[skysblue]

I'm so sick of my story. I've told my T bits and pieces of it through these past few months. I had thought I had forgotten my story - it was in the background barely thought about.

Then, WHAM, I was compelled to call a therapist last December because I knew that SOMEBODY had to hear my story. But my story wasn't finished at that time and T has been helping me finish the story. And I'm almost there, I think.

But this week, the story feels like it needs to be told again - more details, more linear, more rounded out.

But I"m sick of it. I feel stupid to continue to bring up my story. I should be done with it. T says, "Tell your story as many times as it needs to be told. Just remember YOU are NOT your story."

So, if I am not my story, what use is it to keep on telling it? How do I know that it NEEDS to be told again? I want it forgotten but it keeps creeping into my life. Does anyone know if amnesia pills are available?

Perhaps its more that you have a strong desire to be understood and think that your "story" is the key to that, when in reality its all parts of you that need equal understanding?

[rainbow8]

I don't know why, but I feel the need to tell my T the same stuff over and over also. It must serve a purpose. My former T told me that each time I go over my history I'm in a different place, so it's not just a repeat. Or maybe we think something new will come up. Or maybe we think our T hasn't heard us yet. Or, most likely WE haven't heard ourselves completely and have not forgiven ourselves or understood why we acted the way we did.

[SoupDragon]

We can't change our stories, but maybe how we feel about them "now" changes each time we tell the story, to the point where they no longer affect us "now" and they do not impact on our day to day lives in a negative / stuck way.

[skysblue]

Originally Posted by SoupDragon

We can't change our stories, but maybe how we feel about them "now" changes each time we tell the story, to the point where they no longer affect us "now" and they do not impact on our day to day lives in a negative / stuck way.

I agree with this. I have felt some interior movement in how I relate to my own story and it's been positive.

I've arranged to have an extra session with T next week so I can plow through the story once and for all. I want it done. Hoping that this will finally put it behind me. But, I've thought in the past it was behind me and it wasn't. But, I've never allowed myself to 'feel' my story while telling it until this week. Now, I have no choice. It must happen. And I vow, that will be the end of the telling.

[sunrise]

Originally Posted by skysblue

But my story wasn't finished at that time and T has been helping me finish the story. And I'm almost there, I think.

But this week, the story feels like it needs to be told again - more details, more linear, more rounded out.

I've got the Mindsight book on my brain, so the first thing I thought of when I read what you wrote was about how Siegel talks about helping his clients recall/construct/tell narratives of their lives. Sometimes we can't tell our narratives right off, or they're really lacking in memories or details, and he helps clients move the implicit and unspeakable/unrecallable and/or trauma memories into the explicit memory so they can tell their stories in a linear way that makes internal sense, with good and bad, details, reflections, etc.

So what you wrote sounds really positive to me. Like progress. Go tell your story yet again. Being able to tell the narrative of our life signifies we have come to terms with it and it does not have mastery over us. We can speak our truth straight out and not cower from the memories. And it can be so healing to have someone listen to us.

I also think when we feel compelled to do something, as you do to tell your story again right now, that it is wise to follow the impulse. I think that is the impulse to greater healing. I think something inside us knows what we need to heal and pushes us toward that.

Originally Posted by skysblue

So, if I am not my story, what use is it to keep on telling it? How do I know that it NEEDS to be told again? I want it forgotten but it keeps creeping into my life. Does anyone know if amnesia pills are available?

Can you know where you're going if you don't know where you've been?

And my version of what your T said about you not being your story is this: My story is a page in the book of my life. It is not a page that I have to focus on. It is not a page that I have to avoid. Until I can really own the last 2 sentences I just wrote, I am not done telling.

Anne

I think there is value in telling our stories over and over again...and like Sunny said, I think when we are feeling compelled to to something (like tell our story), there is a wisdom there that we should listen to. Following those instincts, even when they don't make sense or I don't want to, has been hugely healing for me.

When I first started telling my story, it was snippets, moments, flashes of sound, smell, sound, little pieces of pictures. It was scary and it overwhelmed me.

The more I allow myself to tell it, the less it is like a series of terrifying sensory flashes, and the more it's...a STORY. Not something that will overwhelm me. Part of the bigger story that is my life.

Somehow, I think telling it again and again makes it smaller. I think it's part of how we gain power over it.

Having said all of that, there is honestly nothing I hate more than telling my story. I don't want to rehash the same thing over and over again, I don't want to remember it, I don't want anyone else to know it. It makes my legs weak to even write this (which I guess tells me that I'm not done telling either).

