The Stories We Tell Ourselves

At some point, you decided something about yourself. Maybe you decided you were the difficult one, the responsible one, the one who doesn’t need much, or the kind of person good things don’t happen to. You probably didn’t make that decision consciously. It settled in quietly over time, until the story started to feel like the truth. In this episode of Lumen, hosts Christopher Mooney, LCSW and Kenyon Phillips, LMSW explore the stories we tell ourselves and how those inner narratives shape our relationships, choices, sense of worth, and capacity for change. Drawing from narrative therapy, existential psychology, Viktor Frankl’s idea of the space between stimulus and response, and the body’s role in carrying old beliefs, Christopher and Kenyon examine how these stories form, why they often begin as protection, and how they can become limiting over time. The conversation looks at confirmation bias, shame, people-pleasing, perfectionism, substance use, and the quiet ways a person’s life can become organized around a story they never consciously chose. The episode also offers a compassionate path toward revision: noticing the story, tracing where it came from, looking for the exceptions it leaves out, allowing the body to practice something new, and experiencing relationships that help you tell a different story about yourself. 

To book a free consultation with Christopher, Kenyon, or the other providers at Lumen Therapy Collective, visit lumentherapycollective.com. 

Follow Lumen on Instagram: @lumen_therapy_collective

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Lumen is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, diagnosis, or treatment. If you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact local emergency services or a trusted mental health professional.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to Lumen, a podcast that sheds light on mental health, relationships, and what it means to be human. I'm Christopher Mooney, LCSW.

SPEAKER_02 0:07

And I'm Kenyon Phillips, LMSW. Each episode we unpack psychological patterns that affect our relationships. No jargon, no judgment.

SPEAKER_03 0:16

Just thoughtful conversations to help you understand yourself and others a little more clearly.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

So what are we going to talk about today? Are we going to talk about what we decided about ourselves?

SPEAKER_03 0:27

Yeah, I want to talk today about our narrative and this idea that at some point we decide something about ourselves. Maybe that we're the difficult one or the responsible one or the one who doesn't need much. Maybe the good things don't last for us, right? Or that if we ask for help, it makes us a burden. Or that we we're just not the kind of person who gets to want certain things. We're disqualified from that. Yeah, we are. It just kind of settles in quietly over the years through experience. And Kenyon, it seems to run in the background of almost everything. You know, when we see when we see this happen, like this narrative kind of idea. And it's it it runs in the background of our relationships. It runs in the risks that we take or don't take. And that story that we have almost starts to feel like the truth, like it's kind of like set in stone. And I think that's what makes it so hard to see. And so today I want to talk about that and and really kind of address this idea of our narrative. Yeah. Right? What is the story that we have going in the background for ourselves?

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Right. I love that it's running in the background, like a background application. Yeah, we are all living inside a story. And it's not really I think it's it's easy to say, oh, well, that's just a therapy concept. But this is actually how human beings operate.

SPEAKER_03 1:56

Yeah, I think this goes beyond the the concept of therapy or or it which is interesting because there's actually the uh the approach to therapy, one of the approaches that we talk about all the time, and I think kind of guides our practice is this is narrative therapy. Right, totally. Which is which is really useful. It is. It's it's extremely useful. But I I I think that it is this idea of like how how are we looking at our story, what has contributed to that story, and then what what are we writing for the rest of it? But we're gonna get more into that today. And and I think this is this is a great concept for just, you know, if you're human, this is happening.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

No, totally. And it brings up this idea we talk about a lot, and we've talked about it in past episodes, this idea that that reality is subjective. With reality is subjective. We don't experience just like raw reality either. There isn't just like it's always an interpretation. So everything we experience is interpreted reality, and the interpretation, our interpretation of reality is the story that we live in. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 2:59

What's so fascinating to me is that I think most of the time we don't even know that we have this framework that we're kind of using in the background. Yeah. It's funny you made the joke about the the background application. Right, running around your computer. Yeah, or or when you're you're swiping up on your phone and you realize that like something's been running and and slowing it down for like you know, a month. There is, this is framework that we kind of we have as a structure and we don't even know what's going on. So we we end up it ends up convincing us that it's reality, that this is the right way, that this is truth. And it it's it becomes really hard for us to start seeing life from different perspectives. It kind of ends up guiding our vision and it guides how we kind of see what's coming at us.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

Right, right. It reminds me a little bit of you know negative thinking patterns that we've talked about with the negativity buffet, the jumping to conclusions, because the vr the framework that we create for ourselves in our story is really like this set of conclusions that we've drawn about who we are, what we deserve, how our relationships work, and what's possible, and most importantly, I think what's impossible. There's a lot of like sort of like canceling ourselves out within these stories. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

I keep coming back often in sessions and and conversations, and I'm I I keep thinking of this book, and I I don't know if you've ever if you've ever read it, but Man's Search for Meaning by a huge, huge fan by Viktor Frankel, right? And Viktor Frankel was an Austrian psychiatrist who actually survived the Nazi concentration camps, and he spent the rest of his life writing about what keeps human beings going in the face of unbearable suffering. Right. No. And it it it sounds like a big jump from what we're talking about, but but there's a really important connection here, and I think it is he he talks about the so one of the things he he kind of addresses is this this between stimulus and response, right? Between like what's coming in and how we interpret it and and act, there's a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. And that's where our growth and our freedom kind of lie, right? So so when we think about how information's coming in and how we're seeing the world, we have we have a moment and there's this this small little area where we we get to actually have some choice over what we want to do next, oftentimes we miss it.

unknown 5:33

Right.

SPEAKER_03 5:33

And I think that's that's the key here. And that's why I'm bringing up Victor Frankel because he he in Man Searcher Meeting, in the first half of the book, he writes all about his history and and his experience in the Nazi concentration camps and the difference between the people who he saw give up and what happened and how he ended up surviving. Right. Right. And and and and it is so much focus on just that little tiny space of between stimulus and response. Totally. Totally. So we're gonna talk about that that gap between what happens and and how you respond. And that's where the story lives. And the whole point of today is to make that space visible, right? We want to really highlight that space. Because that space gives sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

No, no, no. I get excited. Because that space, because that space gives us a choice. Absolutely. That's you know, and that's what Victor Frankel talks about a lot in the book, The Last of the Human Freedoms, he calls it. The the ability to make our own choices about our attitude. You know, it's and it's that idea of it's not so much what happens to us, it's how we respond to what happens.

