Stories

March 20, 2024

In this episode, we dive deep into the our mind's storytelling abilities and how they can sometimes lead us astray. Through real-life examples, we explore how our minds fill in the blanks and create narratives that may not serve us well. From misinterpreting emails to jumping to conclusions, these stories can often cause unnecessary worry and anxiety. However, the episode doesn't just highlight the problem; it also offers practical strategies to catch ourselves in the act. By developing awareness and practicing mindfulness, we can pause, reflect, and challenge the stories our minds create. The key takeaways include the power of awareness in recognizing thought patterns, techniques to question the validity of our narratives, and ways to reframe stories for a more positive mindset. Join us on this journey of unraveling the stories we tell ourselves, as we strive to cultivate a more empowering and fulfilling inner dialogue.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Neurotribe, the podcast where authenticity meets empowerment. Your host, Teresa, is a certified business executive and life coach, navigating the intricate tapestry of neurodiversity. She's someone blessed with ADHD and dyslexia, and gifted a widow and a mother. To four incredible Neurodiverse children.

So each episode of the Neuro Tribe is an intimate exploration of life, love, business, and parenting through the lens of neurodiversity. Subscribe to the Neuro tribe on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube and never miss a story. And if you really like this show, be sure to like, subscribe, rate, and of course share the podcast with anyone.

Join us on this unfiltered journey where no topic is too challenging, no triumph too small. Let's unravel the layers of our community's experiences, embracing the struggles, celebrating the gifts, and finding empowerment and authenticity in every episode. And let's start right now.

📍 📍 Hey friends. Welcome back. I am so grateful. Spring is coming for more than one reason. Spring. It really is the time where everything is new. Everything is blooming. And new things are happening. And that can be whether you're talking about the weather or you're talking about in life. And for me, I feel like it's both.

I am just really. Looking forward to the future and the rest of 2024. Having said that today we are here to talk about stories. Now stories can be what you're telling yourself about, about yourself, telling yourself about life. Or telling yourself about someone else or someone else's actions, right. So I'm going to give you a couple of examples, so you can really get a good idea of what I mean here.

And I'm going to give it from a different couple of different points of view, right? So one example is I had this client and, oh my gosh, I love her so much. She got an email and in this email it had two sentences. The two sentences were, Hey, when we spoke last, you asked me to get the, your, this document.

I forgot to get it for you or I. I forgot it. Here it is. Or something like that. And legitimately that's, that's all it was. But for this client, She went into all kinds of stories about what this client was thinking, what this client was doing. What it meant for her. I mean in her point of view in her world, this client was flirting with her.

Wasn't taking her seriously thought she was stupid. Didn't have respect for her profession or her job. It was causing all kinds of. Struggle for her. And what ended up happening is she went throughout the rest of the day and was miserable. She was ruminating over these stories and over and over and over again.

And then that night she ended up having an OCE episode. And deep cleaned her entire house and deep cleaned her car, including the rims and only got one hour of sleep that night. And so she was tired the whole next day for all of her meetings. So here we have a simple case of an email with two sentences and an attached document.

And what that did was turned that into an entire day and evening of chaos for this client over the stories that were built around this email. So, what we really did, our work together was reading the email over and over and over again. And deconstructing those stories and taking away the stories and also realizing a lot of those stories were. Different situations that happened in the past. And scenarios that happened in the past that she was bringing to today and to the present.

And she really wasn't able to be present in today and just take care of the email. Another story is a client that I had super sweet person and she genuinely believed that. Her story about herself was. In a past life. She was royalty. In this life, she was meant to be a peasant. And what this story did in her life was it created a lot of hardship. So she made a lot of decisions that financially weren't great for her. She made a lot of choices in both the life and in business that really just kind of took away the steam of moving forward in a positive way. Because she was embodying the story that she had about herself, that she was meant to be as it.

And so she went into a tailspin of self-sabotage and. It was sad to see, to be honest. There were so many people that really loved her and wanted the best for her and would step up for her and help her out and go out of their way to do things for her that were kind. And with this story that was so part of who she was.