But when I first started therapy, I had two stories that I told...having a sexual relationship with the minister at my church when I was in high school, and a violent SA when I was in college. Both had haunted me for their own reasons for so many years. I told both stories in the first year of therapy, and they really did turn into narratives, and they don't have the same power over me any more...not even the SA, that I thought would haunt me forever. The triggers associated with it are almost all gone, I can hear the world r*pe without coming apart. They became a PART of my life, right-sized, as they should be. Not the whole story, and not even CLOSE.

The story I'm telling now is so much harder, but I know from what happened in that first year, that we *can* get from here to there.

Trust yourself. If something is pushing you to tell, it's time to tell. Whether it's the first time or the 100th time.

This is how we heal.

[skysblue]

Unlike many of you who have really really painful stories, my story should be no big deal. I hate making it something it's not. Sure, there was something but doesn't everyone have something? I feel like such a pathetic wimp for my continuing whining. And that's why I hate telling my story. It nauseates me that I keep up this self indulgent activity of bemoaning my 'so so sad story'. I tell myself 'just get over it' but I just so love proclaiming my so-called suffering and looking for that oh, so feel good sympathy. On the up side, I been able to spare everyone except 2 people of my telling.

[rainbow8]

Maybe your story is more of a big deal than you want to admit. If it bothers you enough to want to talk more about it, then something is unsettled. Or--maybe you need to explore why you want that "feel good sympathy" so much.

[skysblue]

My story feels like a tumor inside of me. I want it out. Will the telling be enough to remove it? I want every piece it gone. I know it will take many sessions with T to tell the whole story. Although I want to be done with the telling quickly, I will go slow enough to try to find every poisonous piece of it to excise. Can I complete the telling in 2 or 3 sessions or will I need more time than that? Will I falter and not have enough courage to complete the surgery? I will beg T to encourage me and give me strength to endure the pain. This must be done. I have to do it.

[skysblue]

I just read a few minutes ago about how myths are part of our personal psyches and how being in touch with our own myth can be healing. Here's a few quotes from the book, "Dreaming the Myth Onwards: New Directions in Jungian Therapy and Thought." edited by Lucy Huskinson

"Myths are personal stories that are constantly evolving, and working themselves out through us. Myth is a narrative pattern that gives significance to our existence and given that we are creatures of individuality and collectivity, 'myth' refers to both our collective and our personal stories."

"Myth is construed through imagery, but this imagery is not to be conceived as static narrative applicable for all time. Rather, it is dynamic and is continually reshaped according to the living experiences and subjective orientation of its recipient."

"Myth is the story of your own life, which is itself rooted within a collective narrative of basic human behavioural patterns. Our mythical stories are personal narrations of our psychic situations. Our complexes, transferences and countertransferences, our childhood experiences and memories, our dreams and fantasies all provide fuel for the storylines and characters of our myth."

"Myth as a narrative gives rise to new possibilities, new stories and situations, evolving in response to the old. Myth is thereby seen as a continuing life story, which is therapeutically valued in its capacity to heal and transform impotent, unworkable life experiences into ones that are productive and enriched. Myth is therapy insofar as it enables us to function according to new structures of meaning."

"The future narrative is thus a new storyline,which can replenish and overcome the failure of the old. The future narrative is the promise of a greater understanding of one's life story, which is tantamount to the ego realizing that it is not the sole actor and narrator of the story."

"Myth is a composite of reason and non-reason, of conscious and unconscious expression."

"Myth describes our understanding of life, and subsequently reveals how we might change this understanding."

"Myth, as a narrative of how we understand ourselves, must, from a Jungian perspective, include a sense of our future selves."

"By drawing out inner reality [myths] enable the person to experience greater reality in the outside world. They are roads to universals beyond one's concrete experience. It is only on the basis of such faith that the individual can genuinely accept and overcome earlier infantile deprivations without continuing to harbor resentment all through one's life. In this sense myth helps us accept our past, and we then find it opens before us our future." (my emphasis)

[Perna]

Originally Posted by skysblue

I want it forgotten but it keeps creeping into my life.

It is not you, but it is part of your life; it is your life story. You cannot just rip out or forget the bits you don't like?

Think of it like pieces of a puzzle (the puzzle being your entire life story) and you are trying the pieces several different ways and places to see where they fit. Trust me (I'm 61 so looking back on a larger life story with its own horrible-seeming bits and pieces) the colors and designs will work well together in the end.

skysblue, have you heard of imagery rescripting? It's a technique used in schema therapy. I was always rather skeptical of it but have just done it for two sessions and was blown away.

In imagery rescripting, you tell the story. But at the crucial point, you intervene and make the ending the way it should have been. You can use anyone and anything (real, imagined, magic) to make the story right.

