What’s Your Story?
We all carry stories with us about who we are, our place in the world, how others will see us, and what's possible for our lives. Some of these stories are stories we like, some are stories we want to write a new ending to. But did you know that try as you might to change the story, there's an invisible force that may be acting on you that might sabotage your efforts? In this episode, Libby talks about how your very own brain can stop you from changing your story, and some ideas for what you can do about that.
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Transcript
And today's episode really is about that last one. That love is how we heal. And I'm not gonna give much more away than that. So without much ado, we'll get into the episode.
When we arrive at adulthood and begin pursuing relationships, we inevitably carry a lot of stories about ourselves. Our brains are wired for story. And so we have a lot of stories based on our past experiences from our childhood, from our family of origin or previous relationships. And a lot of these stories aren't even explicit. Sometimes they're just like running in the background. Now some of these stories are positive, good things about ourselves, but some of them are painful. And I wanna give you an example of this. So I made up a person, and we're gonna call him Gavin. So Gavin has always liked to take time to make decisions about whether he wants to do something or not. That's because he's had the experience of not always enjoying things that other people like or that things that people say that he's supposed to like. And he also, because of that, says no to a lot of things that other people might say yes to.
He's got a lot of kind of picky food preferences. He only really can tolerate things like loud crowded parties or clubs very occasionally. Mostly he finds them tired and overwhelming and he doesn't really like drinking because when he does, it just makes him sleepy and less sharp in a conversation rather than being the social lubricant that it is for a lot of people. And also he'd always feel like shit the next day, even if he'd just had like one beer. He's also just sensitive about certain things and has a lot of particular preferences, like he can't enjoy spicy food and he can easily get too hot or too cold in if the temperature isn't just right over and overgrowing up both from his family and from his peers and even from some of his partners, he would get complaints that he was too picky, he was too high maintenance, too cautious, not adventurous enough.
What a stick in the mud that Gavin and all of that gave him a story that he was both a lot to put up with and not very cool. So the result of that was that he would sometimes push himself to be more fun, to be more willing to do more things, to be more willing to try more things to drink with his friends, even though it made him feel awful to stay later at a party past when he was enjoying things to endure things that were actually really unpleasant for the sake of the people that he was friends with or dating. And it makes sense from that place that Gavin would fall for someone like Jordan who is super cool, let's just say a whole lot more easygoing and flexible, a little bit more adventurous and happy-go-lucky than Gavin, but Jordan's not like a skydiving every other week kind of guy.
He's just often really chill and people really like him and he just has this cool vibe and he really liked Gavin and made Gavin feel cool by association. Now, while Gavin was previously monogamous, before he met Jordan, Jordan was polyamorous when they met and Gavin was really open to it. And so Gavin dives into this with him and feels really proud of how open-minded he is. Like polyamorous actually something that kind of goes along with his values. And so the whole thing is really great. The relationship is really great. And Jordan nudges Gavin outside of his comfort zone in ways that Gavin really wants. And again, Jordan makes Gavin feel really cool and sexy. But before long, Gavin starts to notice some of the ways in which he hasn't really been honoring himself and what he needs. And so he starts to, within the security of the relationship with Jordan, start to take better care of himself.
And then that causes Jordan to feel disappointed because Gavin isn't as excited about planning that next trip that they were gonna go on and has been cooking at home more instead of planning to go out to that next hot new restaurant. And after the last breakup that Gavin had, he also decided he isn't interested in dating anybody but Jordan for a while. And Jordan is worried about being Gavin's only partner or that maybe Gavin is gonna like turn monogamous or something. All of Jordan's misgivings about Gavin honoring himself kind of reinforces Gavin's fear that Jordan's gonna leave him because he's too boring, too high maintenance, too much of a stick in the mud, which he desperately doesn't want to be or be seen as. Which means that anytime Jordan expresses any sort of disappointment or feels unhappy with Gavin kind of leaning more into some of the ways that he feels better being, they get in a big fight and Gavin gets really upset and also feels really ashamed but also really angry.
