Stories

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So you have now read six different accounts of the same story. If you were asked to tell the story, what would it be titled? Who would the main character be? What would the common thread be? Would you be able to come up with something that incorporated all the perspectives you read? Do you lean more toward one than another? Did you have a strong negative reaction to any part of one of the views? Is there a more true version of this story? If one view is true, are the other views untrue?

It has been said previously that our stories can be our prison. People typically find meaning in the occurrences that match their overarching, internal story. If a person feels less than worthwhile, then whatever happens will be seen through the lens of whether or not they have been validated or given approval. Many other features of the event will be overlooked because they are all about how other people treat them. Everything that happens is examined to see if their hypothesis about themselves is confirmed or disconfirmed. He wasn't respectful of me. I don't trust someone like her. I know something bad is going to happen at some point because of this. This is why some people's wounds devastate them and wreck their relationships for years to come. They have a real need for emotional connection and input, so they look everywhere for someone else affirm them. They are especially sensitive to what people say or do. Or they have become desensitized to bad behavior that they find themselves attached to a series of people who hurt them. Their story becomes the organizing principle around which they live their lives. Whatever story they hear, whatever event ensues, issues of belonging and connection are almost all that they attend to.

I know a woman who visits churches at times if she feels particularly blue. When I ask how she liked the sermon, or how she felt about the pastor's theology, or what the service was like, the only answer I get is, "I got so many hugs there!" and she tells one story after another about who hugged her, what they said, and how she felt about it. Can you guess what the story of her young life is? Sadly, it is no longer a story. It is who she has become.

We hear things differently, we perceive things different, and hence, we believe different things than someone else might. People who live in the same family often have different perspectives on what has happened, what the relationships mean, what constituted fair play, etc. Not only do we have different temperaments (that make us take note of different things), but we also have different lenses through which we view the world. Therefore, different people in a family can have quite varying opinions about things.

We see this in clinical work with families of people who have Alzheimer's disease. One family member may feel that their (senile) father is merely being difficult. Another member will recognize the degree of dementia for what it is. Still another may feel that the father needs to act demented just to tolerate life with his wife--and it goes on and on.

I well remember one Thursday afternoon, sitting in the classroom, listening to my professor drone on and on. Suddenly, one thing he said made me sit upright in my chair: "A good therapist isn't the one who sees what something means when it happens. A good therapist is someone who sees 100 things an event could mean, and who stays open to whichever one of those meanings, or another yet undiscovered meaning, it has for their client." We are not to assume only one possibility. We need to assume that the possibilities for meaning are endless, and entertain the idea that something can mean anything at all to someone else.

Here's an example: a couple came to me for therapy complaining that all they did was argue. It soon became evident that they had locked horns about which reality was the correct one. As long as the man bowed to his wife's interpretations, the conflict would blow over. But if he dared to assert that his reality was correct, she would just about come apart at the seams. We worked a long time together before they learned how to listen to the perspective of the other and recognize that each of their stories came from a deep place of the past. And when the other could acknowledge their perspective, they became less entrenched in testing the hypotheses that arose from that story in the here and now.

Stories are interesting, to say the very least.