Once upon a time...

This weekend I went to a 10 hour intensive on Narrative therapy and how you can use it to treat addictions. It was terribly useful for the work I do at a substance abuse clinic but surprisingly, and not so surprisingly it proved to be incredibly useful for me in my personal life as well.

In uber brief layman lingo, narrative therapy believes that we all have a story we tell ourselves. It is the same story or a spin off of a story we learned from our parents and our friends and our society. Because we are continuing to tell ourselves this story in the thoughts we have, the stories we hear, the actions we take, and the beliefs we hold, we are perpetuating the story. This is super great if our story makes us feel better about ourselves. Unfortunately most people have a somewhat more sabotaging story about many things.

How many of you reading this have ever looked in the mirror and told yourself you were ugly or fat or stupid? How many of you believe it because a parent told you, or because you read it in a magazine or because you have been telling yourself it for so long that you think it’s a truth? What would happen if you started telling yourself something different? I am not saying that it’s easy to stop perpetuating our stories. It’s difficult, so instead of focusing on stopping, focus on starting... a different story.

Think about the negative things you label yourself: I am so fat. I have no control over food. I hate my job. I'm stressed out all the time. Now ask yourself what it is that you get from telling yourself these things. Is it attention? Is it sympathy? Is it laughs? Is it connection? Is it help? All of those things are fine, if you like them and they help you feel good, but if they don’t, then maybe it’s time to try on a new story. I have been telling people for the past few months how stressed out I am and how I am not working out. I have been talking about how little I work out because I secretly think it will make me feel better if they commiserate and tell me the same thing. I also feel like it gives me an excuse for why I look/feel so out of shape. The down side to this is that I have not started to work out again. I am stuck in the story of how I don’t work out anymore and it feels crummy. Last week a friend from work and I were talking about how much we love working out and how it feels so good and how it always makes us feel better. Well, you know what I did this week? I worked out. And now I am telling all of you about how I did it, and how good it felt and how much I rocked it. (Say this even if you feel like you didn't, the feeling will come)

Let’s all take the negative story we tell ourselves and find a time in the past week when, if even for a moment it wasn’t true. Maybe you tried on a pair of jeans and felt good in them, if even for a moment. Perhaps you caught an error that would have cost your business money or maybe you caught an error that no one would have ever noticed. Maybe you finished eating when you were full and took the leftovers for lunch or maybe you took the stairs at the mall. Maybe you got eight hours of sleep last night. If you can’t think of a moment, think harder, it’s there. If it truly is not, then go back two weeks and try again.

All day today and hopefully scattered throughout the next week I would love for y’all to repeat your new story to yourselves and your friends and your family. Tell your co-workers at the water fountain how awesome you felt about yourself when you walked at lunch or how motivated you are or how you had 10 minutes of perfect peace while sitting on your porch after dinner. I am going to tell myself how happy I am when I am exercising.

Be Good to your Body, it's where you Live