And it just leaves Gavin wondering, can he ever find a partner who will just accept him as he is? Now, I wanna point out two things in this story here. One, Gavin has the story about himself as being boring, high maintenance, a stick in the mud, the someone that would be difficult to be with, and that is destined to be rejected by all the cool kids. And Gavin wanted to change the story and he picked someone, Jordan, who he thought would help him do it, but instead of changing his story, he found himself right back in it, didn't he? Now unfortunately, I see this a lot. I see people every day and I include myself here walking around with stories about themselves, stories about who they are, what they can do, what they can't do, what their place in the world is, how other people will see them, what's possible, what's true, what's reasonable to want, et cetera. And sometimes these are stories that they don't like and wanna change. Now, here are some examples of stories that I've heard. I'm not enough, I'm too much. I'm boring, I'm unlovable. I can't trust anyone, I can't trust myself. It's not safe to be vulnerable. I have to do it all. I can't count on anyone else. I have to make everyone else happy before I can get my needs met. I'm not important. I can't do anything right? I will never be understood. I can't really have anything I want.
Now, sometimes we just hold onto our story and operate our lives as though it's true and we never let it go. Sometimes if we believe something, like I can't trust anyone, we will live our lives as though we can't trust anyone. And let me tell you your story. If that is your story and you live that way will be confirmed guaranteed. So you will just stay in your story. But a lot of us, I think really want to disconfirm our story or we want to rewrite the ending. And so we try to do something different hoping for a different outcome so we can tell ourselves a different story. Now, there are a lot of strategies that people employ to try to change the story. If it's a relational story, we might do this with partner selection or relationship structure or making certain behavioral shifts or other choices like whether to live together, whether to share finances or a whole host of other decisions.
And I think a pretty broad swath of people who are practicing polyamory or some alternative relationship structure are doing so in part to rewrite some story they believe about the world or about themselves. And I mean, if you were to like the story that you have about yourself or about the world, you're probably not going to go outside of the norm. Although I suppose like that being who you are, being outside of the norm and liking that story might be your story. And so that might be why you would do it. But for I think many of us who are making choices that are a departure from what everybody else is doing or from what we grew up seeing around us, it's because we don't like the story we were given and we want something else. Here is the tricky part though. While it's great, like a really great strategy actually to be imaginative and creative in our practices, in our philosophies, in our partner choices and in our relationship structures, I actually don't think that that is enough to change the story because there is this other force acting upon us that wants to prevent anything new from happening.
Do you wanna k`now what it is? It's actually your brain. Your brain is wired to keep the story the same. Now, you may be wondering, Libby, my brain is the thing that wanted me to change the story in the first place. Why would my brain want to not change the story? Well, our brains are also wired for efficiency. Now, I learned about this from a neuroscientist named Lisa Feldman Barrett, who wrote a phenomenal book called Seven and a Half Lessons on the Brain, which I highly recommend you take a look at sometime. I'll link it in the show notes. So one thing I learned from her is what is true about the brain is that it is the single biggest user of calories of any organ in the body. Like buy a long shot. Our brains burn up a lot of energy. And because of this, our brains have evolutionarily developed many systems to be as efficient as possible.
One of the ways that the brain is efficient is by devoting a lot of its energy to predicting what will happen and getting everything in place to deal with that situation before it even happens. Now, one example Lisa Feldman Barrett gives is if you're a coffee drinker, have you ever ever noticed that if you do tend to consistently drink coffee every day around the same time like in the morning, and then let's say you miss a day that you get a headache, have you ever noticed that? So the reason apparently why this happens is because of your predicting brain. So coffee is, constricts your blood vessels when you drink it. It's a stimulant. That's one of the things it does. And that's not good for your body, especially not good, for the blood vessels that go to your brain because you need that blood flow to go to your brain.
Your brain really needs that blood to function. But for your brain to go through the process of going, Hey, there's caffeine in my system. Hey, I'm noticing my blood vessels are constricting. Hey, now I need to dilate the blood vessels. All of that process of being in sort of that reactive place is a lot of effort for your brain to do every single day, every time you drink coffee. So since your brain knows that you will have coffee every day at a certain time, because it has experienced that over and over again, it actually preemptively dilates your blood vessels before you even take your first sip of coffee in the morning. Which is why when you skip it, you get a headache because your brain dilates your blood vessels, but your blood vessels didn't need any dilating. And so even more blood rushes to your brain and get a headache, which will actually ensure that if you wanna take a break from coffee or make a change to your habits, your brain will not make it easy for you cuz your brain does not like change.
