Power of stories | bms-wellbeing

Did you know that we are all the world’s best story tellers? Yes that’s right, you, me, and everyone you know now and will come to know. What’s more we don’t just tell stories to others every time we meet someone, we tell stories to ourselves in each moment, even without realising the impact that they have upon others, let alone ourselves. These stories that we believe for that matter, have a direct influence on how we make decisions, our behaviours and even how we create our notion of reality. They even come ‘automatic responses”, that they play a role in what eat, drink and even the clothes that we wear. Do you want to know something, a lot of the stories we believe are actually LIES. A lot of these stories are not even true, yet we believe them, sometimes without question, let alone realisation.

The story of Ducky & Fishy

I would consider my friend to be well educated. When he was at primary school, he had a pet duck that he loved so much. He would tuck it into bed at night, take it for walks and even let sit on the table by him when he ate his dinner. He got home one day from school and no matter where he looked, he couldn’t find his pet duck. When he asked his parents, they told him that ducky had gone to the farm for a ‘better life’. He hassled his parents for weeks, asking if he could go to the farm, to visit his pet duck. Every time he asked his parents, they would make an excuse that he gave up in the end and life moved on. At times in his life, when he recounted the story of his pet duck to others, he would always comment that the pet duck went to the farm for a better life.

When he was in his 30’s, he got his daughter a goldfish. She loved it so much that she would watch it for hours each day. She would talk to it, whilst feeding it a lot of fish food. Unfortunately, the saying goes that you can kill something with kindness. One day, when his daughter was at school, he discovered the goldfish floating lifelessly at the top of the fish tank. He thought long and hard about what to do and decided that he would tell his daughter that fishy had gone to the aquarium for a “better life”. At that moment, a big realization dawned on him. That ducky did not go to the farm for a better life but had died. This belief he had about ducky, not only demonstrated how long he had held onto this story without realizing it, but he also didn’t even question it. What’s more it was also going to directly influence his own behavior on what he was going to say to his daughter about the death of fishy.

Perhaps in reading the story about ducky, you have started to realize what stories you tell yourself and others about things that happened to you, without realising and don't even question if they are our own let alone the truth behind them. I wonder, how well do some of our stories serve us?

Some of the stories that we pick up and tell ourselves are useful, that we run on autopilot with them. For example, driving a car, getting dressed, and riding a bike. However, some of the stories we create and tell ourselves are not useful and can actually have an significant impact upon our wellbeing.

The impact of stories on our wellbeing

When we play some of these useless stories in our head, the following symptoms could arise. For example, sleep disturbance, loss of appetite, easily agitated, lack of motivation, low mood, negative self-talk or difficulties in concentration. In fact, a lot of the time we don’t even know the cause. What's more, “we can't read the label from the inside of the jar”

It’s no wonder we feel so lost in our lives at times. Also, what others see on the outside may give an indication, but we might not have the ability the figure it out ourselves.

Yet, if we could just step back for a moment and reflect on what stories we maybe following in our heads that are leading to the symptoms we are experiencing physically and emotionally in our bodies. Perhaps these symptoms are actually useful in that our bodies and emotions are trying to indicate something to us, about the quality of the stories in our head that we are following.

Unhealthy food….Unhealthy thoughts

We have all had that moment happen to us where we have eaten food and realized pretty quickly that there is something wrong with it. It may have been under cooked, or even gone off. Without having to give a lot of thought to it, we may find ourselves going to the toilet to get it out of the body as soon as possible. Either way our body is rejecting the food, to reduce the potential harm it may cause to our wellbeing.

When it comes to unhealthy thoughts, our bodies physically react to these through various ways. Such as increase in heart rate, sense of heaviness, sweaty palms, shallow breathing etc. Yet, If only it was so easy to recognize and reject the unhealthy thoughts that we have in our head.

What we tend to do with these physical reactions and emotions, we class them as symptoms and start putting them into categories and come up with definitions such as depression, anxiety, trauma, ADHD and grief.

This then may lead us to accept that we are not normal, and in fact are broken and need fixing. Consequently, we set off on a journey of healing trying various medications, therapeutic approaches and lotions and potions. Yet the irony of the situation is that we may be trying to fix something that’s not even broken. Remember the story or ducky and fishy. You are not your stories. A lot of the time they don’t even belong to us, yet we take them on from others, that directly shape what we experience regarding the various people, places and experiences we encounter each day

It might be at one time, that some of these stories may have been useful, but now longer serve us. I worked with an individual, that’s as teenager, he was bullied a lot by individuals who lived in his neighborhood. When he was walking, he would see them in the distance and would jump into a bush to hide, to avoid the beatings. Unfortunately, this became a default response for him, even into his 40’s, that when he was walking down the street, and people were coming towards him, regardless of who they were he would go into stealth mode and go into hiding. Through working with this individual, he was able to revisit his unhealthy stories and change them.

We could all do with revisiting & resetting our stories, but also stories we may be carrying around things around money, work & relationships. If you feel you would benefit from the reset-it program, in which we guarantee it will work, then reach out!