SPEAKER_03 6:37

That's right. And I think, you know, just to to kind of go over and we'll we'll get more into this, the that's sort of the idea behind uh existential theory too in therapy, right? Is this this idea that we have we have certain givens, there's certain truths, and then we have choice, and that's the scariest thing of all. Right. Is that we actually have a choice. And sometimes we lose sight of that or we don't see it. And and that's the the crazy thing about choices. We we don't see it until we do. It's just it doesn't exist. And then all of a sudden we're like, oh my God, I have a choice here. And it is this almost aha moment. Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

And especially when circumstances are difficult. It's so easy to just draw the conclusion, lead to the conclusion. Okay, I have no choices. I have no options here, I'm screwed.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

Right. We talk about agency all the time, and that's kind of that like how much say do I have in how my life goes. Right. And we have a ton. I want to clarify here that when I talk about narrative, and you and I kind of cover what the story is, it's not a fairy tale. Right. This isn't this isn't like some made up story that that we have. It's it's going to be the lens that we don't know that we're actually looking at things through. And it shapes what we notice, what we dismiss, what we reach for, and what we don't bother trying. So it actually it's I I liken it to having these we always think about rose-colored glasses like that, that statement, oh, you're wearing rose-colored glasses. I think about these filters too. I think about our ears. So our ears and our eyes kind of provide these, they have these filters that go over them that we that we gain through experience, through life, especially early on. And that really kind of informs how how our narrative is set because it's it's kind of distorting some of the noise and some of the information coming in. Right. Totally.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

That affects how we see our life, right? And the other thing I think here is these stories don't come out of nowhere. Right. They they build slowly throughout our lives, and you know, especially through early experiences, you know, and and obviously repetition. So those earliest d drafts of the story. I love, I'm gonna just really milk this narrative, this metaphor, right? The the the earliest drafts of the story coming from childhood, not necessarily from dramatic events. You know, some of us did grow up with traumatizing events and circumstances, but others, you know, a lot a lot of the memories from our childhood are sort of like the ordinary things that we all experience, how our emotions were received on a day-to-day level, whether our needs were met consistently or unpredictably, what we had to do to feel safe in our homes growing up, what we had to do to feel loved or accepted, what we learned before words or without words about whether the world was a trustworthy place, that Einstein quote, which I love and I ask myself frequently, the fundamental decision each of us has to make is whether we live in a hostile or a friendly universe. That really was determined for many of us by our childhood circumstances and environment.

SPEAKER_03 9:37

That's true. And the in the the point we're getting at now or today, and what we'll we'll get to is that that's not set in stone early on. No. It sets a course, or maybe we we grow accustomed to that pattern, but that's not something that we have to continue every day in adulthood living, or even as a young adult. Very much. So we get we get to have some say in in whether we want to look at it that way or not.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Yeah. But it really does feel like it's set in stone. Especially when we're young. We come to these conclusions, and once these stories form, they start filtering everything out. Basically, not just filtering out stuff, but just affecting everything that comes after in our experience. Aaron Powell That's right.

SPEAKER_03 10:19

Well, you you had mentioned these negative negative thought patterns before or unhelpful thinking styles. And we've talked about that before, you know, the the negativity buffet. Right. So grab a bib. That's right. Eat up. This is where thought filtering comes into play. And thought filtering is where evidence that fits our story gets noticed and remembered. And evidence that contradicts our story gets explained away. We rationalize it. It's also uh discrediting the positive, which happens a lot. So there's actually three or four different cognitive distortions that that kind of fit with this narrative idea. Right. But when we think about it, and it in and it's weird, the human brain is so odd this way. We just we're really good at just like hanging on negative stuff.

SPEAKER_04 11:05

Right.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

Like, oh, it's this. I'm gonna just I'm gonna keep focusing on this negative experience I had, or that, you know, I must have said something stupid in that, that at that party I was at and definitely embarrassed myself. But we're totally ignoring all of the other positive experiences. Right. Right. Those those were just one-offs. That that that doesn't contribute to the to my narrative about myself.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

Yeah, but so many of us are walking around with this narrative that we're awful and that we're subpar and that we need to do better. And so, yeah, absolutely. The criticism, those which you know, a lot of times those moments are few and far between, those are gonna land with us because they support the story, they support the narrative.

SPEAKER_03 11:46

That's right. It's like this this idea also of confirmation bias. Totally. Right. It's not just noticing any confirming evidence, but we start to unconsciously organize our life to keep producing it. Right. So which is that's that shift from just discrediting the positive to really internalizing what you're talking about. Like I feel I I think this way, these things happen, I notice this thing, I notice this thing. Now I'm going to start kind of orchestrating my life to reaffirm and confirm the things that I believe about myself. Right. What's it we call this something? We call it like kind of like there's something when people are doing this, they're kind of it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. And just totally drew like a Tuesday morning blank right there.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

No, but it's true. That's exactly what it is. Yeah. And hey, in the power of positive thinking, which many people laugh at now, it just seems so 70s or something. But but, you know, that's actually refuting that idea and saying, like, hey, if we don't feed into that self-fulfilling prophecy that's usually negative, we will have outcomes that challenge the story and are positive.

SPEAKER_03 12:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

A lot more frequently than we think. Everyone thinks, oh, I need to assume the worst in order to protect myself. But in reality, there's no evidence that assuming the worst is, you know, it it's not like that's any more likely to be the outcome than assuming the best. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 13:11

It's interesting, right? That that idea that that we're just kind of like walking through the world and that's that fight or flight, that anxiety, like, oh, there's something always negative, there's something always dangerous that we have to deal with. And it feels that way sometimes. And that's certainly, you know, we we certainly have our experience that contributes to that and informs that. But you know, that was it. It was Heidegger, right? And the the philosopher Heidegger that that said, don't worry.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

He made the point that human beings never encounter the world neutrally. We're always going to see it through a bias. Right. Um, we we have uh a bias that we bring with us, a structure of meaning. Right. So when we when we bring that again, it's like the foregone conclusion. When we bring that bias, the world we see is already interpreted before we're consciously aware of how we interpret it. And and that's just how our minds work.