So our brains are actually pretty devoted to predicting what will happen next based on our past experiences. And again, that's because to have a novel experience that your brain hasn't encountered before is actually pretty resource intensive. Now remember, your brain is like by far the biggest user of calories in your whole body. And so it wants to predict and it has, a really important system in place that it uses to do a lot of that predicting, which I learned about this system from Juliane Taylor Shore, also known as Jules. And it's called the Implicit Memory System. Now, your implicit memory system is really important. You would not be able to live without it. It is what enables you to go about your day without having to figure out what the heck is going on about every little thing all the time. It's what enables you to look at a light switch and know that it's a light switch and that up is on and down, is off.
You know, when the sun is in the sky that it means that it's daytime. And when you see a stop sign that it means to stop and that you it, it also helps you know exactly what a McDonald's hamburger will taste like before you even take a bite. You could not function without your implicit memory system if you had to figure out what everything was that you encountered throughout your day. Well, first of all, you wouldn't get anything done. And second of all, you'd be absolutely ravenous all of the time because of the amount of calories that that would take your brain to be able to do that. So there are a lot of useful things stored in your implicit memory system, but also stored are a lot of these knowings that you have about the world that I mentioned earlier, stories that our brains have cataloged as true and that will always be true, and that we should be acting accordingly as though they are true.
So unfortunately, because your brain is devoted to efficiency, your brain is actually gonna do a lot to make sure those stories, those stories that you wanna rewrite, actually remain intact. And you've probably had experiences like this with other people who sort of selectively only notice things that line up with what they already believe, right? But you do this too. We all do this. So what our brains do because they are devoted to efficiency and to predictability, is that they're gonna do things like catalog and really make note of the experiences that we have that line up with our story and also actually ignore the evidence that contradicts it. And, you know, I mean, you've heard that phrase before. You know, people will only hear what they wanna hear and it's actually not that they want to hear it, it's it's that their brain is really locked in a story.
And, it's looking for the things that are gonna confirm it. Also, in the same way that your brain will sort of preemptively dilate your blood vessels, you'll also engage in behaviors as if your story is true, which then creates the opportunity for you to experience your story as true. So to go back to my example of of Gavin and Jordan, it's perfectly reasonable for Jordan to express some disappointment about Gavin changing his dating behavior. But it makes sense also that it's especially hurtful to Gavin because it matches his story that he can't be accepted as he is, and that he's a wet blanket to the people around him, and that's gonna cause him to feel ashamed and also angry at the person he loves, who would make him feel that way, who he was hoping wouldn't make him feel that way. And the funny thing is, when we actually set up scenarios like unconsciously, all of this is unconscious, to reinforce the story that we have, we usually are in relation with somebody who also has a complimentary story.
And in this case with Jordan, what I would make up is that he has his own story about, you know, like once your partner gets comfortable and secure in their relationship, they stop making an effort, which is a story maybe from his childhood or past relationships that he's had, which is probably why Gavin's changing behavior is all the more triggering and hard to accept. But of course, Jordan's lack of acceptance of Gavin's changed behavior is triggering to Gavin and making him feel not accepted. On and on we go. And again, this is really common for us to pick partners who have stories that kind of go with ours, but not in a great way. And this is why we often end up in relational situations, despite our best efforts where we are actually playing out the exact story that we were hoping to avoid.
Sound familiar? it's why people say, oh, you're gonna end up dating your parent, your father or your mother or whatever. We tend to be drawn to what is familiar to us because our brains like that predictability, but all is not lost, okay? Because again, the implicit memory system is only one part of our brain. We also do have our conscious thinking part, the part that is trying to make those new decisions and is trying to rewrite the story. And most of us do something pretty clever with that part of our brain when we're making those decisions. We do make some efforts to create conditions or choose partners that are just different enough that we do have a shot at changing our story. It's just that, as I said, our conscious choices alone are not going to stop the part of our brain that wants to predict from trying to make those things predictable.
And it won't stop our implicit memory system from categorizing our experiences in ways that are familiar to it. Even if those knowings are things we no longer want to really be true. So what we really need is kind of a shock to that implicit memory system. The term for this that I learned from Jules is memory consolidation. And I'm actively getting training in this because it's such a powerful, helper tool. And I actually recommend you check out, jules's work as well because, it's pretty cool. And I'll link it in the show notes. So memory consolidation is basically a process by which your brain breaks apart one of its implicit knowings and makes room for a new knowing to take its place. Now, odds are high that you've probably actually experienced some kind of memory reconsolidation. One cool thing that Jules has found in her work is that most forms of therapy have an element to them that creates the conditions that make memory reconsolidation possible.