It was, it was almost like it was her friends. And she would end up self-sabotaging and pushing away the people that were trying to help her. So she really took this story and bodied it and ran with it. And then in the end,

It really wasn't helping any aspect of her life. Another example, this one's fun. Y'all not really, but it's interesting to see. When people will take an email or a text message. I'm going to say this very clearly. And email or a text message does not have a tone of voice. The only tone of voice and email or a text message can have is if you yourself. Are telling your story about the text message or the email and you hear it. In your own mind. So I had a client that got an email or, I mean, excuse me, a text message. On Thanksgiving and the text message said. I am so sorry.

I need to reschedule Thanksgiving. The kids are sick. So as soon as they're better, maybe next weekend, everyone can come over and we can. Cook Thanksgiving then. This client was absolutely convinced that the kids were not sick. It was a lie. The text message had a rude tone of voice. And she was so frustrated.

She ended up showing up at that person's house to confirm whether or not the kids were sick, which they were. And after speaking to the person, the person ended up reading the text message to her and she said, wait a minute. That's not the tone of voice. That you sent the text message out as, and the person said, I'm the one that wrote it.

This is my tone of voice. So if there is a tone of voice, it's the tone of voice that you have in your own mind. But this client was so stuck to her story. She was absolutely convinced. That the canceling of Thanksgiving was a personal attack on her.

So it kind of gives you a couple of different ways of how stories can really kind of take off and have a life of their own. I'll tell you one of my own. Because every single time. I write one of these podcasts or I write an article or I teach a lesson. I first and foremost do the work myself. I am my own client. And then when I experienced life and I take my life and learn something from it, I genuinely turn it into something. And then go out and teach all of you. So for me, all of you know that I am a widow and I had this story that I was never going to get married again.

I'm laughing.

It's not funny, but. I had this story that I was never going to get married again. And what I felt when I thought that thought was. I'm S that makes me sad. I just felt a very deep loneliness and sadness. When I would tell myself that story. And again, this story that I was telling myself was taking space. It was taking room.

So I want you guys to really hear that stories take space and they take room in your life that aren't necessarily helping you. In fact, some of them. Hinder us. Right? Some of them are making decisions for us that we don't even realize that we're doing right.

So, as I was telling the story to myself about, I'm never going to get married again. I would start to think about the future. And I would think about what would it be like being old and gray and alone, and, you know, maybe playing bridge with some friends. Or, you know, going weeks without talking to anybody until my kids came to visit me. And that whole story that I was telling myself was painting this very sad, lonely future for myself. And as I really sat with it, I was actually speaking to a friend of mine. And it hit me.

I didn't even realize that I was telling that story to myself. And then I thought, I mean, I have no idea what the future holds. I have no idea. I could never get married and be totally content. I could get never get married and be lonely, or I could get married someday. I don't know. But you know what, when I take that story away, I feel better. So then I thought to myself, Stories really do create feelings. And when you notice that you're telling a story to yourself about yourself or about someone else or about something that happened.

My question to you is. How has it making you feel, do you really want to feel that way? Do you want to choose to feel that way? More importantly, when you're feeling this way, because you have this story, how is it affecting your life?

What decisions is it making? Like for me, when I was telling myself that I was never going to get married. I was legitimately putting walls up around me. It was like a fortress. I didn't even realize it was there. I was pushing really good people away from me. Because I had these walls up because I had this story that I was never going to get married again. But once I took that away, it really kind of opened up my eyes to, well, you know, I don't know, maybe, maybe one day. Who knows.

I don't know. But. My future is mine for the taking. And I can choose whether or not if I want to get married. And that feels a heck of a lot better.

So just to wrap it up. I want to challenge you to figure out if you have some stories in your life that maybe you're telling yourself about yourself, about your life, about who you are. Maybe you have a diagnosis, maybe it's ADHD, maybe it's autism, maybe it's OCD, maybe it's dyslexia, or a combination of all of the above.

Right? Do you have a story about your diagnosis? Do you have a story about maybe some situations that happened in the past, but you keep telling yourself those stories. So it prevents you from doing things in the future. Do you have stories about other people, maybe it's your partner or your family, your sibling, your kids.

Do you have stories that you're telling yourself that. Are they true? How much space are they taking up? How much room do they have in your life? How do they make you feel? And what is their effect? What decisions is it making in your life?

I love you all. Take care. Bye-bye.

Stories

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