SPEAKER_03 14:03

Yeah, it's this this real automatic process, like like super quick, right? It just happens right away.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Another way to understand it is survival mechanisms. Yeah. And the question is, you know, is the lens that I'm bringing to my everyday reality, does that still fit the life that I'm actually living? So I mean, I have defense mechanisms and survival mechanisms from a time in my life where, you know, things were unsafe and unsettled. Now my life looks really different. So when I bring that lens, you know, always scanning for safety, danger, it it's kind of an outmoded operating system.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

It is, and it's it's not a flaw, it's just how our brain works, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:45

How our mind works. We're trying to protect ourselves. Our brains are always trying to protect our bodies.

SPEAKER_03 14:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

I feel like. And the reality is our bodies, I say this all the time with my somatic work, right? The our bodies are a lot smarter than our brains. Tell me, tell me what you mean by that. Our bodies sense things. Being animals, uh, we're we're still animals. I think we're on our way to becoming biomechanical. But as of today in 2026, I'm still an animal. And the so given that our bodies store information, and we talk about trauma a lot, our bodies store trauma. The body kind of knows when we're safe, when we're not, our bodies will be clued in to whatever our experiences and whatever our sensations are, often before the brain is. How often do you kind of like use your brain to try to talk yourself out of something that you're feeling?

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Right. It's interesting. Like you're you're kind of talking about this. It's like a learned intuition. Absolutely. Like a feeling like how how much space we take up in a room or the way that I might hold my breath while I'm like around others, or even just posture. If you if you're in a room full of people or on the train, you know, next time, just look at how are people carrying themselves? Yeah. How are they standing? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Are they hunched over? Most people have resting bitch face. They're scowling. Yeah. Even if they're just like looking at their phone. You know, how often do you see somebody with like a r a resting face that's a smile?

SPEAKER_03 16:22

You know, I gotta be honest, I've been trying to do that more often. And I realize I do that, I try to do that when I catch myself, which I have to say is like once a week. It's it's a work in progress. But I've been trying to catch myself around my kids and do that. Yeah. Because I realize even if I just have a flat affect, it's probably something people could interpret as maybe more negative. Right. Right. Right. Because we're always trying to impatience or fed up or in a bad mood or whatever it might be. And so I it is something I've been aware of. And I'm and I would I'd throw that out to everybody to try and just be a little more cognizant of when you're sitting, just are you smiling?

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

Right. Not that you have to smile and pretend everything's happy, but just change your affect a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

This was a trick I I think my mom had told me when she she was a receptionist for a company, and she said that one of the things she was told is when you answer the phone, smile while you're talking because it's going to come across even even though people can't see you.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

Oh, totally. It changes everything. That's a void, as you know, all those years I was doing voiceovers. Right. It's that's a that's a directorial trick that you will get told in sessions, like over and over again. Do it with a smile now. And it does. It changes the the performance, it changes the sound.

SPEAKER_03 17:37

Well, it also changes your feeling about what you're doing. Yeah. And so even if it's something tedious or negative or that you don't want to be there, you actually that's a that's in that little space where you get to have a say over here's the information coming in. I'm making it a conscious effort to change my response.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

Totally. And that's where the benefit of humor comes in. Because how do we smile? How do we make ourselves smile? Usually it's from laughing. You and I had a very tense morning this morning, and for for different reasons. And when we had a really good laugh right before we started recording today, it was I needed that. And I was able to actually smile genuinely. It did.

SPEAKER_03 18:16

It took the air out of the negativity balloon.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Yeah. And that's like how we can approach life. I mean, life is uncomfortable. We talk about this all the time. There's a lot of discomfort that we need to tolerate in order to kind of get through. If we can find the humor, because there's pretty much humor to be found anywhere if we look for it, we're going to be able to smile more. Well, yeah, you can find the absurdity, you know, the humor and in in all of it. And there's because I do a lot of work with substance use disorder and and rehab and recovery. I mean, a lot of people who develop complicated relationships with substance use, underneath that, their story often looks like, I can't handle this. I don't belong. I'm not enough. I have to numb out in order to just survive. And in that case, the substance serves that story. And understanding that that story is part of understanding what happened. And it's also key, I think, to changing behavior. Because so many people who are in treatment for substance use disorder, they want essentially a behavioral modification. And changing the story becomes essential to that.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

Changing the story, and I think this is where substance abuse, and I'm I'm just going to be very blunt about it, it's where substance abuse treatment got it so wrong for so so many years. Totally. Which is let's just treat the substance, let's just treat the addiction. And this is where I think a lot of people still struggle with, you know, the idea of like if somebody is using substance and they have a substance use disorder and they're getting high, they're drinking, whatever it might be, the issue is not the drug or the alcohol. No, it's a symptom. It is a symptom of painful relationship with self. Right. Right. This idea that, and and as you said before, I don't belong, I'm not enough. And when we think about that, we go back to these ideas of shame. Right. Remember, and and shame is I'm a mistake. Yeah. I'm not good enough. I don't belong here. I'm not part of. And traditionally we've treated substance abuse by sending people away and sequestering them and getting them away from everybody and treating them as if they have some kind of problem with like some moral and value issue.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

No, like they're lepers. It's it's you know, like they're they're the other.

SPEAKER_03 20:32

That's right. And that's that's actually the worst thing we can do. For somebody who doesn't feel like they're enough and they don't belong, we shouldn't be sending them away. No, absolutely. Right. So I'm gonna get off my soapbox now and get and get back into, you know. Keep it handy. Keep it definitely keep it handy. It's one of those days.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

The the other thing about narrative therapy, it uncovers this truth that stories, you know, not not all stories are problematic.

SPEAKER_03 20:57

No.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

Some of them we need, some of them are great for us, and uh, they're certainly worth keeping, you know, these stories that protect.