But you don't even have to go to therapy to experience memory reconsolidation. It probably has happened to you at some point, but according to Jules, there are three main things that are needed to create the most optimal opportunity for a memory reconsolidation experience. So first of all, your brain needs to be actively predicting the old knowing. Like you need to be about to think, this is what's gonna happen next second, something needs to happen instead that makes it impossible for that old knowing to be true. So something has to happen that completely contradicts that knowing while at the same time you're expecting it to happen. And then three, you need to feel regulated or integrated enough that you can catch it, that you can notice it and realize, if this is true, then this other thing that I was expecting can't be true.
And it really is like that. You'll go, Jules talks about like ways you can kind of tell when someone's had a memory reconsolidating moment. But what's wild about it is, is that when you have that moment, when that happens, the old knowing is gone. It does not, it's not there anymore. Like it is one of the ways in which you can change and be forever changed in an instant forever. And again, I know I'm confident that if you're listening to this episode that you have probably had some experience like this where you really were expecting one thing, something else happened and suddenly your life and the way you saw the world was forever changed. That's memory reconsolidation. And I can give you an example from my own life around this. So, one of my partners, used to have this habit, and I'm not gonna tell you what it is cuz it's just for privacy's sake.
But I, there wasn't anything like dangerous or anything about it. I just found it kind of unsavory and I wasn't comfortable with it. And I gave them a really hard time about it. And I was kind of righteous and naggy kind of like a, you know, mommy ish about it. I mean, it wasn't my best look and, the kind of behavior that I the ways in which I expressed my feelings about this particular habit. I would no longer consider appropriate, in my relationships. But, um, at the time, that was how I responded to it. And they did tell me that they would stop doing it, you know? But then one day we were hanging out and, something fell out of my partner's bag that revealed that they had resumed this habit and had been hiding it from me.
And I saw their face fall, I saw them and then they came clean and I could see them, their whole body, like bracing for some righteous outrage from me, maybe with a fairly hefty portion of lecture to go along with it. But instead, what I did was I just, I took their hand and I looked into their eyes and from my heart I said, Hey, I am really sorry that you felt like you had to hide this from me. I'm not upset with you. I trust you to know what's best for you. And, I want you to, to do this if this is what feels right to you, and I trust that you'll stop it when you feel like it's the right thing for you. And if you decide you wanna hide it from me and you don't want me to know, that's okay too.
I love you and I don't need to say anything more about it. It was the complete opposite of what they were expecting from me. And it broke an implicit knowing that they had, that they couldn't be honest about what they really wanted if it didn't line up with what the other people wanted from them. And again, this knowing wasn't actually about me. It actually predated me because I'm not like this at all. But like, they had this expectation and that was fueling this behavior. And, the fact that I demonstrated the opposite of what they were expecting completely changed how we related to one another. It was a pretty significant turning point in our relationship. Now, I did do this different move with my partner because I had intentionally been working on doing something different than what I had been doing before.
But it wasn't because of some, it wasn't some therapeutically created experience, it was just something that happened. I took, there was an opportunity, I could have gone left and instead I went right. And that gave my partner a really healing experience. And I feel like I've been fortunate in my relationships to have many opportunities as well to experience the opposite of what I was expecting in the relationship and have that be extremely healing. But one thing that I've been working on also is just being aware, being more aware of what my stories are. Because if I know what my stories are and then I tell my partner what my stories are and they know what they are, then we can actually work together to intentionally shift them. And I wanna give you an example of that. So like, one of my super painful stories is that if I don't do it perfectly or read the room perfectly, then I will be misunderstood, misconstrued, rejected and judged without any opportunity to make anything better.
As a neuro divergent person, I can't imagine where I would've gotten this story anyway. But because of the story that I have rooted in my experiences, I can get extra sensitive when someone I love, doesn't like my reaction to something or responds negatively to something I've said. Now, this doesn't mean that I can't hear feedback I because, part of the fear that I have is that I won't be given any feedback and given the opportunity to make it better, but it can still be really hard to receive feedback if it's negative, if the person is like projecting or mis perceiving me or not giving me the benefit of the doubt if they're being overly harsh, et cetera. And the funny thing is, if someone is projecting or misunderstanding or being overly harsh and then I get defensive and I'll heard about that, then I am likely to act in ways that are gonna confirm their story about me.
