Become A Little More Aware Of Your Inner Storyteller Today
Your Inner Storyteller
There are 4 voices for our ongoing inner commentary/story that we can use to alter and amend our interpretations of our reality about our life events. As we tell ourselves our inner story about past, present or future circumstances and situations, we are using one of these 4 possible voices to do so. These voices alter the storyline depending on our stress levels. When we are in arousal levels 8, 9 or 10 (i.e., use the Whitworth Stressometer to identify these levels now) the inner storyteller will be extremely reactionary due to our stress hormones. There are 3 reactive/reflexive inner storyteller voices called Fight, Flight &/or Freeze. These are our voices that exaggerate the bad and compel us to act in perfectionistic, angry, obsessive, panicky and shutdown ways. When Fight, Flight and/or Freeze gears are engaged our inner storyteller will be telling us a Fight (angry), Flight (anxious) &/or Freeze (overwhelmed) brand of the story as it happens. It is very important to align your energy deliberately with the voice that matches the situation you are talking to yourself about.
Fight, Flight and/or Freeze voices are relevant to all of your life or death emergencies and should be listened to in those circumstances. However, in all non-life threatening situations these same voices will be irrelevant and should not be listened to for even a minute. The inner storyteller voices of Fight, Flight and/or Freeze will misguide us and mess up our problem solving in all of our non-life threatening daily events. The inner voice of Fight often misleads us to rage. The inner voice Flight often misleads us to panic and please others too much. The inner voice of Freeze often misleads us to shutdown, and become mute or isolated. It is the inner voice of Preference that is the inner storyteller appropriate for all of our non-life threatening events. The inner voice of personal preference balances the inner story between positive and negative interpretations of our realities. The voice of Preference identifies playful, fun, kind, gentle, frustrated, uncomfortable versions of the story to tell us so we can solve our problems in meaningful and calmer ways than Fight, Flight &/or Freeze voices will allow.
The goal is to develop an ability to govern the inner voices of your inner storytellers. Work to be more mindfully aware of which of your inner voices is describing your world to you at each moment of your day. Flight, Flight and/or Freeze storyteller voices are reflexive, reactionary and amped up on adrenaline, which makes them very believable and hard to ignore. But you can train yourself to do just that in your non-life threatening situations. It is important to learn that the inner storyteller voices of Fight, Flight &/or Freeze are not under your control. They start up all on their own due to stress hormone levels activated in your Central Nervous System reflexively. In all of your non-life threatening situations you will want to mindfully learn to call these same inner voices out and label them False alarms while you deliberately identify your inner voice of personal Preference to shape your thoughts, interpretations and problem solutions. In order to tune into your voice of personal Preference you will want to spend time developing an understanding of what your true personal preferences really are. This process is a lot like learning to be your own friend by listening to your Preference voice and allowing it to guide you away from being reactionary and towards being Preferential and Responsive instead. This is like trying to locate your true North on your inner compass or taming your inner dragon, whichever analogy suits.
Your true identity is found in your true personal preferences. Your true personal Preferences are not immediately gratifying to you. Preferences that are immediately gratifying are usually reactive and stressful in nature and generally cause more problems than they solve. True personal Preferences are locked inside what you identify as what is best for you in the long run and overall in your life, and are gratifying to you later on and overall, too. In other words, your true personal Preference will be satisfying to your health, mind and body in the long run, not necessarily immediately. For example, true Preference will be something along the lines of working out a little today rather than eating cookies, or finishing a project or homework assignment you started rather than watching another movie on Netflix. It is our willingness to honor our true personal Preferences in little and big ways each day that make us self-respecting and feel like we matter, too. Work on making you matter today by developing a friendship relationship with your very own true personal Preferences. Identify a few things you know would be right for you to do today and honor them a little bit by syncing your behaviors with them. Allow your true personal Preferences to slowly take over more and more of your lifestyle each day and you will finally be headed in the direction of your true North or Preference Identity.
In summary, work on identifying which one of your inner storytellers is talking to you about your life events. The more upsetting the story is to you the more likely it is that your reactionary voices of Fight, Flight and/or Freeze are telling you how to think about your event. If you are not in immediately life threatening danger, work to change the storyteller to your personal preference view of the event on your mind. This often requires pen and paper or a journal or something like that. Write down the upsetting and reactionary story that your Fight, Flight and/ or Freeze story voices are telling you first. Take your time and write it all down. Next, write down what you would rather believe about the upsetting event. If you draw a mental blank when you try to imagine what you would rather believe about the upsetting event, that is normal. Unlike Fight, Flight and/or Freeze storytellers, which are reflexive and essentially march intrusively into our minds without an invitation, the Preference story is by invitation only. To get acquainted with your Preference beliefs about an upsetting event you will have to think about it long and hard to come up with what your Preference story actually is. This process can be helped along by asking yourself to relax your muscle tension and exhale slowly again and again while you allow your preference view to come into mind from your core self, a little at a time. The Preference story is always your favorite story, your better story, of your reality. Your favorite story is the one that evenly balances the good and the bad about each event you experience. Your Preferred story is the one that will matter the very most to you in the long run of your life. It is up to you to dig deep into your core to work out what the Preferred story is for you one event at a time. During your day ask yourself often what you would rather think and believe about this or that as you exhale and relax a little, too. This is a good coping habit to practice everyday. Preference storytelling is a learned activity that is cultivated internally over time by spending time each day getting to know your preference beliefs about big and small things. So, write your stories down and identify your story voices. Cultivate your Preference story voice more of the time and write your preference views and beliefs down, too, to give your personal preference interpretations more and more airtime in your head each day. Stay mindful of your stories and work to make your better, more preferred story heard in your head, especially about upsetting things. In our non-life threatening situations it is our Preferred story that is the one that really matters the most because it represents our personal identity better than Fight, Flight and/or Freeze can. Good luck.
© Pamela Whitworth, PhD. All rights reserved.