SPEAKER_03 21:04

Well, they it's it's kind of this idea of like, hey, I've been through I've been through something really hard. I can actually figure this out. Sometimes we we interpret it in in a really healthy way. Like you can go through really hard things. We talked about this when we were, I think we were covering trauma, right? Like sometimes hard things are just hard. Right. It doesn't mean we're traumatized by it. It just means like, man, I overcame that. There was a challenge. And I think that that's a really important reframe on a specific event. And that I think we we can have some more choice over that, right? Or we we learn in our our narrative can be that we're resilient. Yeah. And we've earned that through experience, right? I've I've earned this, I'm resilient. I have built up this kind of like ability to survive and thrive and kind of like make it through some really difficult times.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

I always bring that out with clients and with friends. Anyone who's going through something really hard and feels like they can't make it. Yeah. I'll often point out, hey, you got this far.

SPEAKER_04 22:00

Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

You have obviously gone through hard stuff in order to get here. And you've made it this far. Who's to say, you know, that you're not going to keep going?

SPEAKER_03 22:10

Right. The other story that really opens opens us up, I think, is that connection is possible. And that's built from when we think about a relationship, or maybe there's one person in our life that, you know, that really loved us or that we have a connection with, and we might have a bunch of other relationships that have just fallen apart and been awful and maybe, you know, abusive, whatever it might be, but or just negative. But if we can find one one person, it allows us that discrepancy in our mind to say, yeah, but wait, I I do have that one time. So I am lovable and I am capable of loving. Totally. And that's that's story like a narrative that can work really well. Yeah. There's also stories that really close things down, right? And that's kind of what we were talking about before, like, you know, or maybe I'm too much. We were talking about cod codependency. Oh, I just love I love too hard, right? But I'm I'm too much, you know.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

And that's probably because the people around you at the time you got that story were ill-equipped to handle any sort of emotion.

SPEAKER_03 23:09

Yeah. So they tell you your feelings are like overwhelming, right? I can't handle your feelings, Kenyon. You're overwhelming for me.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

So then we dim our light. Yeah. I don't want you to dim your light. Well, thank you. I'm gonna brighten it again. Crank it up. I have to earn my place. I have to earn my keep. That's from a household I grew up in was very transactional. There was like a sense of, you know, love is conditional. It's a contract deal. That's right. And you're only as good as your last performance, really. That's how much you that's how much love you get. Yeah. As opposed to being loved in and of yourself, you know, just for who you are.

SPEAKER_03 23:47

Right. Just for for existing and everything that you have is okay. Right. The message is that, well, some of this is not okay. So we also I think have these stories that go through our head that closeness leads to pain. And that I think stems from just straight up experience. Yeah. You know, where it's like every time, every time I am vulnerable, every time I share, every time I get next to somebody, I get hurt. Right. Right. And if we think about if that has been the experience, then of course, like we're gonna put up all sorts of walls and protect ourselves and keep ourselves alone because we don't want to put ourselves out there to get hurt. No getting hurt. So we avoid it. It sucks.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Yeah. It does suck and it hurts. And it's probably better to experience that and then lose it as opposed to just locking down because of a story that closeness leads to pain and never experiencing any connection.

SPEAKER_03 24:42

Yeah. The test for this, Kenyon, is not whether the story was ever true. It some of these are completely accurate when they were formed. Right? Like this, what we're talking about. Like, oh, I've I've been vulnerable. Somebody took that information from me and then hurt me with it. Right. Hundred percent accurate. Right. Risk good response to data, right? That's right. The real test here is whether that information is still useful and whether it's costing us something that we'd rather have. So have I lost out, for example, on new relationships and connections and moments to be vulnerable because I'm going on information that happened 25 years ago. Right. That's old data. Why are we why you know why are we using old data to form, you know, new opinions and and guide our life? We should be I just use the word should, man. It's a bad word.

SPEAKER_04 25:34

Stop shooting all over yourself.

SPEAKER_03 25:36

We can invite new information in. And I think this is part of the process. Like, how often can we take new information in and new experiences? How often do we create a situation where we allow new experiences in? And that's a part of I think how we start to deal with this idea of changing our story is hey, let me look at, yes, I've been hurt five times by people in my life when I talk about this thing. You know what though? I'm going to tip the scale a little bit. Maybe I find somebody who I know is gonna be a little more open, maybe a little bit more friendly, warm. And I'm gonna go share with them and see if I can create some new information, collect some new evidence that my ideas about my life are are not so solidified and concrete.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

We in recovery language, we often talk about that in terms of going where it's warm. If I have a need and I go to somebody who's cold who's gonna shut me down, then that's gonna reinforce the story that I can't be close to anybody. I'm not gonna get what I need, I'm not gonna get what I want. But if we go where it's warm and we, as you said, suss out people ahead of time and say, oh, this person feels safe. Maybe that's a therapist. Maybe that's your aunt or uncle. Right. Maybe it's a friend from, you know, your past at one point.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

Yeah. You know, it's it's interesting. The the way that we look at it, right? It's it's it's like we look at past experience and we think, oh, that's just wisdom. I'm I'm so wise and experienced because I've had these these moments in my life where it has kind of contributed to how I'm I'm leading my life now, and I've it's wisdom. It's not always wisdom. You know, it's it's just experience.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

It's experience, yeah. And sometimes it's a trauma response.

SPEAKER_03 27:15

And sometimes it, yeah, you're right. The two psychologists that came up with narrative therapy. And you know, it's interesting. These are White and Epstin, yeah. White and Epston, yeah. Michael White and David Epstein. And they really, I think, honed in on it. So it's none of these things are new concepts, right? We've talked about this. So you and I do we we just spent the time before this reading through the the Tao of Stowe. Right. And these Taoist and Stoic quotes. And it's like this philosophy is thousands of years old. Thousands of years old. Narrative approach, you know, the way that we look at ourselves in the world, relationships, all this stuff. It's thousands of years since human beings have been walking the earth. Right. But Michael White and David Epston really spent their entire career working on specifically this thing, like the idea of narrative. And the idea that we are you are not your problem.