And then I end up locked in this cycle where I feel misunderstood and they feel misunderstood. And this goes into that whole intent impact thing. Right now, at the end of the day, I wanna own that, like my story that I have is mine to deal with. But, here's the really big deal that I want you to know. Okay, you ready for this? The only thing that really breaks that story is to have a disconfirming experience. I'm going to say that again. The only thing that really breaks the story is to have a disconfirming experience. That means I can understand and I coach my clients on this, okay, I can understand that getting defensive doesn't help me be understood and I can work on that. And sometimes me making the move to not get defensive does give the other person the opportunity to then hear me and understand me.
And then we have a repair experience and everything feels better. But me making the move to not get defensive in response to someone misunderstanding me or projecting, on me, or being overly harsh and not giving me the benefit of the doubt that move is holding a truth that I may not actually have, which is that I actually can be understood, you know, me not getting defensive or reactive, is me being able to let go of the story. The really painful story that I will always be misunderstood, rejected, and judged without any opportunity to make things better. And the only thing that really makes it possible for me to let that go is to have an experience where I am understood, where I am accepted, even if I didn't do it perfectly. And where I am given the benefit of the doubt that is what actually helps me feel okay and safe and secure and connected and able to trust that story isn't true.
I can still remember one of the first times one of my partners gave me the benefit of the doubt without me even asking for it just instantly forgave me for something. I said, because he knew that I meant well and he was so kind and gracious and caring to me. My head almost exploded because I had never been treated like that before. And this is actually one of the beautiful things I wanna say about polyamory is that you have more opportunities to have relational disconfirming experiences because you have more different types of people to create these different types of experiences with you. But this is what I mean when I say love is how we heal. The opportunity to change our brains, change our stories is in having the experience of the story being different. Part of the puzzle is us doing our own work so that we are not feeding into that story.
But part of the puzzle is also creating opportunities in our relationship to actually have the story be different. And what has helped me with that, what has helped my partners with that, what has helped my clients with that has been sometimes to create opportunities to deliberately break the story and have an intentional memory consolidating moment. So for me, it would be like deliberately working to not do that thing that my partner is expecting me to do. And nay, maybe even has completely set me up to do by their predicting brain. This isn't easy because as I said, often our stories go together in sort of a hellish dance. But if you both know how your stories dance together and you both are taking deliberate action to do different steps, even at times when one of you might be doing the same steps in a given moment, you create that new story and it becomes impossible to believe the old one anymore.
Now it's not always a magic bullet, it's not always just saying or doing the right thing one time. Sometimes also we'll be too upset or too distracted to catch it, even if it does happen, even if it was a really, you know, powerful shift intentionally that we were trying to do. Sometimes it just doesn't work. But if you really wanna change the story, this is one of the most important ways that you can write that ending. So to recap, all of us come to our adult lives, our adult relationships with stories about ourselves, about how the world works, about how relationships will work for us, et cetera. Some of these stories are stories that we would like to not be true and that we would like to rewrite, but while our prefrontal cortex are logic brains might make choices aiming in the direction of having the story go differently, our implicit memory system, our viciously predicting brain will often make it hard for us to actually change the story.
And so one of the most powerful things you can do is to become aware what are the stories that are running in my brain that might be getting in the way of me changing the story for myself? And what are the ways in which I might not be noticing or might not be creating opportunities for myself to change that story? And what are my partner's stories? And what are the ways in which I am reinforcing and reconfirming rather than disconfirming the stories that they may have. You can do your own work on basically not setting yourself up to continue to repeat the old stories that you believe are true, but it can be even more powerful to create together with the people you're in relationship with, opportunities for you to have disconfirming experiences. And in fact, the only real way that you truly can break your implicit knowings is to have disconfirming experiences. And you can have them. Incidentally, many of us have memory consolidation is the process and it's something that happens naturally in the world, but there are ways in which you can intentionally create those opportunities in your relationships by just turning left instead of turning right by just doing one thing, doing the thing that is not expected instead of doing the same old thing that you've always do.
Actually having these disconfirming experiences is how we are able to let go and change our story and write the ending that heals us.
