my son was not my brother: I was truly safe, and I could create connection. In that moment, I healed a little bit more, and my son was given my love, not my fear.

One of the best ways we can start to see these patterns is to slow down and pause in the moment. It gives us the opportunity to see things that we couldn’t see before and to choose something different in the moment that might help us to connect more vs. disconnect.

In this book, you’ll learn some of the key tools I regularly use with my clients to support seeing these patterns and working through them in connected ways. We will explore different writing processes you can do on your own, such Writing Down Your Soul and my own, integrative somatic writing process. Hedy Schleifer’s Crossing the Bridge allows partners to deepen their understanding of themselves and each other. And I’ll introduce you to my Healing Story Circles, which are safe places to explore your experiences and challenges through reflective listening.

Feelings are often not accepted in our Western culture, and a lot of effort goes into distracting our kids and even ourselves from our feelings. When we can create the space for our own feelings and our kids’ feelings, and the feelings of our loved ones, we actually create more opportunity for healing to happen. Next, we’re going to talk about feelings and what they have to do with healing.

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