SPEAKER_02 28:04

I love that. I want to reiterate, tell me that again. The idea here is that you are not your problem. You have a story about yourself that's become dominant and maybe limiting, but once you can externalize that story and realize it's not you, you can start to find all the places where that story doesn't actually apply to you.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

You told me to keep my soapbox handy. Please, my God, whip it out. I'm sliding it over. This is the issue generally in the United States with the medical model and the medical approach to mental health, to physical health, to everything. It's this idea that we are our problem. If you look at how we're diagnosed and everything's labeled, people hold on to that because we're looking for answers, right? Human beings want to categorize things. We want to put things in a nice little bucket. So you go to the doctor and they say, Hey, you've got this. And it's all of a sudden, well, now I've I've got this diagnosis. I am depressed. How how often, and this is what I loved about social work. And and, you know, when I first got in this field, I wanted to go the psych direction. And a couple of close friends of mine had said, Hey, you know, maybe you should look at social work instead. That seems to make a little more sense for you, and you can get and you can really go out and do what you want. So I was like, okay, let me look at this. And then when I started looking more into like social work and the idea of like the person in environment, that's really what we're talking about here, right? Yeah. We're not our diagnoses. You're not, you're not a depressed person, you're a person who is depressed. Yeah. You're not an anxious person, you are a person who has anxiety. Person first. Person first, always. And you're part of a system. Yes. It's not like you're just living on an island. That's right. So if we can say I'm a person existing in the world, and my story is, you know, my is historically the story says, oh, I'm dealing with these things. I've I've got these internal issues. Right. What narrative therapy is, the idea behind this is like, no, no, no. Let's take that issue and let's set it outside of you. Now you're just a person in the world and you're dealing with this thing as an external external problem. It allows you to really step back and look at it and say, oh my God, how am I going to address this? What are the different ways? Who can I call in to help me now? Right. I can call in teammates, I can call reinforcements, I can bring in anybody I need to to really address this issue that's in front of me. Right. It's not, you can't call in people to deal with the issue that's inside of you if you think it's an internal, like a flaw.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

Like a flaw. Right. That's a character issue. No, absolutely. You explained that to me when I was getting into this, and you said, you know, here's the wonderful thing about the social work angle. That's how you termed it. Yeah. You know, it's we're not just reducing people to diagnoses or conditions. We're seeing people first and we're seeing people in an environment, and we're exercising a whole lot of empathy for what they've gone through and what that system is around them.

SPEAKER_03 31:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

And treating it accordingly.

SPEAKER_03 31:08

This removes the shame, right? It's it's like if it if we remove that idea that we're fundamentally flawed, yeah. We get to actually work on we don't feel like we are are awful. No. I keep thinking, you know, this is such it's been such a fascinating process in working with couples too. You know, this idea of like if you and you just think if if those of you listening to it just have a disagreement with like your partner or or just somebody close to you in your life, if you have a disagreement with them about how something's going, it doesn't have to be this thing where you look at them and go, well, you're wrong and I'm right. And that's where I think most people get caught. They get caught in a loop of trying to prove their voice. Scorekeeping. Yeah, score keeping, trying to prove that they're right, or just like, hey, I need you to hear my part of it. I need you to hear my part of it. We can use narrative therapy and and and that dynamic too, in the idea of like, let's remove the problem from the two people.

SPEAKER_04 32:01

Right.

SPEAKER_03 32:02

Set it, set it outside.

SPEAKER_04 32:03

Right.

SPEAKER_03 32:04

Often it's about something that has nothing to do with the two people. Right. It's how the other it's how the two people are interpreting a situation. And then they can stop demonizing each other. That would be nice. It's that simple. Right. In three minutes, we can solve your issues. There you go. There you go. So, can you how do we know that a story's running? Great question.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Great question. Somebody who's a fan of narrative therapy said, my story speaks to me in my own voice. So it's really deceptive. And our stories feel like reality. So it's really challenging to notice that we're in one. Here are some signs that a story is operating one, a story that that we probably would be better off without, or you know, that's limiting us. An outsized reaction, a reaction that feels bigger than the moment actually calls for. So the charge belongs to something older, not this specific situation. I have another friend who's very wise who says if we get upset, we're never upset about the situation at hand.

SPEAKER_03 33:07

Right? It's baggage.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

It's baggage. That's what you're saying, right? Something that we say a lot in recovery is if it's hysterical, it's historical. So basically speaking to the fact that like we're we get, as you said, baggage.

SPEAKER_03 33:18

Yeah. It is. And I think the the other thing to look at here are patterns that repeat across different relationships or jobs or friendships. If the same thing keeps happening, the same dynamic, the same interaction, the same drama with a different cast, it's probably not all the other people. It's probably the mirror might be a good thing in that case, right? So it's it's probably something that we're bringing to each relationship or the way that we're also viewing the world. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

I remember like there are certain things that really are hard for me to hear, criticisms. And but the the reality is I've heard them from every single person I've ever gotten close to at one point or another. Usually it's a girlfriend or now a wife. They'll say this one thing to me. And it's like, and it used to really just piss me off. But after I hear it so many times, it's like, oh, okay. It's not all these other people.

SPEAKER_03 34:16

Yeah. No, you you don't it's hard to admit that, isn't it? Totally. Yeah. I don't want to I don't want to admit that maybe this is a me thing. This has got to be a you thing.

SPEAKER_02 34:25

Right, right. That's the initial response. But as the old saying goes, you know, if somebody tells you you're a horse, you can tell them to F off. If two people tell you you're a horse, you maybe look in the mirror. And if three people tell you you're a horse, then you go out and buy a saddle.

SPEAKER_03 34:40

I don't think I've heard that. But now, unfortunately, for the rest of my sessions today, that's all that's going to be going through my head. You know what Kenyon said. You know what your problem is? You're a horse. Exactly. Wow. Here we are. There's the other the other thing when we know that like a we have like a limiting story repeating in our in our mind is that there's just this sense of inevitability. Right. I hear this all the time. This always happens to me. Or this is the hand that I was dealt. Here's this is just the the deck of cards, right? This is just how it's going to be. This is inevitable. I'm always in this situation.

SPEAKER_02 35:19

It's a prelude to resignation, which often leads to depression.

SPEAKER_03 35:23

Sure. And then that resignation, actually, it's interesting. That's that's that idea of right, I'm I'm just somebody who does this. Uh it's just how I am. Right. Right. This is just the way it is. This is who I am. I'm wired this way. I can't change. People don't change.