It sounds like pretending, right? But it has sound neuroscience behind it, because actually the brain can't tell the difference between when we use imagery for what happened, or what we wish had happened. Of course, we hold onto the reality of what really happened, and must still grieve for that, but for me something is shifting for the first time. Like the person I was then was finally given the help that I needed in the moment that I needed it.

Knowing you, you will want to read extensively about this A really good explanatory paper is Holmes, Arntz and Smucker (2007) in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. If you don't have journal access, I'm happy to send it if you PM me your email

[Sannah]

I think a person is done telling their story when they can stop hating it. Your story made you who you are. When you have incorporated your story into your being with acceptance you are done.

[rainbow8]

Improving, EMDR uses a form of imagery rescripting too. You think about how the situation could have been, how you wished it could have turned out (while you are holding the buzzers or watching your T's fingers) and it changes it in your brain so you aren't distressed at what really happened anymore. I wouldn't believe it I didn't do it and it helped me!

[SoupDragon]

Originally Posted by skysblue

Unlike many of you who have really really painful stories, my story should be no big deal. I hate making it something it's not. Sure, there was something but doesn't everyone have something? I feel like such a pathetic wimp for my continuing whining. And that's why I hate telling my story. It nauseates me that I keep up this self indulgent activity of bemoaning my 'so so sad story'. I tell myself 'just get over it' but I just so love proclaiming my so-called suffering and looking for that oh, so feel good sympathy. On the up side, I been able to spare everyone except 2 people of my telling.

Reading this you are so tough on yourself, wonder what this is about for you ? And what even if everyone does have something, why does this negate the validity of your experiences?

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by skysblue

I will beg T to encourage me and give me strength to endure the pain. This must be done. I have to do it.

Amen.

You are very brave.

[sunrise]

Originally Posted by SoupDragon

Reading this you are so tough on yourself, wonder what this is about for you ? And what even if everyone does have something, why does this negate the validity of your experiences?

Amen to that.

Improving, my T sometimes uses something like imagery rescripting, although he hasn't called it that. He also is trained in psychodrama, in which a group of clients act out dramas from one of the client's life and the group can put a different outcome on it. Can be very very healing.

[skysblue]

Originally Posted by 3rdTimesTheCharm

Can you know where you're going if you don't know where you've been?

And my version of what your T said about you not being your story is this: My story is a page in the book of my life. It is not a page that I have to focus on. It is not a page that I have to avoid. Until I can really own the last 2 sentences I just wrote, I am not done telling.

Anne

For many people who have been victims and must not let that story claim possession of who they are, yes, I agree with your statement.

But, for me, my story is an indictment of who I am as a person. It intimately flavors my whole past, my present and my future. UNLESS, it can somehow recede from my consciousness and I'm allowed to begin again - to start from NOW.

So, although I will hate telling my story again, my hope is that it will be finally released. If not,... (well, I can't go there yet. Too depressing of a thought)

[skysblue]

Originally Posted by Sannah

I think a person is done telling their story when they can stop hating it. Your story made you who you are. When you have incorporated your story into your being with acceptance you are done.

I hate the thought that my story has made me who I am.

[Sannah]

You have to come to peace with your story, thus, you.

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by skysblue

I hate the thought that my story has made me who I am.

I wish you peace and happiness.

[skysblue]

Well, me and T talked yesterday and when I asked her if I should really do this - tell my story again, she replied that she thought it was a good idea given that I can't seem to shake it. I had decided not to go down that road but now I've changed my mind AGAIN.

So, tomorrow I begin. But unlike other 'tellings', this time I want to try to go slow and get in as much detail as possible. Other times telling parts of the story, I would get through it as quickly as possible because I just didn't want to face it. But now, I'm looking at the 'telling' as a surgery. If I do it correctly, maybe I can excise its power over me. idk - it's worth a try I guess. I hope to dedicate the next several sessions with T to do this job. I will ask T to keep me on track.

It's so strange to me that something that happened so long ago can still impact me. I've 'forgotten' my story many times but then it shows up unexpectedly and knocks me off my feet.

[Sannah]

Originally Posted by skysblue

this time I want to try to go slow and get in as much detail as possible.

Other times telling parts of the story, I would get through it as quickly as possible because

I just didn't want to face it.

It's so strange to me that something that happened so long ago can still impact me.

Allowing the feelings to surface during your telling will give you the most bang for your buck. You also have to allow yourself to understand how it has affected you. Yes, acceptance is so important. If you can't accept anything about you, you aren't really "living real". You are living sort of like a suspended life.