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How Our Stories Shape Our Experience: Understanding and Reshaping the Lens We See Through

Couples CoachingHow Our Stories Shape Our Experience: Understanding and Reshaping the Lens We See Through

How Our Stories Shape Our Experience: Understanding and Reshaping the Lens We See Through

Have you ever found yourself in total disagreement with someone about something that happened? Or feeling uncomfortable about how you reacted to a partner, a colleague, or family member? This can arise because everything that we experience passes through our unique perceptual lens. Our subconscious is interpreting everything through this lens, which is formed by our past experiences.

Our brains are incredibly powerful processing machines and constantly build stories about who we are, what to expect from the world, and how we need to be. Many of these understandings are formed by implicit and explicit learning in our formative years, but they can be made later on.

So when we face something new, we often don’t experience it in presence, for what it is. Instead, we experience the present through the lens of those old stories, and they have the power to completely drown out what’s really taking place. Especially if it is an experience that resonates with a painful core belief we have about ourselves – for example, “I am not safe” or “I won’t be heard” or “I will be abandoned”. In some cases, this resonance can trigger our deepest survival instincts in the most ancient parts of our nervous system, bypassing cognition or rationality, which takes place in the prefrontal cortex, altogether.

That’s why two people can go through the exact same situation but have totally different feelings about it. And it’s why sometimes it can be hard to understand the other person’s feelings. One person might feel calm and at ease, while another might spin into fight or flight. Their brains are using different stories and predicting different outcomes.

The good news is, we liberate and empower ourselves by safely exploring the stories we carry. When we notice the beliefs and adaptive strategies we’ve picked up along the way; we can apply understanding and compassion to shed the shame that we may feel about them; we can challenge them; and we can begin to create new, more suitable helpful patterns, strategies, and neural pathways.

Every one of us has our own unique set of experiences and perceptual biases. I wonder whether you can see how this principle applies to you in your life? Please feel free to share in the comments.

And if you’re curious about how you can reshape those patterns to live more fully – with presence, awareness, connection, and safety – I’m here to help. Book your free 15 minute call by clicking here.

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