SPEAKER_02 35:39

There's that passive reinforcement of the story. Yeah, it's rough. You talked about this earlier, but I'll bring it up again. If there's a tendency to dismiss compliments, oh yeah, discrediting the positive, right? Exactly. Minimizing things that go well. If there's something, if there is evidence that contradicts a limiting story, you dismiss it or you explain it away. Well, that was a fluke.

SPEAKER_03 36:00

Yeah. It's a one-off, right? That was that was some weird thing in the universe. Totally. And then this idea, I think, that uh this goes along with the shame, right? Which I think is what we're getting at here is that under underneath the narrative here, there's there's a real issue with shame. And it's that there's this uh persistent sense of not really belonging. Right? I don't belong here. Even when we're welcomed, even when we're like I mean, when you walk into a room and everybody's like, hey, I'm so glad you're here. It's so great to see you, and you're like, I just don't feel right here. Right. Something just feels off.

SPEAKER_02 36:32

That's probably you. Me? Yeah. No, no. Oh, I thought you were like, wait, what? I'm just gonna attack you on air, Chris. Damn. No, I but yeah, I mean, it's it's something in what you're saying, if it doesn't match, if the insides and the outsides don't match, if the environment, what the data you're getting from your environment doesn't match how you feel, then maybe there's something going on internally. Maybe it's a story, a negative or limiting story about how you'll never belong.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

Right. I can't tell you the mental gymnastics I just went through trying to also figure out like what did I do in the last hour and a half or the last six months or eight months where you would think that that's me. I was like, oh my God. I can't my brain was going so quick just now, just like, wait, what did I do? What did I do? What did I do? What did I do? That's probably that's probably a narrative I should take a look at. Right.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

Definitely, definitely. I have the same thing. And yeah, because I was criticized, but possibly justifiably for doing something, for making a mistake. Shame, as you say, tells us we are a mistake. You can't afford to make a mistake. Once you make a mistake, you're forever tainted. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 37:44

You'll never do anything right again. Well, and that entrenches that story. And so any contradictory evidence doesn't update it. It just gets neutralized right away. That doesn't matter. And, you know, if anybody does give us contradicting information, right, they only said it because they don't really know me, they don't know the real me, they don't know what's underneath, they don't know how awful I really am or what I'm what I'm capable of.

SPEAKER_02 38:08

Right. Huge barrier to intimacy. That comes up a lot with relationships, new relationships where you know somebody's you're getting to know somebody, somebody appears to like you, and then your story set, you know, your that that idea of, oh, well, no, I'm disqualified from connection.

SPEAKER_03 38:26

So we block people out. So let's look at some physical tells. Like how do we tell when when there's like a negative, we have that narrative, right? That remember, because we don't know we have it until we know.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

No, no, no. Well, again, going back to what we were talking about before, the body knows often the body is quicker than the brain to and so if you're walking into a room and you find yourself like really tensing up, or oftentimes you'll see shrinking, sort of like, how do I become invisible in this room? I do not want to be seen. The body is basically saying, I don't want to be seen. So you kind of hunch down, or you know, maybe you sit in a chair if everyone else is standing, and that's a sign. Bracing yourself before a certain conversation. Maybe you feel your heart rate start to quicken. Maybe you you find yourself clenching your fists, clenching your jaw.

SPEAKER_03 39:17

Yeah. Holding your breath without realizing that's a huge one. So many times I can think about conversations I've had with people where they're like, I didn't even realize I didn't breathe. It's one of the simplest things, too, as like a therapist, just to be aware of when you're working with people and you're sitting in a room with somebody, just focus on the breathing that's happening. Mm-hmm and whether or not you're both breathing. Right. Sometimes I recognize that when I'm listening, I'm like, oh my God, I haven't taken a breath in like 30 seconds. No. What's going on here?

SPEAKER_02 39:48

Oh God, so many of the things I've say to clients, I need to hear myself. And that's one of the benefits. Oh, that that old chestnut. But it's true. I the and and also I found when I'm feeling unmanageable, when I am tense, often it's like, oh, taking a breath. Let me just take a breath. We've talked about this in other episodes, but I'll remind us. Taking a breath can change our actually literally change our our brain chemistry. Depending on who much oxygen is in you.

SPEAKER_03 40:21

Yeah, well, the more the we talk about this with uh diaphragmatic breathing, your box breathing or the what is it, four, two, four, or whatever combination of numbers you want to use. But that idea that if you breathe in your stomach nice and slow and not into your chest, you are resetting your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous response. Yeah, I just did it. Feel good? I feel much better. It's so funny. Sink into your seat a little.

SPEAKER_02 40:48

I just yeah, I just kind of relax a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 40:50

I just don't want to take a deep breath on the microphones. Well, it's not that kind of a show. It's not not yet. You want to talk about bad faith? Yeah, there's a there's because I love existential philosophy and psychology. You can't get enough of it. Yeah. I have colleagues, former colleagues, that that I know would was just they it's like just an automatic response. It's probably my narrative now, but that they would just roll their eyes if I if I bring it up because they're like, oh, he's gonna talk about those four truths again and how everybody's gonna die. So we just just like let it go.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

I love uh dude, I can't get enough of it. Like, I mean, I remember the first time I read Paul Tillich's The Meaning of Meaninglessness, and was in that was my introduction to existential philosophy. And I was like, wait, these guys are optimists.

