Why your stories may be keeping you stuck

But You Don’t Understand!!

As a counselor, I have many stories. Ones that I share when I see a whole bunch of the same story, manifested throughout different lives. Many people who walk into my office come to me with a grand story of their own, or so they think. Often this cycle manifests in hours of explaining details of a story that is undoubtedly painful, unfair, heartbreaking, and just so difficult. As a counselor, my heart aches for the details of my clients stories.

But, undoubtedly, its not about the content or the details. It’s about the fuel that keeps the machine running. 

Core beliefs or negative beliefs that we hold towards ourselves are most often formed in childhood. These childhood beliefs then creep their way into our relationships, decisions, and responses. Some of these beliefs might look like “I am not good enough,” “It’s not safe to feel my feelings,” or “I am unlovable”. These beliefs are the power sources that pump lies into our psyche about who we really are. 

Why am I telling you this? The lies we believe about ourselves are often hard to pick out, because we have believed them. We have created a whole belief system around those lies. So, what if we start to believe differently…What would that mean? This is the point in the story where we try to dig our heels in and get people to understand why we are justified in our annoyance or why we have to perpetuate our pattern of taking control. (Bookmark Dave’s blogpost on Why Trying Harder Doesn’t Work)

If we peak behind the curtain we can learn that we are upset that our spouse left a cheese slice wrapper on the table not because we are passionate about cheese wrappers but because we feel unheard, which may connect to our belief that we are unimportant. Learning how to pull out these beliefs can be the difference between arguing about a cheese slice wrapper and having a connected meaningful conversation. 

Self-reflection is a powerful tool that can shift into self-awareness when diving into the right areas of the pool. Start by noticing patterns. Do you notice particular way relationships resolve or a repeated feeling you have? As you write those golden nuggets of information down, I encourage you to reflect specifically on each one. As this is the most important step of healing your core. Truly it’s not about the cheese wrapper.