"Pause for a moment and listen to your mind. Not to your breath. Not to the sounds around you. But to the quiet, relentless commentary running in the background. This always happens to me. They probably think I'm incompetent and stupid. I should be so much further along by now. There's no point trying. I'm a bad, ugly, damaged person, and nobody will ever love me. We like to think of ourselves as rational beings who occasionally tell stories."
"In truth, we are storytelling animals who occasionally reason. We constantly narrativize our existence - selecting facts, interpreting, explaining, judging, and predicting. We spin narratives about the world, other people, what we are doing, what things mean, and what will happen next. And while these stories feel like neutral descriptions of reality, they are anything but. Stories help us make sense of existence."
Humans constantly narrativize experience by selecting scenes, assigning causal links, and placing people into roles. Inner stories impose order on chaos, make lives coherent, and determine interpretations, predictions, and identities. The most influential story is the self-story, which shapes present well-being and future possibilities. Some inner narratives are helpful, while others trap people in harmful patterns, producing self-criticism, hopelessness, and limiting beliefs. Metacognitive awareness and deliberate attention recalibration enable people to notice, evaluate, and change unhelpful self-stories, allowing for healthier patterns and improved psychological outcomes.
Read at Psychology Today
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