SPEAKER_03 41:29

It all comes back to choice, Kenyon. Yeah. It all comes back to choice. So this is there are truths in the world, and I'm not gonna get into them all now. I'm gonna save that for another time, but but there are truths and givens, and we have a choice. And it is the same thing Victor Frankel talked about. Absolutely. And it's the same thing. So it's interesting, all these these they were all the stoic and and existential philosophers, and they they talked about all these hardships, and then the psychologists and and people who worked in mental health started to take that on and and and turn it into like this idea of like, okay, what do we do with that psychically? How are we how are we utilizing that or how are we running from it often? Right. And so I think of Yalum often because I love group therapy. And he was like, he just made it so easy to to kind of like distill and and and and you know, digest. And I think of that that's he always goes on about the four truths, right? Responsibility, you know, meaning, death, and loneliness. And that we have a choice. We get stuck in those spots. We all get stuck in one of those or all of them as human beings, and then but we have a choice. And so it's it's understanding what the reality is and then looking at like, okay, what do I want to do with that? It's the same thing that narrative therapy then builds on, which is here's the story, here's what can happen, how am I going to make a choice to change? So the idea of bad faith here, though, is that we treat ourselves as a fixed being. As a thing almost, not like a person. Yes, as as as like not living, right? There's no freedom. We just kind of like there's no freedom of choice. No. And we want to treat ourselves as a person, right? So instead of saying that's just the that's just the way I am or that's just who I am, which actually closes off any possibility of change, the antidote is is actually recognizing that we are always, at every moment, in the process of becoming. Right? We're always moving forward and that the story's not finished. We're still writing it. The way that I present this to people is we're opening a book, you're writing your book, you're the author. You have not finished it. It's you're not done with the book until you're dead. Right. Like you you're just not. It's right. So every day, at every moment, at every microsecond, you have the ability just to write a different letter. You can write a different word, you can write a different sentence, a different paragraph, a different page, a different chapter. I could go on and on. No different volumes of the book. And by the way, just because you Had one really awful chapter which might have been full of drama and horror and terror and everything else, the next chapter can shift. You can start to change it. And no one else has a say in how that goes. Right. And that's the really important distinction here in a narrative approach to life. No one else has the say, and no one else gets to dictate what our chapter says or what our sentences say or our paragraphs. We do. Yeah. That's it. It's our own story. What else helps? I didn't I didn't just solve this just now. I thought I just solved this. I just told you.

SPEAKER_02 44:39

I don't know. What what more do you want? Seriously. What more do you want? Well, one thing is we talk about this a lot, but you know, like awareness before action. So notice we can't revise a story we can't see. So let's observe, let's slow down, let's, you know, especially if we have like a strong reaction to something. Ask what story just got activated? What where is this coming from?

SPEAKER_03 45:04

Yeah. And we do that through things like journaling. I used to think this was so corny, just this idea of like, oh, journal, write it down, journal, journal, journal. But it's actually it's such a phenomenal process. And people that I think would never journal come up to me and they're like, dude, I was journaling about this the other day. And I was like, wow. There's you can't go wrong with it. No. Just write your ideas freeform. Just hit it. So noticing where the story comes from, whose voice is actually in it. So you mentioned this before. Our narrative becomes toxic and hurtful when we internalize it and it becomes our voice. Right. Because it often didn't start that way.

SPEAKER_04 45:42

No.

SPEAKER_03 45:42

It was whatever other person or system or whatever was in place. It doesn't always have to be a person. It can be a system issue too, right? When we internalize that and it and it goes from somebody else to our voice, it becomes our responsibility. And we think about this all the time. You hear your parents, you hear people, I hear parents say, Oh, what about did I screw up my kids? Did I do this? You know, or you hear somebody who's like in young adulthood saying, Well, yeah, like this, they always said this to me, or this is what my experience was. But this is the existential psychology part, which is at some point it becomes our responsibility to fix it. Right. Right. Even if it was somebody else's voice. Yeah. So recognize where the voice is coming from and then name it and be like, no, that was their opinion about me. That's not my opinion about me.

SPEAKER_02 46:33

Maybe that was my third grade teacher, or maybe that was my mom, or you know, maybe that was my abusive first girlfriend or boyfriend.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

Yeah. Or my you, you, you, you, and yet again, another flashback, my third grade teacher. That was a rough one.

SPEAKER_02 46:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:49

And that's not to say that like identifying the person doesn't erase the story, but it it does help us challenge it.

SPEAKER_03 46:56

That's right. In narrative therapy, Michael White called this like the sparkling, these sparkling moments, right? Right. It's these moments that we can actually look for in our story where we're looking for the exceptions deliberately. And there's no rule that says we can't tip the scale in our favor a little bit. We're allowed to put our finger on the scale and say, well, I'm gonna look for the good evidence here. There might be a ton of bad evidence still that we that we're looking at that that kind of contribute to our story. But you know what? I'm gonna look for one or two good things today that just say, Yeah, no, dude, you're on point. You're okay. And that's that's what Michael White called sparkling moments. And it's it's the times when the story's not true.

SPEAKER_02 47:36

And so we got to look for that. Look for the exceptions. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:39

Like, for example, like, oh, I always let people down. I always I I never show up. I I can't, I'm not reliable. Look for the time that you didn't. Look for the time that you didn't let somebody down. Look for the time that somebody said, dude, I'm really glad that you were there. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:54

That's a good one. The somatic side, the body-based kind of side to it is let your because again, our bodies are ahead of our brains most of the time, if not all of the time, let your body try a new story. And what is it like to if you're somebody who walks into a room and feels like they need to shrink, how about trying an experiment? Walk into a room and take up space. Practice it. Practice it. Just try it. Just adjust. And it can be a really, really subtle adjustment, but just adjust the way you stand, the way you sit, slow your breath down. You know, the body often, I would say always, needs to practice a new story before the mind's gonna believe it. We can't always think our way into a different way of being or a different sense of who we are, a sense of self. You gotta move into it.

SPEAKER_03 48:48

What's the the recovery saying? You can't think your way into right action, but you can act your way into right thinking.

SPEAKER_02 48:54

Totally. And that is brilliant. Because it's evidence but I didn't I didn't coin it.

SPEAKER_03 49:00

Just say you did. Just lie and say you did.

SPEAKER_02 49:02

Let's copyright. I got a great lawyer.

SPEAKER_03 49:05

It's mine now. No. But you're right. Like, say it again, one more time. You can't think your way into right acting, but you can act your way into right thinking.

SPEAKER_04 49:14

Right.

SPEAKER_02 49:14

Because again, the the the body's ahead of the brain. The brain always wants a court case. The brain wants a story. The brain wants evidence. That's right. Because the brain, then that's the brain doing what it's supposed to be doing. It's supposed to be scanning for danger. It's supposed to be protecting us. And often it sabotages us in the service of trying to protect us. And that's what these old stories do. These stories from, you know, a time when we needed to survive, we outgrow them. So salt and peppa were wrong?

SPEAKER_03 49:47

Salt and pepper are never wrong. They just took a cognitive approach to it. They did.

SPEAKER_04 49:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:52

And there's a little dissonance in that. That's okay. There's space for both. There is space for both salt and peppa. The other thing that we can try, and this is I love this one because I just love relational experiments. These are the most durable things, right? These relational experiments and relational experience, this is what I think has the most effect on us overall. This is why when everybody's like, what approach to therapy is the most effective? Sitting in a room with another human being. Right. It doesn't matter whether it's CBT, DBT, MBT, whatever BT. It's and and people have they there's been tons of research on this. Yeah. Right? And and clients have said over and over and over again, the only thing that mattered was the relationship. So relation, the relationship is the most durable thing. And stories that are formed in a relationship, they have they tend to shift the most. Right? So we want, we want to try a friendship where we're received differently than our story has predicted. We want, we want to take a moment where we might be asking for something and we actually get it. Absolutely. Or somebody asks us and we actually can give. I love I love that one because I think that that that one feels really good for me. It's I I feel like I'm I'm okay asking people for help if I need it and asking for things I might need. But the the one I really want to, the one that makes me feel like a good human being is when somebody asks me for something and I can and I can deliver. A hundred percent. And I can be reliable and I can be solid, and I just it it's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

That's how we get better, I believe, is by being of service to others. And it always, especially when we're going through hard stuff, it never ceases to surprise me. Oh wow, I have the capacity to help somebody, to be useful. It's a huge self-esteem booster.

SPEAKER_03 51:50

It is, and that that experience that you're talking about, Kenyon, is more valuable than just saying the words. So if I say, Oh, I'm worthy or I'm good enough or I'm helpful, that's one thing. It's the action that you need to to engage in. And then when you feel it, when you when your body actually internalizes that and you experience that the feeling of worthiness, oh, that's gold. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:13

That is, that's where it lands. And that's where we can change. So we are not our stories.

SPEAKER_03 52:21

No, and I want to I want to close with this idea and really reiterate this that we're not we're not our stories, the past. Right. They inform who we are, they contribute to who we are. In no way do they dictate who we are. No. They don't have to.

SPEAKER_02 52:39

No, but what about that little voice inside of me that's like, okay, if I am not my story, then who am I?

SPEAKER_03 52:45

That is a great question. And you are then again stuck in the existential loop of like, oh my God, what do I do? So you have anxiety, fear of the unknown. Yeah. And I think many people hold on to their old narratives because they're really worried or really afraid of what else they could be. Or they're 45 years old or 46 years old. Or 50. Or 50. And they're like, well, now what? Now who am I am I gonna redefine myself? Am I gonna try to figure out who I am? This has always been who I I have been. Even if it's negative, even if it's hurtful, I'm gonna continue with it. So I think part of the part of the fear that comes up is if I let this go, if I let go of this old story, who am I really? Right. And that's the big that's always the big question. We're asking that always, who am I? What am I? What's important to me?

SPEAKER_02 53:37

Which the Greeks were on to. Know thyself.

SPEAKER_00 53:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:42

Rolo May, who is also an American, is usually think of the French making existentialism popular, but Oh, but Rolo May was amazing.

SPEAKER_03 53:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:53

I mean, but an American who brought these existential ideas, you know, just kind of like mention that the lexicon. Imagine that.

SPEAKER_03 53:59

Imagine that.

SPEAKER_02 54:00

But May wrote that the capacity to be to be aware of ourselves is what makes genuine change possible.

SPEAKER_03 54:07

Again, it's this idea. If you don't know, you don't know. Totally. You can't you can't change what you don't know. As Biggie rapped. Yeah. We're really throwing it back today. Yeah. You can step back, you can look, and you can ask yourself whether this is actually true or is it just familiar? Is it just something is it just something that's been repeated over and over again? Or or is it my truth?

SPEAKER_01 54:30

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 54:31

And in and again, like the idea of, you know, am I a terrible person, or do I just have this story that says I'm a terrible person? You know, one feels like a definition, a fact about me, the other is something that I'm just carrying. And as you point out all the time, baggage can be put down.

SPEAKER_03 54:52

Absolutely. You can you can store it, you can leave it someplace, you can throw it over the bridge into a river with a bunch of rocks in the bottom of it, whatever you want to do. It's it is our choice, 100%. You know, in closing, Kenyon, the the real takeaway here is that the story that we live inside is not a life sentence. It's not written in stone, it's not been preordained. There's no like this is the path you will follow. Nobody's nobody's dictated that for us. We are in control of our own story, we are writing it, and we are doing it real time. Right. It's live. Right. No, absolutely. As the famous Bill O'Reilly once said. Do this live.

SPEAKER_02 55:39

Do this live, that's true. But Frankel, whom I'd rather quote than Bill O'Reilly, Victor Frankel, again, shout out to Man Search for Meeting, an incredible work that I believe everyone should read. And if you haven't read it, go get it. And it's not long. No. Frankel survived things, thankfully, most of us will never face. And what he came back with was, hey, as I mentioned earlier, the last of the human freedoms. The last human freedom is the freedom to choose how you respond to any set of circumstances. It's not always what happens, it's our relationship to what happens. It's not what happens to you, it's what you do with it. So that space, that pause we always talk about between something that happens and how we respond to it. So how do we sort of cultivate that space, that you know, oh wait, here's where I can pause, and then kind of like doing whatever we can to expand that pause and learn to live in it, that's that's the work we have to do in narrative therapy.

SPEAKER_03 56:49

Right. It's not a perfect new story. It's it's just a choice about the one that we've been living. Choice is the key word. Choice is the key word and the the reaction versus response. Like, don't just react to the story, respond to it, widen that space, look for that space between stimulus and response.

SPEAKER_02 57:11

Thanks for listening to Lumen. If today's conversation resonated with you, we encourage you to follow, review, and share Lumen with anyone you think would appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 57:19

We'll be back soon with another conversation designed to bring a little more light to the human condition. I'm Christopher Mooney, LCSW. And I'm Kenyan Phillips, LMSW. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. Lumen is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, diagnosis, or treatment. If you're experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact local emergency services or a trusted mental health professional.